In town you're the law; out here it's me...

I went paintballng this past Saturday, something I had only done once before when I was 17. And I had a blast back in '87, so it's actually somewhat surprising to me that I hadn't done it again since. Oh wait, wait - no, not it's not surprising at all actually, cause I'm wicked lazy. Right...

Other than my total sloth when it comes to making plans and doing things, there's no other reason why I haven't done it since. So when one of my co-workers from my former job started making the arrangements, and I merely needed to pay and show up, man - that's my kind of outing.

Though let me tell you, I'm not the spry young thing going over the top 'Nam-style that I was back in the day. Post-game, I hurt. Sure, I hit the gym regularly, and despite being, you know, all fat and what not, I'm actually in pretty decent shape. But wholly unprepared for the crouching, crawling, sliding, climbing, running, diving and ducking that a solid game o' paintball requires. Oh sure, I did it - and pretty well I think, making some funky dope maneuvers - but I could tell even before the day was over that I was going to pay for it.

And Sunday the check came. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Lots of muscle soarness, but also some straight-up welts from the paintball hits I took. Sure, you would expect me, as agile like a gazelle as I am, to be able to dodge and weave between the flying paintballs with nary a splat on me, but alas, twas not the case. Apparently I make as large a target sideways as I do full-frontal, and I got hit. A lot. I know I got hit at least 9 times, because I can count nine of these on my body:

WARNING:

(Hairy Dan Photo Below)

No, those aren't hickeys on my well-shaped flank (easy girls, settle down) no, those are souvenirs of my day in the woods of Pennsylvania. Though I did my share of tearing others up too; I had a couple of pretty memorable sniper shots and at least once I totally surprised a guy who didn't see me coming as I came around a bush and served up a nice double-tap to his chest.

It was a long day, but loads and loads of fun. Looking forward to doing it again at some point before I'm too old to crawl around in the mud pretending to be manly. And I have a whole bag of paintballs left over, so I'm thinking it shouldn't be 19 years until I do this again. Though it may be 19 years until the pain goes away...

I aint as young as I was when I was younger...