Trevi, Paintball, Parties, Driving, Walking

Weekend of last was a bigger one – and it was coming off the back of a fairly hectic week at work with added complications of emergency trips to city during work time. I’m booked to fly to New Caledonia on September 13, and I only recently realised I should get a passport for this purpose, hence the last minute flurry of buerocracy.

So I rushed into the city on the peak hour train Friday morning and was reminded how great it is to NOT commute like a big commuter. Ugh. Found myself in the foyer of some government tower on creek street at 9am, and before long I was before the passport lady. She was sighing and asking me “are you sure you brought nothing along with your CURRENT address on it?” And I was all, “No M’aam”. She frigged about for a bit then decided she’d accept the application anyway. I paid the extra $80 to get it within two days just to be on the safe side, and caught the train back for a nice big ten hour day at the office in Toowong.

On Saturday I woke and cleaned my clothes, then my pink shack before strolling over to the house of my sweet sister, under which I store my car. The plan was to cruise up to Samford and meet up with Nick(elodeon) and his gang and we’d all play paintball to celebrate his 21st birthday.

So I started up the falcon and idled the big car through the tight streets of Toowong. Before long we were bowling through outer suburbs and loving the trip.

The route to Samford was fairly simple, we’d literally head up South Pine Road, then left onto Samford road, and follow it all the way out into the bush till we saw a paintball sign. Somehow I stuffed up and half an hour we were driving up mt Glorious instead of getting to Samford. Quote of the week goes to Estelle who said as we powered up the climb “If there is a paintball arena at the top of this I am going to be fucking astonished”

It was at that point I pulled over to re-evaluate the situation and pee. Whilst in the bushes doing my thing a small roofless four wheel drive full of girls flew past, their hair blowing about in the wind. They beeped and their laughter trailed down the mountain after them.

I then got back into the car and we turned it round with gusto, smoke peeling from both rear tyres, taking off back down the mountain. We were now running late and I drove to match. Of course we soon caught up to the girls and realised how freaky this would seem from their perspective, the big green car that was originally pointed in the opposite direction to their travel, suddenly looming up behind them. Luckily they didn’t freak out too much.

We eventually reached the paintball place about half an hour late. There were like forty participants or so, everyone was suited up and ready to go and some big dude with a beard and earrings got up and started going through the do’s and dont’s [DONT shoot someone at less than 5m range, don't shoot at birds, etc etc] We heard the induction but then everyone took off out onto the arena. Over the walls we heard a further five mins of explanation occur, then the gunfire and yelling commenced.

Meanwhile Estelle and I dealt with abrupt women on the counter choosing a “pack” and working out how much paint to buy when we had nfi how much we would use.

We managed to sort out something and bought our packs, got suited up and put on helmets. Wearing the latter felt akin to placing ones head in a vice. We were then handed guns and ushered out into a warzone.

The paintball area is basically a massive hillside property with dense vegetation, clearings, bridges, forts, trenchs and dugouts. We got out there and realised the stupidity of the situation. We had no idea what team we were on, what the objective was, there was a hail of gunfire going in all directions.

Wtf had we gotten ourselves into? Everyone seemed to be shooting at everything. We could not tell which were our enemies. I grabbed Estelle and we ran into an empty fort. I decided we should at least learn how to use our guns. I shot mine at a wall. BANG. One paintball, exploded bang on the mark where I shot it.

Awesome. I instructed estelle to shoot at the wall and she did so in kind.

A couple more mins past and we got up the courage to venture out of our protective ford. We still however we still faced the issue of not knowing who to shoot at. So we ran down the side of the hill and hid until the round was over. I shot at a few trees.

The round ended with a whistle blast. Everyone crawled out of their hiding places, some dripping in paint, and gathered round the referee while the objectives of the next round were explained. I noticed we were wearing green helmets. Half the other people were wearing black. I realised we needed to “shoot the blacks”. This became a lame running gag of mine throughout the afternoon. We realised paintball isn’t going to kill us and decided to make the most of the experience. I bought us some more paint and we all moved to another area of the property to play capture the flag around some massive dams with bridges, motes and steep terrain.

The the round began, and we sprinted into the heat of battle. Suddenly me and my little sister were shooting up the place. I watched with glee as Estelle pumped paint into some big guy with a balaclava. I shot a few more peeps then copped one in the finger which was quite painful.

Several more rounds followed and we held our own. Right near the end of the game I got shot in the head. I was eccstatic. The afternoon drew to a close and I blasted the remainder of my paint all over the place like some mad idiot. By the end I had put a hundred dollars worth of paint through the gun. My head was starting to hurt a little and I was glad to pull off the gross overalls.

From paintball we proceeded home with the radio loud and the windows down, revelling in the saturday afternoon vibe. Estelle and I agreed that while we did pretty good, this mock battle shit is not our cuppa tea. We’re more at home riding waves on a hot afternoon, playing our guitars or some other form of activity sans aggression.

After busting through the suburbs on Nick’s tail trying to catch up to him, we reached my shack, bogged up on a heap of tofu stir fry, showered then proceeded to Estelle’s. I bought a bottle of trevi on the way and our evening commenced.

An hour later I had finished the trevi and we were walking to the house of Nick in St Lucia to have some more drinks. Estelle got the bright idea of racing to Toowong to catch the 412 which was supposedly going to take us to the 5-ways and hence almost to Nick’s house. So after me, Estelle and Grace raced to catch the bus, it kindly deposited us near UQ, and hence further away than we began.

This minor fact mattered not by this stage however, as the girls had plastic drink bottles full of wine in their handbags, and I had purchased more beer from a conveniently placed bottle shop, which I drank as we walked down the street, without a care in the world of getting caught. We also had a portable voice recorder for some reason, and the three of us sang “Happy Birthday” in a canon just for Nicholas. Then we made the machine speed up so we sounded like chipmonks.

We got lost in the suburbs for what must have been several hours. We didn’t actually reach Nick’s until 11 or so at night and the party was dying down. We burst in quite drunk and before long we were drinking more still and screaming. Fast forward a few blurry hours and I was calling a taxi as Grace was sitting upside down on a couch and speaking in a language none of us could understand.

In unrelated news I would like to share this golden quote from my cousin Mike:

Michael« : There were 5 of us. I end up sleeping with the two girls in the single. It made waking up and relising my car was fuked a little easier..

He had an interesting weekend too.