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August 20, 2002
What A Weekend
Friday
I should have known the weekend was going to be an interesting one when my boss took the team out for margaritas at 6:00pm on Friday. I lost count of the number I had, and when he brought me back to work at 9:00, I was in no condition to get any more work done. I also realized I hadn't eaten since lunch, which only added to my drunkenness. I goofed around at work, updated my blog, chatted online, then decided to walk home to help sober myself up. An hour later I got home, called Angela, set my alarm for 7:00 and went to bed at 12:30.
Saturday
8:25am the phone rang. It was Bryant, my ride.
Bryant: "You ready?"
Me: "Give me 5 minutes."
I leaped out of bed, cursing my drunken self for setting the alarm for 7pm. I threw on pants, t-shirt and a hat, grabbed my jacket and was out the door. We met the other interns on campus. In total, there were 13 of us, each with bloodlust and the urge to hurt each other. Yes, we were going to play Paintball.
On our way out, we stopped at McDonald's for a wholesome breakfast, then drove about an hour South into the boonies. The place was called Hole in the Wall Paintball and spans several acres. We waited a good hour to get our equipment (we insisted on semi-automatic rifles instead of the pump-action ones). We were each issued a rifle, several hundred paintballs (marble-sized plastic balls filled with water-soluble paint), a camouflage jumpsuit and a mask. After a brief safety orientation we were sent out into the forest to kill each other.
We joined a group of obviously experienced people, and were split into two teams distinguished by the presence or absence of fluorescent green ribbons on our helmets. The experienced players scoffed at the number of "Walk-ons" (non-members) and likened us to fresh meat, ready for the killing. We took up our positions. The game was Elimination: kill all opposing team members. Last team standing wins.
We took up our positions at opposite ends of the field (section of forest marked off with yellow tape), and when the whistle blew, we each ran off in random directions shooting at anything that moved. That first round I mostly hit trees and the ref. He wasn't happy.
We played several rounds of Elimination and Capture-the-Flag on various fields before breaking for lunch. I was pleasantly surprised to see that they didn't price gauge us on the hotdogs, chips and pop they had. Considering we were in the middle of absolutely nowhere, they could have charged $5 a hotdog and we would have had to pay it.
We played for another few hours against some semi-professionals (one had a fully automatic paint gun), acquiring welts and bruises as we went. At one point I was in a bunker when an enemy came up behind and shot me on the tailbone. I now have a welt a mere 2 centimetres from the top of my ass crack. Add that to the ones on my knee, arm and shoulder, and I'd say I had a good day.
We went home around 6. I had laundry to do, and besides I wanted a good night's for...
Sunday
I had actually set my alarm for the right time the night before, so I was actually dressed by the time Bryant phoned me. We met Shahaf and 8 of his friends at work, and we headed North to Anacortes, Washington. It was about an hour-and-a-half drive to the small harbour town. We met one of the other 3 cars there at 10:45. According to Shahaf's itinerary, our ferry was leaving at 11:00. When I phoned him, he told me he and his carload were in a grocery store buying lunch for themselves and sardines for the seals he assured us we'd be seeing. He didn't seem overly concerned with the fact he had 15 minutes to get to Anacortes, buy his ticket and board the ferry. The rest of us waited at the ferry terminal and watched our ferry sail off, and another one dock.
Shahaf et al finally arrived around 12:30, just in time to board the next ferry to Friday Harbour. The ferry ride lasted about an hour, and I kept myself from being bored by filling out a survey about Washington Ferries. I tried explaining to the survey woman that this was my first time on a ferry, to which she replied "That's ok, it's my first time too." Reluctantly I took the survey and joylessly filled out all seven pages. The questions ranged from the bland "How many times a year do you ride Washington Ferries?" to the tongue-in-cheek,
"If Washington Ferries did not exist, how would you have made your trip?"
- Drive
- Walk
- Swim
- I would not have made the trip
Yeah, like "Swim" is a viable option. I chose "d", because if I can't ride the ferry, dammit, I'm not going!
We made a brief stop at Shaw Island, where we played frisbee with a 7-year-old girl. She laughed when I dropped the frisbee, and at one point asked Bryant "What are you afraid of?" after he flinched at a throw aimed at his head.
From Shaw Island we headed to Friday Harbour. There we met the hippy who would be teaching us how to sea kayak. He drove us to the secret kayaking location, gave us a lesson on climbing in and out of 2-person kayaks. We then pushed off for open waters. Bryant and I partnered up, me in the stern, steering, and Bryant in the bow. We kayaked in the sea for a few miles until Randy (our hippy leader) told us to stop, and to line up our kayaks side-by-side in the "Raft" formation. Floating in the ocean like that, we saw boats travel past us, a bald eagle in a tree, and then the orcas, or "Killer Whales".
There were at least a dozen of them swimming around the area. We mostly saw dorsal fins, but every once and a while an orca would leap out of the water. It was incredible. The Hippy explained to us how to differentiate between male and female orcas based on the shape of their dorsal fins. The male dorsal fin is long and erect, while the female fin has curves. I'm not kidding, that's what he really said. At one point, a pair of orcas swam under our raft and surfaced a few metres off our collective sterns. It was a great experience.
After the orcas stopped surfacing, we decided to head back. As Randy drove us back into town, he gave us the skinny on his hippy life-philosophy, including political neutrality, environmentalism and pacifism. No big surprises there. Once we were in downtown San Juan, we checked the ferry schedule and found we had missed the ferry by about an hour. The next ferry would be at 10:30pm, and we would be arriving at Anacortes at 12:30. Great.
We decided to eat at the town's Mediterranean restaurant. I had the kibbeh which was described in the menu as "Ground lamb stuffed with onions and ground lamb". Who can say no to two scoops of ground lamb?
We finally boarded the ferry and amused ourselves for an hour, until one of us realized there was a meteor shower going on outside. We all lay down on the deck outside and watched the lamest meteor shower I've ever seen. I think I witnessed one meteor in the 20 minutes I was out there. We went back in and patiently waited for the ferry to bring us back to the mainland.
Monday
I finally got home at 2am, exhausted after such an action-filled day. It was probably the most exciting weekend I've had out here. I can only hope that I get a job offer at Microsoft, so I can enjoy weekends like this instead of sitting in front of the TV watching Law & Order marathons in my underwear.