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Pocket Ducks UTG
Making something out of nothing, one hand at a time
Sometimes when I go out on the balcony of my apartment to smoke, I feel like just saying "fuck it" and jumping off.
But see, we live on the second story. So it's not for the reasons you might think.
What it actually is, is my bit of fascination with physical feats. Now, I've never been in great shape in my life, and even as a kid I wasn't the kid who was all about doing stupid physical stunts... but I was friends with those kids, and plenty of it rubbed off on me. I was more hesitant than some, but I liked to do some of that stupid stuff and had plenty of sprained ankles/wrists/etc. to show for it. Part of it is probably just a fascination with the whole thing, and I'm sure there's at least part of me even today that likes the idea of being superman and doing crazy stuff. The funny part is, of course, that I've never been very good at it.
Case in point, a month or two ago while wandering around (a bit drunk) downtown, we ended up in a parking garage. A friend of mine who's been studying all sorts of martial arts and who knows what else says "Dude, let's do some free running!" and takes off, doing some sort of handspring vault over a guardrail and dropping to the pavement below. Nobody else follows him, except myself of course, and I manage some awkward vault myself and I continued on looking awkward and having fun for a couple minutes afterwards until we decided to rejoin the group.
The combination of liking all sorts of physical activities, and not being that good at them, makes for brilliant fun.
So when a friend of mine asked me to play airsoft a few days ago, I was completely prepared. Never played before, but I thought it might be fun. And I do realize that airsoft isn't exactly some gymnastic feat or something, but it's some manner of physical competition, so that instantly puts me in the "I'm gonna suck, let's do it!" mode.
Well I wasn't quite as awful as I might've expected, though I definitely got pretty pwned by the more experienced folks I was playing with. Even got a nice welt on my side here as a badge of my efforts (it even broke the skin a little bit... those things are harder than they look!)
The highlight though, was our final game. It had gotten pretty dark by this point, and we all wandered around the woods with flashlights taped to the guns, though none of us were suicidal enough to turn them on and give away our position. The game was coming down to the wire, and I had been somewhat pinned down to a certain area, as an opponent had a nice high vantage point and knew exactly where I was. A few minutes of a bit of a firefight there, and I noticed a rustling in the bushes to my left. Now I was pretty well screwed, since to my right was a wide open area, in full view of the guy on the hill.
So I stayed to the bushes, trying to avoid opening myself up to the guy on the hill, and about a 10 minute close-range firefight ensued with the guy who tried to sneak up on me from the left, with occasional bursts hailing down from the hill whenever I opened myself up at all.
Eventually, after an epic battle, I finally got pegged in the left temple from 20-30 feet, and as I yelled "Hit!" the guy on the hill started laughing and said "Nice work, we win."
Yeah, turns out we had come down to a 2v1 situation... except my team was the 2. The guy on the hill was our lone opponent, and noticed that we were unloading on each other, so he just sat back, took a few pot shots, and waited until finally one of his two opponents managed to kill the other. Sadly, I couldn't even teamkill properly.
Note to self: playing airsoft in the dark is weird.
But see, we live on the second story. So it's not for the reasons you might think.
What it actually is, is my bit of fascination with physical feats. Now, I've never been in great shape in my life, and even as a kid I wasn't the kid who was all about doing stupid physical stunts... but I was friends with those kids, and plenty of it rubbed off on me. I was more hesitant than some, but I liked to do some of that stupid stuff and had plenty of sprained ankles/wrists/etc. to show for it. Part of it is probably just a fascination with the whole thing, and I'm sure there's at least part of me even today that likes the idea of being superman and doing crazy stuff. The funny part is, of course, that I've never been very good at it.
Case in point, a month or two ago while wandering around (a bit drunk) downtown, we ended up in a parking garage. A friend of mine who's been studying all sorts of martial arts and who knows what else says "Dude, let's do some free running!" and takes off, doing some sort of handspring vault over a guardrail and dropping to the pavement below. Nobody else follows him, except myself of course, and I manage some awkward vault myself and I continued on looking awkward and having fun for a couple minutes afterwards until we decided to rejoin the group.
The combination of liking all sorts of physical activities, and not being that good at them, makes for brilliant fun.
So when a friend of mine asked me to play airsoft a few days ago, I was completely prepared. Never played before, but I thought it might be fun. And I do realize that airsoft isn't exactly some gymnastic feat or something, but it's some manner of physical competition, so that instantly puts me in the "I'm gonna suck, let's do it!" mode.
Well I wasn't quite as awful as I might've expected, though I definitely got pretty pwned by the more experienced folks I was playing with. Even got a nice welt on my side here as a badge of my efforts (it even broke the skin a little bit... those things are harder than they look!)
The highlight though, was our final game. It had gotten pretty dark by this point, and we all wandered around the woods with flashlights taped to the guns, though none of us were suicidal enough to turn them on and give away our position. The game was coming down to the wire, and I had been somewhat pinned down to a certain area, as an opponent had a nice high vantage point and knew exactly where I was. A few minutes of a bit of a firefight there, and I noticed a rustling in the bushes to my left. Now I was pretty well screwed, since to my right was a wide open area, in full view of the guy on the hill.
So I stayed to the bushes, trying to avoid opening myself up to the guy on the hill, and about a 10 minute close-range firefight ensued with the guy who tried to sneak up on me from the left, with occasional bursts hailing down from the hill whenever I opened myself up at all.
Eventually, after an epic battle, I finally got pegged in the left temple from 20-30 feet, and as I yelled "Hit!" the guy on the hill started laughing and said "Nice work, we win."
Yeah, turns out we had come down to a 2v1 situation... except my team was the 2. The guy on the hill was our lone opponent, and noticed that we were unloading on each other, so he just sat back, took a few pot shots, and waited until finally one of his two opponents managed to kill the other. Sadly, I couldn't even teamkill properly.
Note to self: playing airsoft in the dark is weird.