Forget staycations — here come paintball-cations
A vacation is often a change of mind and a change in situation. The paintball phenomenon offers a chance to do something different (for most of us) normally a short drive from home. Just as hiking, mountain biking and canoeing provide outdoor recreation, paintball fields are offering the great outdoors. Here’s Peggy’s take on what she calls the modern version of cowboys and Indians.
The woods are filled with the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire. The mist is hanging heavy in the trees making it hard to tell friend from foe. I advance from my position behind a pile of sodden logs and run, bent at the waist, gun held across my torso, toward a building labeled “post office.”
I hunker behind the walls as the building is pelted by enemy fire. My mouth has not a drop of moisture left, and I wonder what it will feel like when I’m shot.
And then I am!
He has come up on my left and fired!
Ouch! I’m stained with pink paint.
“I’m out!” I call as I stand, arms up in full surrender. Someone shoots me in the butt.
“Hey! Ouch! I’m out!”
It’s my first game of paintball, and I’m having fun. I think. My husband is still out somewhere in the mist picking off the enemy, which includes two boys—ages 10 and 12 visiting from New York—and four guys from a bachelor party. They have traveled from their homes in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, and Washington, D.C., specifically to play paintball in the fall foliage. Not that they’re noticing the leaves.
Although it’s all meant in fun, I’m surprised by how seriously everyone is taking this. I sit on a log (paintball’s bench) with two other bachelor-party-goers, and from the way they’re talking—using expletives as nouns, verbs, and adjectives—we could be on the front line in Iraq.
Except there are way too many trees and too much rain, making this paintball field in Stratton, Vermont, look more like a Civil War battlefield. Or something from The Last of the Mohicans.
The “field” is actually a wooded glen between two ski trails at Stratton Resort. It’s about the size of a football field, with boundaries marked by yellow tape (yes, the kind used to designate crime scenes). On the field are natural barriers—trees, fallen logs, old stone walls, and a stream with steep banks—and manmade pieces designed to set the scene—plywood buildings labeled post office, hotel, saloon, bank, jail, and the like; stone bunkers, and small walls of sandbags. Three wooden bridges cross the stream.
No wonder this sport is growing so fast (51.5 percent since 2000, reports the Sporting Goods Manufacturers Association, with over 5.4 million people playing in 2007). You get to play cowboys and Indians without having to yell “pow.”
John Kemper, who owns Avalanche Paintball at Stratton along with his wife Amy, says that paintball is a favorite for bachelor parties and as a team-building activity during corporate retreats (shoot your boss and get away with it).
“LEGO offered people paintball or golf during their first retreat,” says Kemper. “The first year, nine of them played paintball. The next year 15 played, then 20. Now everyone plays.”
While it seems that paintballs traveling at 200 mph would pose significant danger, the National Information Clearinghouse of the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reports that paintball has the least number of injuries of all the listed sports. The number of injuries (0.2 per 1,000 participants) is far less than those from cheerleading, volleyball, and tennis. Getting hit by a paintball feels like having a wet towel snapped at you or getting stung by a small bee (depending on how many clothes you’re wearing and at what distance you’re hit). The pain fades within seconds.
Before we head onto the field, we’re outfitted in Darth-Vader-like helmets with built-in goggles, and I opt for full armor—a slightly padded camo jumpsuit, “bullet-proof” vest, and neoprene neck protector. Our semi-automatic guns have safeties and covers to prevent an accidental out-of-play shot, and we watch a three-minute safety video before heading out.
“We always recommend that people overdress,” says Kemper.
But some of the manly-men bachelor party guys wear nothing but thin long-sleeve shirts and sweatpants, except for two guys clad in their own camo. One laughs when I ask if he’s a Marine like his outfit indicates.
No,” he says. “I borrowed this from my brother-in-law.”
The other doesn’t say anything—won’t even give his name. But his buddies mumble something about his stint with Special Forces.
“Oh,” I say and tighten my chest protector. I hope he’s on my team.
The two kids are clad in blue jeans (that will be brown by the end of the session) and hooded sweatshirts. Their mother has made them wear neck protectors.
Our team loses this round of Elimination, where the goal is to shoot everyone on the opposing team, and we move on to Capture the Flag. The last time I played Capture the Flag I was a 14-year-old at summer camp. After the whistle blew, the other girls in my cabin and I sat on the boat dock, talked about boys, and hoped the game, going on behind us, would end quickly.
Now I am one of the boys. We devise a strategy—we’ll advance toward the flag in twos and watch the left side of the field, where trees can obscure an ambush. The whistle blows, I run for the cover of the post office, and again, I have cotton mouth. I have no desire to advance beyond this point. And I have to pee.
Before there’s much more talk of invading more countries, Congress should play paintball, I think. Then I wonder if the McCain and Obama campaigns should duke it out on a paintball field, until I remember McCain’s military record and Palin’s moose-hunting forays and that giant grizzly bear shown in her governor’s office in Juneau. For them, going after the Obama campaign might be like shooting fish in a barrel. And think of the havoc they would reek if they brought in that ringer Cheney.
I shoot like a Democrat (and for the record, I am one). But again for the record, the Minnesota Paintball Association claims that Chelsea Clinton played paintball for her 16th birthday.
Although it seems like a game for settling scores, or one where every man (woman and child) is in it for themselves, it’s a good team-building activity. In a few short adrenaline-filled minutes, I learn about myself—that I am more defensive than aggressive, that I need to be more patient (what was I thinking running from my easy-to-defend log hide-out to the PO?), and that if I ever have to go to war, I should bring a change of underwear.
I also learn that my husband is an assassin. While the four other guys on our team make aggressive—almost foolhardy—commando-style attempts to capture the flag (no guts, no glory), my husband stays hunkered down behind a wall of sandbags or hidden by the “hotel” and patiently picks off the enemy with bullets of pink paint. During four hours of play, he only gets shot once. In the thumb.
“I had a good kill ratio,” he says on the drive home. I laugh, but he doesn’t. Should I be nervous? Or happy that I live with someone who can pick off the neighbors?
We win one game of Capture the Flag and lose two more. One particularly hung-over bachelor has no qualms about running into the line of fire, and this strategy works for him (in part because some of us have terrible aim and prefer to cower in the mud than charge after him).
Four hours later, when our ammo is gone—all 500 little gel balls of paint each—we gather back at the rental building near Stratton’s Sun Bowl base lodge and talk about the day’s carnage. The guys wearing thin shirts are sporting a few circular purple bruises, and one guy has a goiter-size lump growing beneath his jaw.
“Do you know how much fire I took?!” he exclaims, tilting his head to so the swelling looks even bigger. “I just turned my head to look behind me, and pow! Right in the neck!”
The 10-year-old eats a Go-gurt while his older brother sits on a porch railing and smiles proudly. It was only his second time playing paintball (the first was the previous weekend, for his 12th birthday party). But he was vicious, able to flatten his small body with his nimble joints behind whatever cover he found, unleashing round after round at the grown-ups.
He wants a paintball gun for his birthday next year. I can see why. He says there’s a paintball field near his home in New York. But it’s much more fun to play with the big boys in someone else’s backyard.
The paintball field at Stratton is open on Columbus Day weekend. For more information, check out Avalance Paintball or call 802-824-5388.
There are at least a thousand paintball fields in the U.S. To find a field near you or near where you’re traveling, either search for paintball online, or try paintball.com’s field locator. And for the real paintball fanatic, there area paintball fields across the world — Here are overviews of paintball in, not exactly a close-to-home spots, Croatia and along the Scottish borders.
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