After having been gone 23 of 31 days in March, I was more than happy to come back home for a bit. That respite from the road was short-lived, however, as last Tuesday evening, I packed up with another guy here at camp named Scott, and we headed to south eastern Ohio for a paintball symposium put on by the Christian Paintball Academy. The CPA was founded to help non-profits, like the camp, take their paintball programs to the next level in terms of safety, promotion, gear maintenance, etc. We spent Wednesday through Friday in the classroom tearing apart and reassembling guns (the proper term for a paintball gun is a marker, but that isn’t nearly as cool, so I’ll stick with gun), learning strategies for running our own scenario games, and hearing stories from the main speaker, a guy who works in Cincy as an independent contractor for the US govt. who tries to figure out ways to be a terrorist in the city. If he succeeds, it usually costs a few million dollars, but it changes safety standards, which I guess is a good thing. I could tell you his name, but as I’m sure you’ve already guessed, he would then come kill you!
One of the highlights of the symposium (which there had better have been highlights to take me away from my wife and son for 4 days…okay, here’s a picture),

He gets his looks from his Mama!
was everyday after dinner, when we got the chance to play on their 25 acres dedicated to paintball. The property has bunkers of every shape and size, a sniper tower, the Alamo, a fuel depot, a minivan with wire mesh windows and a turret cut through the roof, and anything else you could imagine to put one in the mood to shoot things! On Wednesday night, we were playing a scenario game where 3 people were placed in the top of the depot, a two story building that is very difficult to capture, and they were charged with defending it against about a dozen attackers. The last team standing wins! I was on the defense the first game, and I’m happy to say I took out 6 before succumbing to the firefight. The second round, I was on the offensive, and had worked myself into a position less than 10 yards from the depot without even being seen. I asked a fellow symposium attendee named Phil to cover me with his full auto Tippman A5 (of which I am now a proud owner as well), and he was glad to throw down some paint to cover my unnoticed advance. In the midst of a barrage of paintballs, I made the corner of the depot and, with back pressed flat against the wall, was running through my options for entry and victory when, out of nowhere, I saw a streak from the left and felt the sudden sting of death (at least in paintball terms) as two orange paint filled orbs desecrated my left leg. One shot got me just above the ankle and the other shot, from close enough to break the skin and leave me bloody, caught me in the meat of my left thigh. I threw up my gun, called myself out, and resigned myself to spectator for the rest of the round. This story isn’t over yet, though, as I had carefully calculated there were only two guys left in the depot, and I had a line of sight on both of them. The shot had come from outside their stronghold, on the ground, from less than 3 yards. As I turned to see my victorious assailant, my blood boiled when I realized it was a tool from my own team! Now, please don’t get me wrong, I love a good paintball match, and getting shot is all part of the deal, but when its friendly fire, and it comes from less than 10 ft, and it hits so hard it makes me bleed, I am less than my normal gracious self. My only solace was the next day, when everyone who witnessed the Benedict Arnoldian (?) display chose to hound Mark (that was the traitor’s name) mercilessly, even from the front of the class where the teacher/referee of the game was seated! I am happy to say Mark and I worked out our differences, and I also shot him later in the game, multiple times in the knees, while he was wearing shorts!
On Saturday, as part of our graduation from the Academy, we helped run and participated in, a huge scenario game put on by Pleasant Vineyard Ministries called the Gorilla Game. After a morning of reffing and watching others have a great time, we were allowed to get in on the action. I was ecstatic, as this would be the first chance I really had to try out my new A5 with an e-trigger (it just means its electronic and shoots paint really fast!). After a few rounds of playing, getting shot, and being reinserted at various locations, the aforementioned Phil, with his own A5, and I, along with several other members of the red team (so noted by our red duct tape arm bands), found ourselves in a dream position. We were trying to take The Bunker, which is a WW II style concrete bunker (theirs is made out of plywood) that served as one of the main reinsertion points for the yellow team. If we could take it, we could control that entire area of the woods. There was one hapless 13 yr old in the bunker, keeping us from our objective, but this kid knew his stuff. He kept his head low, the paint flying, and he was certainly holding his own. Phil and I had worked to within 20 yds of the bunker and we had several of our teammates covering our flanks. I yelled to Phil to throw down some paint, and I made a mad dash to the front wall of the building and threw my gun through one of the window slits as I yelled “MERCY, MERCY MERCY” like a madman. If you’re up close to someone and you know you have the drop on them, yelling “mercy” is your way of giving them a free pass from getting absolutely lit up. The kid, named Killian, threw up his hands and walked out, all the while congratulating me on a good tactical maneuver. I turned to let the red team know we were in the clear when I felt the unmistakable pain of once again being shot, multiple times I might add, from close range. I turned to see a member of my own squad, hunkered down less than 20 feet away, lighting me up with blood red paint. I lifted my arm in the air to show him my red arm band and, I’ll be honest, I wanted to lift other things in the air, like a single finger from my trigger happy left hand! As I yelled “SAME TEAM” over and over again, the sheepish response I got from the 10 yr old inner city kid hidden behind his smoking barrel was, “My bad.” All sense of calm had escaped me by this point and, even though I recognized his outfit and knew he was the youngest player on the field, I bellowed, “Yeah, it was your freakin’ bad. Don’t you know what red looks like!” before I walked off in a huff. In a much calmer hindsight, a witty response from him could have included something like, “Yeah, red is the color of the paint dripping down your leg from where I lit up your 30 yr old butt!” I think my yelling kept him from thinking of anything nearly so witty, and he just say there while I sauntered off. A couple minutes later, he was out as well and we made nice when he got off the field. I found out soon thereafter, Phil had endured a similar run-in with the young Rambo. When he was reffing, the little traitor had dropped two shots right in Phil’s meaty backside from about 5 ft! Oh well, life goes on.
On the whole, it was a great event, we learned alot, and now I’m home with my wife and son, who is only 7 months but is already cruising around the house by holding himself up on things and walking. This is happening much too fast! Here’s hoping you don’t get shot in the butt today. God bless.