Paintball

On Saturday, all of our paintball planning came together, and we went out to Jason's hunting plot in Madison to play. And it was awesome. We rented 5 markers, I brought mine, James brought his and one he borrowed, we took 7,750 paintballs, ten 12oz. CO2 canisters, three 20oz CO2 canisters, and masks for seven people. Oh, and it was awesome. Did I say that? Here's just part of the gear:



Since it had rained heavily the day before, we hiked our gear the last part of the way in to Jason's cabin: the road is primitive and we didn't want to tear it up. Once we got everything in (only took one trip), we went over safety, loaded some lousy paint, and chrono'd the markers. As it turned out, we needn't have worried much. All but one of the markers were shooting well under 285 fps; I think the one that clocked over 300 maxed out around 310. I'm checking Matt's, here.



My marker didn't seem to want to shoot any faster than 250 when I checked it. But later in the day it read just north of 285. Doesn't really give me a lot of confidence the precision of the adjustments I made: the markers seem to be so sensitive to a whole host of variables that influence their muzzle velocity.



Checking out Brian's marker, while James and Matt watch. Tracy was behind the camera; never did think to take it from her and get a picture of her. Oh well.



I don't have any pictures of the games, of course: I wasn't willing to risk the camera getting hit by paintballs. James had a helmet cam he uses for bike riding; don't know yet how the video he took came out. Could be awesome. We'll see.

The games were awesome. We ran around in the woods for a good four hours, not counting breaking for lunch and chrono'ing the markers before we started. Tracy and I were both exhausted when we got home, but it was a good kind of tired. Similar to after a hard day of skiing. Definitely something we want to do again!

At the end of the day, we had a good bit of paint left over. Balls in unopened bags we saved; the rest we used for target practice. Mike is shooting James' marker here, playing with the electronic trigger.



James' marker was chopping balls - either that, or they were breaking in his barrel because his barrel was so dirty by the end of the day. I had him load up with balls and just blow through a bunch of them so I could get this photo: the launched ball disintegrating just after it exits the barrel. No Photoshop - that's the real thing.



We're hoping for more paintball in the not-too-distant future - and we're hoping for more people. Seems likely; we'll see.