Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Painball

  

     This past weekend I went paintballing for a friends birthday. She invited about 10 people to go to Adrenaline Plus paintball for a good time. It was indeed fun, but I forgot just how painful paintballs hitting you at 200mph can be. Being on the losing team the whole time didn't help things.



 A few action shots taken by out awesome referee.



I think this was right before I got shot in the face.







     While there, the referee had us play one game that was very... interesting. He lined up both teams facing each other about 30 feet apart. We weren't allowed to run or hide, but we could duck and try to dodge. He then told us that we had one shot each. Everyone was kind of apprehensive about this Civil War style game, but we all went along with it anyway. Each of us took our shots and each of us got shot and then he told us to do it again, except this time we had two shots. After the first round we were even more hesitant about continuing because we all knew just how painful it was to be hit at this distance. The ref told us that we could leave the game whenever we wanted, but no one did. We all chose to go on. A few people got out around 3 or 4 shots each. I stayed in the game up until we had 5 shots each. After that I had all the welts that I wanted and decided to sit out. The game kept going though. The 5 people left in remained in their lines until they each had 7 shots each. There were 2 girls and 3 guys in the game at this point. These stragglers were obviously the type of stubborn people that as kids would play bloody knuckles until the death if they had to just so they wouldn't have to admit defeat. It was rough just to watch this last round. At the end of it many of them used the excuse of not wanting to waste anymore bullets, but you could tell that they were all in agony.

     I've asked around to find out if this sort of game is ever played in the States and have gotten a no from everyone. It must be an Australian thing. 

Monday, September 6, 2010

Need a Light?


     Yes, this is me. I'm fire spinning with a 4 foot staff. If you look very close you can see that my face is extremely intense due to my acute concentration. I had never done fire spinning before, but I was very excited because it's something I've always wanted to do. Unfortunately, I paled in comparison to the owner of this staff.
     Sean, the owner, has been teaching me how to spin a staff for a couple days now. He did it for quite a while in a drumline for a marching band and is therefore very skilled at it. He was the one in his band that taught all the newcomers how to spin, so he is obviously a really good teacher and I'm learning pretty fast. He'd never actually done fire spinning either though. He got the idea for a photography project so that he could create some mind-blowing fire pictures and boy did he. The one you see above is one that he took, but there are much better ones which show him spinning.
     It's amazing the people you meet and the things you get to do when you travel.