airsoft and Providence
Thought I'd update people on my weekend, since my posts recently have had very little to do with *me*, which is, of course, why you're reading....right?
I went airsofting on Saturday, with Richie, Christian, and Butch (David?). It was actually a bigger deal than all that, because we were going to one of Outdoor Adventures' organized things, and there were probably ~50 people playing at the beginning of the day. To be fair, our group's attendance was Christian's influence - he hosted the before and after party at his house, made me come, etc. Good for him.
So, the day was very interesting. Leaving out all of the drama revolving around everyone else's guns (especially Richie's, whose gun quite suddenly popped - a loose term for broke - a cylinder head, putting him out of commission until he got himself a rental), my day was pretty exciting in itself.
It started out just fine, because there was nothing unexpected going on. Nothing, that is, until I swapped out the barrel in my gun for a longer one, with the intent of gauging its effectiveness. Everything seemed to be fine, and indeed, I thought all was right with the world, but I was to discover later in the day that I had dropped a piece of the gun on the floor while putting everything back together.
Meanwhile, my magazine stopped feeding BBs into the gun, principally because there was a random hunk of white plastic in amongst the non-random, round pieces of white plastic that were SUPPOSED to be in the magazine. This would necessitate taking apart the fancy new high capacity magazine that I bought, which was not in the plan for the day until that moment.
This did not go so well. Including two repair sessions, one in the basement, and one in the car, it took me about 45 minutes to get my magazine working, and in the process, I managed to lose 2 screws - one to the carpet monster in the Chastain's basement, and one to the bottomless void of under-the-car-seat in the Lort's Malibu. Ahh well. It was working, at least.
That was more than could be said for my gun, apparently. Before and up to the day, much of the conversation about my gun had revolved around whether or not I would pass the chronograph test. Outdoor Adventures has a 420 FPS limit for their games, and my gun supposedly shoots around 440. The question, then, was whether my gun was really going to perform as well as it was supposed to, because if it did, then I wouldn't be allowed to play. Heh. As it turned out, this was no problem. In fact, during the pre-chrono training sessions and exercises, I was beginning to feel that my gun was really doing pitifully. Sure enough, when I walked up to the chrono, and proudly shot my beast of a gun, the chronometer practically laughed out loud as it posted a whopping 250 feet per second. My second shot clocked in at about 171, as my gun thoughtfully spit out two BBs at once. A third shot, fired out of sheer desperation, came in at 259.
This was NOT what was supposed to happen! I was supposed to walk away from the chrono having shot a 419, with a smirk on my face and a feeling of deep satisfaction. Mostly, I looked like a recently-shot 12-point buck who has just realized (1), that he is dying, and (2), that when he fell to the ground, his gorgeous set of antlers broke into tiny pieces and he now looks like the 3-pointer he was kicking around the week before. I was not happy. I was even unhappier when we started playing our first game. Any shot that I could even get close enough to take had to be taken at a 30-degree angle, making me feel much less like a sharpshooter, and perhaps more like the engineer manning the howitzer, attempting to factor in such things as wind resistance, total number of miles from the target, and whether the jet stream was going to work to my advantage or disadvantage. Blah. Needless to say, I was basically just relieved by the time I died my second time, and was out of the game. I needed to mope.
This is where God came in. OK, God was really "in" the whole time. Good point. Anyway, I decided that I would take the plunge, and talk to this other guy there who I had seen with a P90. I had looked inside my gun at the piece to which the barrel attaches, and I was beginning to suspect that I was missing a piece. I asked him if I could look at his gun for a minute, and explained the situation. He let me look, and sure enough, I was missing a piece. He asked if I was going to be able to fix it today, and I told him that I didn't have the part with me. So he offered to loan me an entire hop-up/barrel assembly from one of his other 3 P90s (the fourth P90 is just for show). I gladly accepted, and upon switching out my assembly for his, I went and chronoed my gun. Sure enough - my gun was now shooting 417 FPS with .25 gram BBs. Delighted, I joined the second game when it started a few minutes later.
This game went very, very well. My gun was, as it was supposed to be, one of the best on the field. It was making shots that we had been expressly instructed earlier in the day never to try on account of their impossibility.
As soon as the second game was over, I went over to talk to the guy again. I wanted to know what sort of barrel it was that he had loaned to me, because it was by far the best my gun had ever shot. As it turned out, he couldn't tell me anything other than it was a tightbore barrel, as I suspected.
The third game started a few minutes later, and I switched teams (illegally) so that I could be with the rest of the guys. This wasn't actually a problem, as the teams had gotten unbalanced already just because of people leaving early. About 20 shots into the third (and last) game, my battery conked out. Having had a lovely 2nd game, I wasn't really too upset. I just walked off the field.
On my way out, someone asked whether my gun had quit working (since I couldn't possibly have gotten out that quickly), and I responded that my battery had died. He offered to loan me a battery, but I told him that I had to have a specific, custom battery for my gun, and that it wasn't a big deal anyway because it was the last game. I continued walking off the field, and someone who was following me off asked me to repeat what I said to the first person. I realized that it was the same guy who had loaned me his barrel assembly. I repeated it, and he revealed that he knew exactly what I was talking about, because he had that same kind of battery. In fact, he said, he had 5 of them, and would I be interested in having one? I told him what I told the other guy, that I didn't really care about playing the last game. He repeated his offer, saying that the batteries were just slowly dying for lack of use, and that he couldn't use five batteries. Misinterpreting him (again), I responded that if he wished, I would buy one off of him (which would have been to my benefit as I wouldn't have had to pay shipping, and I was already thinking that I probably needed to get a second battery). He corrected my assumption, and said clearly "No, I'm asking if you'd like me to GIVE it to you."
Naturally, I was somewhat floored. The battery in question costs $42 at RedWolfAirsoft.com, is out of stock, and even if it were in stock, shipping costs would be over $20. To me, this was a guy handing me 60-odd dollars in cash. I quickly gave in to his demands ;-) and accepted the battery.
To summarize an otherwise lengthy post:
God blessed me on Saturday with:
Thanks, God.
I went airsofting on Saturday, with Richie, Christian, and Butch (David?). It was actually a bigger deal than all that, because we were going to one of Outdoor Adventures' organized things, and there were probably ~50 people playing at the beginning of the day. To be fair, our group's attendance was Christian's influence - he hosted the before and after party at his house, made me come, etc. Good for him.
So, the day was very interesting. Leaving out all of the drama revolving around everyone else's guns (especially Richie's, whose gun quite suddenly popped - a loose term for broke - a cylinder head, putting him out of commission until he got himself a rental), my day was pretty exciting in itself.
It started out just fine, because there was nothing unexpected going on. Nothing, that is, until I swapped out the barrel in my gun for a longer one, with the intent of gauging its effectiveness. Everything seemed to be fine, and indeed, I thought all was right with the world, but I was to discover later in the day that I had dropped a piece of the gun on the floor while putting everything back together.
Meanwhile, my magazine stopped feeding BBs into the gun, principally because there was a random hunk of white plastic in amongst the non-random, round pieces of white plastic that were SUPPOSED to be in the magazine. This would necessitate taking apart the fancy new high capacity magazine that I bought, which was not in the plan for the day until that moment.
This did not go so well. Including two repair sessions, one in the basement, and one in the car, it took me about 45 minutes to get my magazine working, and in the process, I managed to lose 2 screws - one to the carpet monster in the Chastain's basement, and one to the bottomless void of under-the-car-seat in the Lort's Malibu. Ahh well. It was working, at least.
That was more than could be said for my gun, apparently. Before and up to the day, much of the conversation about my gun had revolved around whether or not I would pass the chronograph test. Outdoor Adventures has a 420 FPS limit for their games, and my gun supposedly shoots around 440. The question, then, was whether my gun was really going to perform as well as it was supposed to, because if it did, then I wouldn't be allowed to play. Heh. As it turned out, this was no problem. In fact, during the pre-chrono training sessions and exercises, I was beginning to feel that my gun was really doing pitifully. Sure enough, when I walked up to the chrono, and proudly shot my beast of a gun, the chronometer practically laughed out loud as it posted a whopping 250 feet per second. My second shot clocked in at about 171, as my gun thoughtfully spit out two BBs at once. A third shot, fired out of sheer desperation, came in at 259.
This was NOT what was supposed to happen! I was supposed to walk away from the chrono having shot a 419, with a smirk on my face and a feeling of deep satisfaction. Mostly, I looked like a recently-shot 12-point buck who has just realized (1), that he is dying, and (2), that when he fell to the ground, his gorgeous set of antlers broke into tiny pieces and he now looks like the 3-pointer he was kicking around the week before. I was not happy. I was even unhappier when we started playing our first game. Any shot that I could even get close enough to take had to be taken at a 30-degree angle, making me feel much less like a sharpshooter, and perhaps more like the engineer manning the howitzer, attempting to factor in such things as wind resistance, total number of miles from the target, and whether the jet stream was going to work to my advantage or disadvantage. Blah. Needless to say, I was basically just relieved by the time I died my second time, and was out of the game. I needed to mope.
This is where God came in. OK, God was really "in" the whole time. Good point. Anyway, I decided that I would take the plunge, and talk to this other guy there who I had seen with a P90. I had looked inside my gun at the piece to which the barrel attaches, and I was beginning to suspect that I was missing a piece. I asked him if I could look at his gun for a minute, and explained the situation. He let me look, and sure enough, I was missing a piece. He asked if I was going to be able to fix it today, and I told him that I didn't have the part with me. So he offered to loan me an entire hop-up/barrel assembly from one of his other 3 P90s (the fourth P90 is just for show). I gladly accepted, and upon switching out my assembly for his, I went and chronoed my gun. Sure enough - my gun was now shooting 417 FPS with .25 gram BBs. Delighted, I joined the second game when it started a few minutes later.
This game went very, very well. My gun was, as it was supposed to be, one of the best on the field. It was making shots that we had been expressly instructed earlier in the day never to try on account of their impossibility.
As soon as the second game was over, I went over to talk to the guy again. I wanted to know what sort of barrel it was that he had loaned to me, because it was by far the best my gun had ever shot. As it turned out, he couldn't tell me anything other than it was a tightbore barrel, as I suspected.
The third game started a few minutes later, and I switched teams (illegally) so that I could be with the rest of the guys. This wasn't actually a problem, as the teams had gotten unbalanced already just because of people leaving early. About 20 shots into the third (and last) game, my battery conked out. Having had a lovely 2nd game, I wasn't really too upset. I just walked off the field.
On my way out, someone asked whether my gun had quit working (since I couldn't possibly have gotten out that quickly), and I responded that my battery had died. He offered to loan me a battery, but I told him that I had to have a specific, custom battery for my gun, and that it wasn't a big deal anyway because it was the last game. I continued walking off the field, and someone who was following me off asked me to repeat what I said to the first person. I realized that it was the same guy who had loaned me his barrel assembly. I repeated it, and he revealed that he knew exactly what I was talking about, because he had that same kind of battery. In fact, he said, he had 5 of them, and would I be interested in having one? I told him what I told the other guy, that I didn't really care about playing the last game. He repeated his offer, saying that the batteries were just slowly dying for lack of use, and that he couldn't use five batteries. Misinterpreting him (again), I responded that if he wished, I would buy one off of him (which would have been to my benefit as I wouldn't have had to pay shipping, and I was already thinking that I probably needed to get a second battery). He corrected my assumption, and said clearly "No, I'm asking if you'd like me to GIVE it to you."
Naturally, I was somewhat floored. The battery in question costs $42 at RedWolfAirsoft.com, is out of stock, and even if it were in stock, shipping costs would be over $20. To me, this was a guy handing me 60-odd dollars in cash. I quickly gave in to his demands ;-) and accepted the battery.
To summarize an otherwise lengthy post:
God blessed me on Saturday with:
- A loaned gun part.
- A fixed magazine.
- Knowledge of how to make my gun shoot even better than it did on Saturday.
- A free $60 battery.
Thanks, God.
Labels: airsoft, Providence
posted by Arathon at 19:12
1 Comments:
I can't believe I read that whole thing, especially since I have pretty much zero interest in airsoft. Just shows how desperate I am not to go back to studying Organic Chemistry.
[you found out our secret, darn it. it *is* as very handy method of communication.]
Maybe I'll come visit Maryland one of these days and we can all hang out.
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