Brief Waltz Down Memory Lane

So the students are on mid-semester break right now, which means we have almost a month of doing nothing but checking buildings and backing up the local village PD on things as trivial as traffic stops. We're always looking for some sort of distraction.

A while back, my Lt. and I were discussing paintball, and me mentioned he had some gear stored in his garage. Well, out of the blue the other night, he brought it all in.

He had a few Spyder clones, but what interested me the most was the old Brass Eagle Stingray II that he said belonged to his wife.
Much to my delight, his wife had never cleaned the damn thing. Like....ever. The bold was actually seized, gummed up with crusted paint, rust, and who knows what else.

I tore it apart, cleaned it, oiled it, and screwed in the tank he had (Hydro expired in '08) and sure enough, it didn't leak. As I did that, he raided our evidence room and found a handful of paintballs confiscated somewhere along the line. So, we stood outside in four degrees trying to blast trees with cheap, warped paint.

We started paintball with Stingrays and Talons back in my day, and I haven't seen a functional Stingray in....a long time. I thought about offering to buy it from him just for kicks, but I still have enough unused tippmanns laying around that I'd never be able to justify THAT particular expenditure.

I may have actually made some professional headway with this little endeavor too- as he watched me tear into the gear to clean and fix it all, he passed a comment along the lines of "You seem to enjoy this sort of thing, it looks like we'll have to send you to armorer's school."

TL:DR- I got to play with a Brass Eagle Stingray II from my childhood days.

procarbinefreak wrote: Hah.  I started with a stingray II.  I'd love to see one again.

It was like meeting an old friend for coffee. Except instead of coffee, it was gun oil and stale paint.

I had a similar experience. Found an older 98C with 20oz and hopper for $40. I wanted to take it home but had no reason to.

I've been contemplating getting back into the game lately.  I'll have to get a rental and check out the local fields to see if the scene is worth getting my own gear again.  I think I got rid of all my old stuff, or it's back at my parents' house still.  If they do still have it it's all in pieces and probably not enough of them left to be functional, so might as well be gone.  

You guys should totally play, paintball is a blast!

My local field is pretty decent. Fairly old-school (as in late 90s/early2000s when I was at my peak playing) Pallet and spool speedball fields, junker cars as bunkers in some woods courses, and yes, it even has an extant hyperball field! There's another field about a half-hour away that draws all the tournament kiddos with their inflatable fields and the like, so this one tends to be straight rec ball. I totally love it.

The school I'm stationed at has a paintball club. One of the sponsor teachers found out that I play/played and I've been invited to come along on the next organized game. I'm going to take the DMLCD'ed E-Bolt '98 out with me and dress in some old gear to play the "sleeper" card on everyone.

Hey Reb.
Remember you, how have you been?