Comet, the only deer with more comebacks than Rocky Balboa... I had all intentions of making a new version of Comet since March. But with Webdog, and with planning, and plotting, and all that, t once again got put off. And, at the last minute, I took Comet out of the closet, dusted it off, and took it to my bestest expert, Mary. Mary is my fiancee, you see, and she's also a master (mistress?) at the arts of sewing. And I asked her "Can this be fixed?" She looked at me, looked at the monsterous, gaping hole, and said "Yes. You only tore the seam. I can fix this." And before I knew it, Comet was good as new. Mostly. There were a few holes that needed to be major-league stitched still, and we did them. So, literally, 48 hours before the game on signal, Comet was ready for one more go. Paintball Sam's, the TIP outing that launches the year off right. This wouldn't be any different, naturally. The TIP crowd was slimmer than usual, with Shives moving away and all. But we had Da Rookie, Mike Smith (the lunatic Texan, like they're all not loonies, they live in Texas...) came up on the Amtrak, Kendrick and his friend came up as well. I'm forgetting people, sorry.

The weekend was hot and muggy, really sticky stuff. I had planned on using my Viper, but Kendrick's buddy wanted to use it. The Viper actually stopped shooting, and we couldn't figure out why (I later found out that I had sheared an O-ring because of bad maintenance. It's back to shooting beautifully.) So I used the Autococker. On an interesting note, the 'Cocker stalled on me at Skyball, but it's reconsidered it's position in my paintball life and has begun to work flawlessly.

The Sam's game was crowded, I mean really crowded. The final count was 620 people on Saturday. That's a new record! (Kendrick says it's the web page. But he's also the current webmaster....) TIP got blue bands, and we headed out to the far fort.

Normally we would have been with Fred Schultz, but Freddy had a nerve in his neck go spastic on him, and his doctors wouldn't let him fly, let alone play. We all signed a "Get well" card to Freddy, and we all missed him there. (Side note : If anyone knows Fred personally, let him know that TIP wishes him well, and we hope he's back on the field soon.)

The first game started late, not due to bad planning but due to accommodating the extra people that showed up! We took the usual path, down the road, across the short-fort, through the swamp, and into the barrels. Once there we started to really rock and roll. The big game has had a tank in the last few years, and this year they offered a "Tank killer" laser-tag gun to the team without the tank. White team got the tank, they gave the blue team the killer gun.

Guess who got the tank killer?

I played off-handed with the 'cocker while looking through the scope of the laser gun for the tank. I never did find it, but we did roll across the barrels to a NEW barrel fort up the tape. This threw us all off, because it was just built this year. 5 guys in there held up a push of over 100. Woah. But, we cleared them out of there and pushed on.

Around now I passed off the tank-killer to another player and went out hunting opponents. Just the thought of a deer hunting is fun, it's even more fun when I'm crawling around and making the moves. I didn't get too far, however. I got taken out when I was trying to longball with a guy and, well, lost. That happens, and I needed some water anyhow.

Post game I found out what happened to the tank, the white team got it, and drove it BEHIND their own fort and literally sat on it to prevent us from getting it. Sheesh. Blue team won in over 90 minutes.

Game two took us to the close fort. I had ditched the jersey because of the heat, and donned the straps on my Redz harness to make it easier to haul my paint. however, I didn't re-check the velocity of my Autococker, which had dipped to sub-200's while I was sitting around. (It's a '95 'cocker, it does that.) So I had no effective range to begin with. But, on the bright side, I knew this going into the fray.

So when I hit the ridges I played the radio hard and long. Comet is actually a good camouflaged creature, so I hit the dirt. I got within 20 feet of the white team before they noticed me, but with my barrage of "weak paint" I bought myself some breathing room. That is until they figured out I had no range. oops.

It was a mercy killing.

Anyway, while walking off the field I ran into Biff, and a retreating Blue team in the barrels. So I talked with him and waited for the white team to overrun our position. They did, and I walked off the field. But not before seeing a guy wearing what I'd call an interesting t-shirt. The weather was really, really warm. And by now I had pretty much sweat through Comet to the point where it was too moist to play in. I was prepared for that, however. And decided to do "dual duty" with Boomer. That story is on Boomer's page, which you can find by this link.

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