Friday night 10:00 pm
Stu: You have to come, it’s going to be fun.
Cass: Well, I’ve got quite a bit of work. I don’t think I can go . . . Call me when you get home from work and I’ll let you know for certain.
Friday 11:00 pm
Stu: Do you have any idea how much mockery and derision you’ll be subject to if you don’t make the gathering?
Cass: Well . . . I’m really busy. . .
Stu: You saw what they did to the 'cake for fun, do you really want to be on the recieving end of that?
Cass: Okay, I’ll go with you. . .
That was sort of the conversation Friday night between myself and Cass, she did finally relent and Saturday morning bright and early my brother and I picked her up and headed off to the first official Alberta T-cell gathering.
We made it to the appointed paintball local in a relatively uneventful manner and when we pulled up we were immediately greeted by a large, fearsome looking man wearing a shirt that I hope we have a picture of. . .
We made introductions, gathered our forces and proceeded inside to arm and equip ourselves for the hours to come.
Playing paintball with these people was possibly one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life, despite the occasional (well okay . . . frequent) sharp stinging pain of 200mph paintballs impacting on my tender self.
While I’m certain that anecdotes of this day will fast spread amongst the forums let me present you with a few key moments:
CGB (Craig)gets shot in the head and proceeds to scream like a little girl for a good 10 seconds. I think we were all a little afraid that Cupcake had mistaken him for a bipedal ungulate and attempted to have his way with him. As it turns out it was just his reaction to blacking out. . .
Mud Dog (Craig II, my brother) get’s shot in the head by Beefcake. Except that they were on the same team it was a brilliant tactical manouver.
~E (Eva) catches CGB and 454SS unawares and proceeds to open fire. While this is normally somewhat painful they had given Eva a special high powered gun because it was her birthday. Again we can hear CGB scream like a little girl . . .
Cass proceeds with a direct frontal assault of the other team’s base, fortunately she presents a small target and had a remarkable amount of success with this tactic throughout the day.
Sturat (yours truly) manages to leap, bound and sprint my way from one hiding place to another before finally descending on Eva in a hail of paintballs. Though it was an upward hail as it was she who was doing all the shooting while breakdancing on the ground in front of me. I finished her off with a single round to the quad.
Finally at the end of the day Cupcake and Mud Dog made a full frontal assault on our position. Had the game not been over 454SS might have been paying more attention and not suffered quite as badly as he did. We eventually repulsed the attack and I managed to decorate the Cupcake as I had promised. Wait 'till you see the pictures of his back. . .
While this is only the briefest of accounts far far far too much happened for me to attempt to regale you with the whole story here. Plus I don’t want to give away all the good bits, we’ll let some of the others have some fun.
We then all proceeded to make our way back to the Cupcake’s house for a truly spectacular meal of BBQ’d beef and grilled veggies.
I’m not ashamed to say that I couldn’t get enough of the Cupcake’s meat. Figured I’d beat him to the punch on that one.
All in all it was a spectacular day and we’re all looking forward to the next gathering which is happening in Mid-July for 454SS’s birthday, though this one will be in Edmonton I think.
Keep watching this thread, as everyone e-mails me the pics from the weekend I’ll put them up here so everyone can enjoy them. Plus I’m certain there are a few other stories that people will want to share.
STU
ps. Special thanks have to go out to:
Cupcake for the BBQ and organization
CGB for the organization and slush related entertainment
Beefcake for the two funniest lines of the night. “yeah, that we got from the internet” and “I know tea has caffein but how much was he drinking”
Magnus for flying in from Guelph to meet with the Alberta T-cell.
Cupcake’s wife for allowing a bunch of strange people her husband met on the internet to come back to their house for a BBQ.