PAINTING THE WORLD BLUE

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[10/20/2011]
Hello and welcome back to PAINTING THE WORLD BLUE. It’s been another crazy month with lots going on both on and off the paintball field. It’s been crazy up north with earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods while all we have had in Florida is a few squalls but great weather otherwise. While the weather and world seem to be going topsy turvy, Sue and I continue to love our new life in Florida. Two fellow CREW members have now joined us down here in our little slice of Florida Heaven - Hugh “G” Walls and Heather “TRAINWRECK” Taylor. G stayed with us until he bought a house and Heather moved on down after graduating with her master’s degree in Education. Congrats to Heather! We are all so proud of her. They now live one street behind us. With Jabba, Deuce, Christy, G, Heather, Sue, and I, that makes a magic SEVEN of us taking over Port St John. Who is next? Some may say the neighborhood just went to the dogs, and well it did indeed - to our Sadie, Maggie, and our first grand dog Levi, that is.

At the end of June, we produced our Annual WESTERN WARS Hybrid Scenario pitting Chief Hercules as leader of the Native Warriors against General Andrew Potter commanding the Soldiers and Settlers. This 2-day event is fast growing because we put everything that we personally love into this game and deleted everything that we don’t like from it from a scenario/big game aspect. It has thirteen different flag stations worth different amounts of points, props galore, and missions that run every half hour. For the night play, instead of playing paintball, your team can earn points by winning a multitude of challenges for all age groups. This includes Horseshoes, Five Card Stud, One on One Shootouts, Foot Races, Texas Hold’em, a Hot Dog Eating Contest, Rock Throwing Contest, Blackjack, and of course B-Pong. Everyone really got into the theme of the game sporting feather headdresses and western garb. It was a great time. The Soldiers and Settlers were victorious in the end.

After the game, Sue and I headed to the Delaware Water Gap where we stayed most of the week before heading over to the annual Dewar Family Picnic for July fourth weekend. There, we enjoyed the hospitality of Terri, Raymond, and Tim for a great weekend at their lovely lake house with a lot of CREW members, friends, and the extended Dewar Family. They brought in a smoker and smoked a whole pig, did a steamer pot of lobsters, clams, corn, and potatoes, and also provided an immense spread of other delectable goodies. I was in charge of the Exotic Blue Juice and keeping the five gallon container refilled all weekend to the delight of the Island Drinkers, and Tim made his signature Sangria so all were fat and happy. We played volleyball, shot off fireworks, had paddle boat battles, water balloon battles, and just hung out for a truly relaxing and fun vacation.

Later that month brought us to one of our favorite events, MONSTER GAME at Hell Survivors, a two day shoot-fest that suits our Running and Gunning style perfectly. Our General was Bob Long and he was out there shooting faces right along with us. Hell Survivors sure did live up to its name. It was hot and humid throughout the entire weekend, so I had to sneak off after the play was over and cool down a bit with Bob in Dave’s Tiki Bar. Cold drinks and cool breezes abound.

On that Saturday morning, while making a mad dash for a forward bunker in the infamous meat grinder, I took a full flat out face planting ground shaking fall, BUT I MADE IT TO THE BUNKER!!! My hopper unfortunately did not make it, and continued about five feet past it, but one of Dave’s most excellent staff came running over to make sure I was alright and fetched it for me. I had hit the ground pretty hard (I don’t always pick my size twelve’s up as far as I should) and had players shooting at me from three directions. After being hit, I headed off, brushed the blood off my elbow scrape, reattached my hopper and came in for multiple more dashes into the meat grinder until the lunch break came.

While sitting in our compound, I took off my boots and socks and kicked back to hydrate. Suddenly Jab comes over and comments that I have blood running down my ankle. Thinking wow, I must have also scraped my knee during the fall, I lift my pants leg up and whoa, there is a two inch gash right down to the bone under my knee. I call over our resident team medic, BEAKER, and ask him to patch me up. Everyone tells me I should go to the emergency room, but then why should I start listening to the voice of reason now? I’m an old, hardheaded paintball player. So no, I don’t go of course. Beaker cleans out my wound, bandages it and tapes it. I limp around the rest of lunch and actually did not go back out to play - for an hour or so anyway! Anyone that knows me and knows CREW would understand how I couldn’t stand sitting there while the CREW was Pillaging and Plundering the field. Naturally, I had to go join them despite the many threats from my teammates that they were going to call Sue. That night back in the motel, my savior Beaker, once again cleaned the wound and rewrapped it for me. We did call Sue, however, and gave her full play by play, letting her know what happened and how Beaker was treating it. For being a nurse for over 30 years, she has patched me back together many times and kept me almost in one piece. She told Beaker to check it in the morning for infection and if it was okay to then send me back to her to nurse back to health on Monday. The next morning when Beaker first came in, I swear they were carrying a stretcher and chain saw and were going to practice Gettysburg style medicine, but all was good and we kept the leg. Sunday the CREW did play without me and I gimped around the staging area talking to players. I did heal up nicely and am back to full Running and Gunning.

That old fashion New England Steamer Pot at the Dewar’s over July 4th weekend really made us miss the steamer pot that we left at our place in Chincoteague, so Sue and I decided we had to get one. We had looked all over and could not find any locally, so we ordered one. Of course, then we had to immediately try it out, so G, Heather, Christy, and Deuce came over to be steam pot guinea pigs on our first attempt with the new pot. We have steamed a ton of clams and crabs in our day, but this time we did shrimp, clams, lobsters, corn, carrots, and little red potatoes in a Cajun/Old Bay mix and boy, did it ever come out great. We pigged out and then spent the rest of the day floating around the pool sipping Blue Juice through straws.

Deuce and I then headed up to EMR the second week of August to run our TIPPMANN EXTRAVAGANZA which Team TSSOC wrote and produced. Eric and all the boys from TIPPMANN came and set up their compound and the event went off without a hitch. TSSOC even provided most of the ref staff and they did an excellent job. This gave a lot of our refs a chance to play (which they greatly appreciated) and everyone loved the game. One extremely cool thing they did for the night play was put a ton of light sticks all over the field giving the field a really cool look and feel for night play. We’re planning on bringing back TSSOC to produce our 2012 26-Hour Scenario at next year’s TIPPMANN EXTRAVAGANZA. Great job, guys.

Now I take you to the “BLUE VS RED” game at OXCC in August where Greg “RED” Hastings was general against yours truly in a rematch of a game we did in Texas in 2003. I was all healed up and ready to go, ready to do my own Pillaging and Plundering, though I was a real hard ass about conditions under which I would attend this event. I was especially a hard ass about being general since I do not general anymore. CRABS! HARD SHELL CRABS! DELICIOUS BLUE TIP MARYLAND HARDSHELL CRABS! They must be delivered to me in bulk smothered in Old Bay before I would play. Rick, the owner of OXCC, and DXS came through for me and we went up to Rick’s house Friday night and demolished a bushel of the lovely crustaceans. Man-O-Man, were they ever good and certainly worth the trip.

The event was produced by Jeannie and her team, Knight Stalkers. It was set out to be a truly great battle between our forces and it was just that, a great battle with great reffing. We each had a tank on our side, but Greg did not have our secret weapon: EMR HOME TEAMS along with BLUE’S CREW. We had members of Boneheads, Exiled Souls, Joint Fury, Lies and Deception, and the Wildcards as well as many other friend teams and players. The battle went back and forth all day and was hard fought the entire time, but side BLUE was victorious again and carried the day. Thanks to everyone that came and helped destroy the evil RED horde. LOVE YA GREG! After a ton of prize giveaways and awards, DXS held the Player’s Party at the CREW Compound where master chef Tom “JEFFTHROW” Pettitt cooked up some spare ribs, along with marinated chicken, pork chops, and assorted other delicacies for the players. Andy Potter hosted the B-Pong challenges while DJ Deuce kept the music hopping. It was a great day overall which is exactly what BLUE’S CREW and DXS always strive to provide. Great Events, Great Paint, In Your Face Paintball games, and always a great time had by all both on and off the field.

Now I actually had four weekends in a row at home with Susie so we made the best of it. The first weekend we hit the beach on Saturday at the Cocoa Beach Pier with G, H, C, and D and just kicked back all day. We followed up on Sunday with a cook out and hanging in the pool, a totally nice kicked back weekend. The following week Sue and I used a Groupon special and took the ole ’95 Jeep Wrangler with no top and drove up to Daytona Beach Resort to spend three lovely days driving the beach, eating seafood, and hanging out, just another terrible time, eh?? That Saturday we worked the T-Shirt booth with our fellow Parrot heads at a Surf Competition at Cocoa Beach Pier to raise money for the Kidney Foundation. It was a cool event and raised a lot of money. We love the Parrot head group and their motto is PARTY WITH A PURPOSE! They work to help many different organizations and people throughout the county while enjoying music and each other’s company and we love the people in our group. After working the beach booth, we met up with Christy and Deuce and hit the Beach Shack for some laid back Blues and caught up with Jabba. On Sunday, we once again kicked back in the pool and barbecued some burgers and dogs.

The third weekend at home we met up again with our Parrot head friends in Historic Downtown Melbourne at Meg O’ Reilley’s for a few beverages and then on to Italiano Briana for an excellent meal. After dinner we stopped briefly at another local place called the Tracks and then headed to the County Line to meet G and Heather where they had a Comedy Club going on. We enjoyed it, though it was a different style of Comedy Club than we were used to. They had an excellent band that joked around and got people up on stage in between songs for funny stunts. This past weekend at home, we had our Monthly Parrot head meeting at Rusty’s in the Port on their brand new deck over the water. They did a fantastic job on their extension. It has a nice new Tiki Bar and a stage where good musicians were playing Trop Rock style of music and as always, their seafood was great.

Tomorrow, Deuce and I are heading up to EMR to help Jab get ready for CASTLE CONQUEST XXXII, which is looking to be another excellent event at EMR. If you have not made it to one of our DXS events, you should definitely come check it out and spend some time with our entire EMR Family. There is nothing else like it in the country with the First Family of Paintball, great DXS Paint, and a staff that takes care of everything necessary for you to enjoy a weekend of PURE PAINTBALL INSANITY. Play Hard, Play Honorable, and come run with the CREW anytime. Shoot with us or shoot at us, just shoot and have fun. Hope to see you there!

Blue and Deuce