Park Tag

"We turn Playgrounds into BATTLEgrounds ... of Epicness"

Normal tag turns into a running match, whoever runs fastest and has the most stamina can come out the winner. Park Tag balances being agile and being fast, so you can be excellent at one or the other and not have too much of a disadvantage. Or you could be good at both, but it doesn't mean you're going to be the best.

It's unmeasurable fun as you dart through a playground, once thought to be for children ages 3-5, trying to avoid being tagged. There are many different types of tag capable of being played, and it usually depends on what the actual grounds look like.

Fish in the Water, where the person who is "it" closes their eyes and moves around a very small and compact set trying to tag somebody. Sand is all but off-limits, if the "it" person calls "Fish in the water" while you are in sand, then you are now "it". Or if they manage to tag you. A good warm-up and cool-down since it involves virtually no running or exertion to avoid being tagged, just balance, the ability to be light on your feet and the ability to stand using only a toe or two and a finger or two.

Capture the Flag, this requires strategy and a flag (duh), but the rules always change with every new ground we come to. Sometimes you'll have two lives, other times you'll have one. There might be one safe-zone or three. The rules adapt to try and eliminate camping and encourage fun, thinking and agility.

Shark Tag. The newer playgrounds that are constructed of metal sides and plastic bottoms works very well for this. The shark can only use the sand and any metal, but no plastic. Runners are allowed the metal and plastic and a one-step hop across the sand. By one-step I mean if you land with one foot, you must leave with one foot. If you land with two, then you must bunny hop.

Regular Tag. One-step rules apply here as you dart across the equipment. If you're tagged then it's a five-second count to start again or ten seconds to get your butcher (the one who tagged you). Counting to ten gives you free reign to tag anyone, it doesn't mean you have to go after your butcher solely.

We're going to try to bring a camera-man along for the next round, because the epicness of some of our stunts will blow your mind as they succeed or fail miserably. So get out there and play some Park Tag, get some fresh air, exercise and have fun.

There's a First Time

And then there's a second time that blows the first time away. Except we didn't stay long enough for Evan to start his mixing. I talk about raves. I've been to a whole two of them, the first was in a basement of a small downtown building, tickets were $5.00, and there was probably about 100 people. The second one was larger, and definitely had the capacity to be larger. It was held in an old skate park on 118th Ave and 90th Street. I recognized more people here, and had more fun.

Holding it in a skate park is pretty cool, it allows for different heights to spin poi and to dance, but the best part was the bowl. Some people were spinning in the bowl while a few others did tricks along the bowl. Sliding down, jumping out, wall walking, all sorts of crazy fun stuff. One thing I tried several times was running up a side and trying to do a hand stand on the ledge of the bowl. Obviously I failed miserably, I'm used to dropping down to do hand stands rather than trying to push myself up.

I did a wall walk around the taller bowl and got about 3/4's of the way around before I started sliding back down. Around the more shallow bowl was a set of makeshift steps to get out, so I wall walked up and jumped over the steps and then wall walked down ... well, it was more like run down and try not to fall. The first time I tried sliding down, my shoes played a trick on me. It went like this:
Shoes: "Psst, we're going to use our grip now."
Me: "what?"
*screech!*
And then I ended up tumbling down a 6 foot wall. Smooth moves. Then I developed a good way to do it. Crouch down on the ledge, grab onto the side and slide sideways on your feet, man it worked so much better.

The rave was actually a spur of the moment thing, the girl Stuart was supposed to be going with decided to back out at the last minute, so after he and I finished beating Team USA in NHL '07, I was informed of my evening plans. I think I should learn to spin staff now.

The Lords came to work yesterday

And I mean both types. Ole' Ronzilla himself stopped in, he wanted to check up on Ray for some reason (because being a salaried employee clearly means he has absolutely nothing better to do than to check up on the other salaried employees of the warehouse, not even spending time with his family), except Ray was spending time with his family. It was his daughter's grad, and he forgot to inform Ron of the that. Well, Ole' Ronzilla hung around for about two hours before giving up and going home.

That was one lord that we can do without. And according to this amazing Coca-Cola fun fact (which if it's true is quite scary) we now have a nice method of disposing of bodies.
...
I mean ... getting rid of meat.
...
yes ... meat.

We finished our daily meeting, and started work, and as Dosman and I left the office, we struck up a conversation well within Ronzilla's hearing range. It went like this:
"Hey Dosman, I see you got to 40 finally, get your mount?"
"No, as soon as I hit 40, a 36 and a 38 jumped me. I ran back inside to get my 40's spells and then pwned some noobs. DOTted them both, feared them and then DOTted some more. Two strikes and they went down."
"Nice."
"And then a 70 jumped me."
"Insta-gibbed."
"Pretty much. Are you in the Barrens yet?"
"Yeah, I'm three bars away from 16, but I got my Fire Totem so I can use Fire Nova Totem and Searing Totem. They fucking rock."
"Shammies rule."
"I do Lightning then Fire Blast for DOT, drop the Nova, let it explode then hit Searing. Mob is dead in 10 seconds."

Now, if I were Ronzilla (which thankfully I'm not), I'd be confused beyond most of a fuck. So much 'net slang and WoW acronyms were packed into every sentence. Which reminds me, I need to hearth back to Thunder Bluff for more Shammy spells and to upgrade my leatherworking.

The Lords are taking a break

My WarCrack addiction took a backseat to something far more adrenaline packed yesterday.
PAINTBALL!
This is going to be a complicated sentence, so try to follow along eh? It was Jamie's brother-in-law's stag party (get all that?) so we went Paintballing at a course between Tofield and Ryley named Tags Paintball. Pretty nice outdoor course, but some of it was flooded with water, including the safe house. And there were rules for the course, it went like this:
No ...
Alcohol
Drugs
(and something else that I can't remember because I was stuck on the alcohol part).
Fortunately one of the owners said "you can drink, but don't let anyone else catch you", and if they did, well we had guns and they didn't. Paintballs can break skin y'know.


We did the Ghost town course first, a bunch of shacks, dead cars/vans/a trailer and segregated into teams. I was on Team Blue, so I got a blue ribbon tied around my arm. Although, my helmet stands out more than people who want to go professional in the sport and buy their own. It has a red and black color scheme and a Japanese flag decal across my visor. Cuts down on glare a lot.

So, blue team started in the far east corner while green team started near the safe zone we ended up designating. There were 10 of us for the stag party of Hardeep's, and four guys joined our group, they were definitely going beyond the recreation aspect of the sport. They were divvied up, two on each team. Noll and Tom took our team, mainly because they had blue on already.

First game I covered Noll as he advanced, he took out three guys and I tagged Dosman, then Noll was tagged out, so I moved back closer to our start position to help Jamie and Tom take on another guy behind cover. We won the first round with three of us left, not too bad.

Second round, we switched ends on the Ghost Town, and Noll wanted to do a death charge up the center to try and get 6 greens that were in a single shack. I agreed, but we only got to the third shack up, maybe halfway there, when we came under fire, I moved back to the second shack, hoping to spot a shooter, but one of the greens was trying to flank us from the outside, I warned Jamie, Noll, somehow made it back there without me noticing, and then I ended up tagging Dosman again. He was the little bastard trying to outflank us. Serves him right. Hardeep and Tanner were left as well, until Noll and Jamie were taken out. That pretty much left me to charge, and then I ran out of paintballs. Stupid damn hopper.

Next game we moved to the Castle, surrounded by a moat and mosquitoes aplenty. Blue took possession of the Castle first, trying to get the greens as they advanced under cover of bushes, stacks of pallets and large wiring bails. One of them snuck around the north side of the moat and crossed, and I was certain I had heard someone moving over there, I didn't see anyone. He shot me with two balls and I jumped so high, both from pain and surprise. I've got two nice welts from him.

Second round we switched, and I decided to forgo my mask and just stick with my helmet because it was getting hotter. That would turn out to be a mistake. I took the mask along so if I was shot in the head I wouldn't have greasy paint in my hair (now that I have hair again), and the round I took it off, Dosman ended up tagging me in the head with two rounds. The first broke on the top of my helmet while the second broke on my head.

Finally, last game we decided to do some speed ball to finish up our paintballs. Don't let the name deceive you, you don't usually advance very fast, it's a game designed around machine gun warfare: fire 1000 rounds and hit two guys once each. This is where I got shot a lot. A lot a lot. Noll covered me and I made it to the third cover up before I got shot with two balls in the finger, one on the arm and one on the mask. Back to safety, respawn and shot a death charger as he took out two of our guys.

Most of them ran out of balls quickly, and as the game ended, I painted an old light fixture orange to use up mine. Needless to say, a real-life FPS rocks the fuck out of any video game.

And May the Lords of Kalimdor have Mercy ... again

Well, I've got a few minutes to spare.

I've unfortunately given up on Earthen Ring and the Ronin, it would have been great to roll with Chief again like the old days, but they've started hitting a barrier that hit me a while ago. FIA had been doing a lot of endgame content as I reached the 40's, and even with the BC expansion, it's just not enough in the end. And considering the length of their gaming careers, they've done a lot. In a period of three months half of the core of FIA had each logged almost 1000 hours of game time. Take 24 hours, subtract about 9 hours for work, and say 5 hours for everything else and leave the rest to gaming. Fucking amazing.

So right now I've got a level 14 Blood Elf Mage on the Farstrider RP Realm, in the hopes that I'll eventually get around to rolling an Alliance character and find Shadow, and today I started on Cho'Gall PVP Realm as a Tauren Shaman, who is currently level 10. I'm rolling with a BE Paladin made by Dosman, a short dude I work with. He's got a 38 Warlock as well, and more time on his hands. Once we get high enough, he'll drop Silvermoon City and join me in the Barrens and we'll roll across them like an unstoppable plague of Elf and Tauren.

But not tomorrow, because tomorrow is Paintballing for a friend's brother-in-law's stag party.