Paintball a.k.a. Running through the woods with no idea of what I'm doing

Weeks and weeks have gone by without too much excitement.  Welp, that all changed today when I played paintball for the first time!

I joined Erin and her friends for a 2-hour game of shoot-anything-that-moves as part of her 30th birthday celebration.  Early on I noticed that I have the aim of a blind person and so it was easier to just take one for the team by running down the middle of the playing field so that the opposing team would shoot at me thereby giving my team a chance to rain paintballs on them in return.

I wasn't entirely running around like a chicken with its head cut off the whole game, though.  I managed to take advantage of a wooden helicopter during one game... it was kind of a rush to sit in there scanning the woods for movement and then firing away when I saw someone moving towards my direction.  Unfortunately, the trees took the brunt of my shots.

The highlight of the day for me was at the very end.  I had a handful of paintballs left when I got shot for what I thought was the last time since game time was running out.  I quickly raised an arm, yelled "HIT!" and walked over to the other players who were out of the game.  I sat down and noticed three opponents sitting comfortably behind a barrier, just taking their time picking off my teammates while the clock counted down.  I had the bright idea that if I ran down and tagged home base to get back in the game then I could run back to where those players were and try to hit them (it had been nearly 2 hours of play time and I hadn't hit anything but trees).  So, off I went.

I managed to run back and find something to crouch behind while I took aim and fired at the other team.  We were so close to being done that eventually I stood up and just ran at them firing off shots.  As soon as I ran out of paintballs the game ended, so I was pretty happy that I went in to be the last person on my team that made it to the end.

Getting hit hurt as bad as you would expect, but the adrenaline prevented from me dwelling on the stings too much.  One shot to my right hand hurt pretty bad because the ball hit my ring which cut into my ring finger.  Two shots clipped my thighs.  Several shots got me right in the bum, but I didn't notice those until I sat down for the car ride home.  Despite the pain, I think paintball is going on my list of things to do again.  Next time, I'll have a little more strategy...I hope!