A great trip but right here, right now I’m tired as ever!
Somewhat surprisingly, this time around the trip went like a breeze. No problems whatsoever with the law & order, we didn’t even miss the ships, no fatal car crashes, no one went to demand the consigliore to get supplies from McDonalds or for other entertainment…and overall, nothing which “didn’t occur” occurred. Weird?
So, early Saturday morning we packed everyone on the Helsinki-Tallin ship and thereafter headed toward Riga via Via Baltica. Oldis and Richards (Instinct) had set everything up for us – in a way which almost made us feel like royalty. We had a hotel reserved for us and a Reball field for free use for Saturday evening. The Reball field, by the way, was great – adequately warm and good to go despite being just a little short. We spent 3,5 sweaty hours there. In the evening the guys had reserved us a private table from a cozy Italian-style wine restaurant. A special appreciation can be voiced for the salads that had been preprepared for us and ready when we barely had time to have sat down. Our hosts had figured that it would be convenient for us to have something to eat immediately after training so we would not be rushed in ordering the main course which was veal with a pleasant red wine. The total was less than 200 for a party of ten.
After this relaxing experience it was time to hit the hotel – the day had lasted for only 18 hours up until then.
In the morning Richards guided us to a different venue – a paintball arena of decent size and equipped with f. ex. showers and lockers. There we were greeted by Instinct 1 & 2, Sigur and an Estonian team with a name that escapes me now. The format was 4-man. As was to be expected (after a 4 month break) our game performance was hindered with a substantial “icy formation” in our moves. This manifested into quite a rollercoaster ride performance wise. For example, we managed to mess up a 3-1 advantage but occasionally won when the tables were similarly turned against us. Here I have to give props to our, until only recently, 2 division players Jii, Kimi and Cassu. They were facing SPL players for the first time in their lives and gave them no free lunch at any time. Every time we stepped on the field we went in angry, no matter that we got occasionally quite smashed also. Cassu and Janne get additional kudos for the coolest move of the day when they “sandwiched” an opposing player at the closing seconds of a point.
Overall the level was semi-tough, perhaps somewhat easier than we expected, and not once did we get completely annihilated. Even as we experienced problems in closing the games, we managed to score points on a constant basis. Additionally, our paint was a tad much on the brittle side. All in all the day was perfect and playing was a bag of joy once more.
The trip back was on the hasty side, as we were led by a car probably equipped with something allowing us to shoot through the highway quite rapidly. Even with that we ended up not having much time to spare.
Weekend by the numbers:
-11 hours of sleep (Friday-Sunday, and I slept at every chance)
-2 glasses of wine and 3 beers
-6 lumps on my head
Peace.
