Elitie Weekend ROCKED!!!

YEEEEEEEEEAAAH BABY!!!

I'm not going to lie. Over all it was a blast but there were a fair number of problems.

First problem was my flight on Thursday was an hour late getting off the ground. What that means is I was late for dinner at Rodizio's. I heard all about it and it sounds like it was a blast on it's own.


The next problem was the altitude. Kingston is approximately 300 feet above sea level. All the paintball events took place between 5400 and 7800 feet. I felt like I was breathing through a damned straw. Running up and down the sides of a mountain didn't help that much. lol

The only other difficulty was the fact that we were constantly behind schedule. Generally the tour buses left the hotels about 20 minutes late and that just cascaded into all other events being delayed.

That's it for problems though.

Everyone seemed to have a great time. We all played a phenomenal game, with honor and integrity. It was a huge pleasure to play with/against everyone.

So let's see..... Friday we arrived at the Spec Ops store, met the sponsor(Atomic Ordinance, Stiffi, Draxxus, Vforce, Tippmann, Tiberius Arms, Engler Customs and Greg Hastings Tournament Paintball. Next the players were broken in to 6 groups of 10, given their free gear and tours of the facilities. Myself and the rest of the Special Ops forum Mod Squad were given out red shirts, free camo and badges, and then put to work making ghillie cloaks.

We then headed off to the field. Since it was time for the positional clinics the Mod squad was given the option to attend the clinic of their choice. I selected the Sabre clinic. We marched down into our section of the field where our own mod Rob "Tyger" Ruben was in charge and we found out Greg Hastings was co-teacher.

The clinic was 10 minutes of "classroom", a 10 minute game, 10 minutes "classroom", 10 minute game, 10 minutes "classroom", 10 minute game. It was a blast even though I got shot out each time.

We then headed back to the staging area for a snack and to wait for the SPPL style game to start. By that time though the altitude was starting to affect me as was the heat. I think it was 106F/41C. All I know is I was sweating pools and I decided it was healthier to sit out for a bit.

After that it was BBQ for supper followed by the nightvision game. The Mod Squad wasn't needed for that so we took the shuttle back to the hotel and went for a swim.

Saturday morning arrived with temps over 100F/37F. We returned to the Retribution field for the team challenge. I woke up sick to the stomach and had to bow out of participating as the opposition in the Down Pilot scenario. The Mod Squad was to be enemy forces and one was to be the down pilot. The players were supposed to come in, locate and rescue the pilot and/or retrieve a data CD. Collecting both was big points, collecting just the CD was OK but not worth as much. I took some photos of the first game then wandered of to try and check out some of the other stuff.

I found the zipline challenge next. 500 feet across and 100 feet down. The objective: Shoot all 10 targets while crossing the valley. Even though I didn't use the marker it was still cool to go across.

After that the team I met up with headed up the mountain to the rifle range. Sadly I didn't get to shoot anything but I did get to see the Barrett 82A1 get fired. To quote the Mad Bomber What Bombs at Midnight; "BOOM BABY! YEAH! HAHAHAHHAHAHA!" (Tick reference. Geez, read a damned comic book people!)

I was starting to feel the altitude again so I walk the 3/4 mile down to the staging area, just in time for lunch. I managed to eat a hot dog and was waiting to see if it would say down.

The announcement came that if everyone hit the field in 10 minutes we could be back on schedule. The Mod Squad protested because they had JUST got in for chow. They ate and left while I felt my stomach gurgle a bit. 20 minutes later I wasn't feeling overly bad and was trying to decide what to take pics of next. That's when Rob "Tyger" Rubin conscripted me into officiating the Tiberius Pistol Challenge. I was supposed to follow the player down a short course with 30 targets. The player had 3 minutes and 32 rounds to complete the challenge. 1 point per target and 1 point/second left on the clock at the end of the course. Several players ran the clock out with out getting to the end. Those players ended up with a higher hit ratio (12+). The others ended up little difference. They would hit fewer(6 to 10) targets but time left on the clock brought them up to average. The high score for the day was 21 points.

We were supposed to leave for the hotel at 6:30 to shower and change before heading to Jason Orvis' (owner of Spec Ops) house for a pizza party. Since we were late pizza was diverted to the field, then we went back to the hotel to change and finally to Jason's place. There was a lot of chatting about the day and what to expect on Sunday. some of us got to play Greg Hastings Paintball on PS2 against Greg Hastings himself. It was a blast! At midnight we wnet back to the hotel.

Sunday Morning:
We were supposed to head to the Spec Ops store before the game but since it was a 2 hour drive to the Elite mountain field that didn't happen. I was hopping it would since my pod pack and pods disappeared. We arrived 7800feet above sea level. Just getting out of the bus had me trying to catch my breath.

Everyone wandered around for a bit and had something for lunch. Tyger called us all together for the safety briefing and team assignments. Basically the 6 10 man teams were split into 2 groups, one red one blue. There were also 40 or so invited "walk ons", local players, and the Mod Squad left. We were split into two groups green team and mercenaries.

Red team was Russians, Blue Chinese and Green Kazakhstan. Green was split into 2 sub groups one was given red armbands the other blue. They were then sent to opposite sides of the field to act as the first objective of the scenario.

The overall theme was a satellite went down and both Chinese and Russian governments wanted it. Points were earned for holding various bases for your respective team. Bases included 2 communications buildings(one on the blue side, one on the red), hospital, artillery base and training camp. Green held the Com bases to start. I was on Green/Blue.

After we were converted to Blue Kole "Cpt. Obvious" Maxewell, John "Maj Tom " Abeli and a couple of the other Mod Squad wandered of to do our own thing. We headed up the hill and noticed some barrels to our right and we decided to check them out in case they held some sort of secret. We moved into the woods just pass them and started taking fire shortly after. I took a hit in the left should, called myself out and headed to the re-spawn point. It was there I found out it had been a bounce.

Re-spawns were every 15 minutes and by that time there were 5 of us there. We had noticed a path across from us and decided to follow it. It only made sense since the Mod Squad had no map. Turns out it went to the Artillery camp. Looking back the first big bang should have been an easy clue. As we got closer we saw some other Blues hunkered down. They had been taking sporadic fire and we came under it too. We traded paint with out barely visible opponents for a good 5 minutes. That's when I got hit in the side of my mask. On the way back to the re-spawn I saw a group of 4 or 5 Reds coming up from behind. Too bad dead men can't talk. Five minutes in the dead box more blues arrived. That's when I found out I'd been hit with friendly fire! NO-ONE had bothered to see who was shooting whom.

While waiting to reinsert we saw a squad of 10-12 red go by towards the Blue Com Center. We decided to sneak up behind them . We crossed over the woods and paralleled the road so we had some cover. We got to the bottom of the slope below the Com Center, took a bit of fire and were reduced to 3 from 6. We did eliminate 2 or 3 of the reds though. At that point it was decided we should RUN across the road, hit the field boundary, haul ass up a 70 foot long hill at a 16 degree grade. Did I mention that this was at 7800 feet? By the time I got to the top I was huffing and puffing like a 90 year old with emphysema after running a marathon. At the top I was seeing stars and only had 10 feet to go to get some cover. I saw 2 paintballs sail past my face and felt one go past the back of my head. I just couldn't move.

THWACK!!! Hit in the ribs. I left the field. I was done after an hour and a half. I sat in the air fill station barely able to breath. Does that qualify as irony? Thirty minutes later I was better able to breathe and headed down to the staging area. I drank three bottles of water, two cans of Sprite and had a slice of watermelon.

It was about 20 minutes or so before the first wave of players started to come down. The game was winding down and players were hungry.

The rest of the Mod Squad began to congregate and Jeremy "redleg_64" Barnby came to me asking my help in grenading French toast. All I had to do was get French toast on his knees and make like I was hitting him with my inflatable hammer. French got HOSED! Everyone laughed including toast.

Ten minutes later I'm waiting in line for chow when I feel the back of my shirt lift up. I though it was a breeze until I felt 8oz of orange paint ooze up and down my back and rear end. I turned on him pretty quickly. Too bad I didn't get a shot of toast's face. He looked really relieved when I started laughing.

After everyone was done eating Jason Orvis announced the prizes and winners. I'd list them but I can't remember who won what. Then they thanked the sponsors and we all headed back to the hotel.

The Mod Squad managed to get a swim in. Lots of cannonballs, chicken fights and lounge chairs in the pool! Good times!

Half of me wanted the weekend to keep going. The other half was screaming, "WHAT?!?! Are you on glue? Go the hell home so you can breathe again!!!"

It was absolutely awesome being part of the FIRST EVER Elite Weekend. I'd love for Spec Ops to invite me back next year but I'm not holding my breath for them to pay my way again.

Here's all the pics I took. Carrie took pics of the bruises today.
These are pics from other sources.