Paintball

We headed back down to Upton for more paintball this past Sunday. It was hot. The thermometer, sitting in the shade, read 90 for most of the day. The upside was we were mostly in the woods. The downside was we were mostly running through the woods. The other downside was that our team got its ass kicked. The teams are essentially random, with the refs mainly concerned about equal numbers. It usually shakes out about even, if not in our favor, but we looked like kids this time out.
For some reason we took a fair number of nasty hits, too. I started it off by getting shot directly in the Adam's apple. Fortunately the shot was from a pretty good distance and I was wearing a neoprene neck guard specifically for that purpose. Nonetheless I ended up with a scratchy voice for a few hours, and a bruise that's still visible four days later. Another one of us came across a kid who didn't exactly know the rules, particularly the ones about close-range combat, and got blasted in the arm from something like three feet away. 280 feet-per-second is the maximum velocity allowed on this field, and it turns out that a paintball hitting your arm at 190 mph will raise about a 3/4-inch bloody welt. Totally nasty. We were all sure that was going to be the worst of it until the last round of the day. One of us got tagged right in the throat, but from much closer than my hit and without the benefit of a neck guard. You should see what it looks like when someone has a golfball-sized bloody welt right in the middle of their neck. Actually, you shouldn't, it's friggin' disgusting. He was a wicked trooper about it and thought it was "awesome," although I'm not sure if he still thinks so.
Don't let any of this deter you from thinking it's a good time, because it is. Let me know if you're interested in going next time and I'll kick you an e-mail.
And yeah, I have extra neck guards.