It might seem that this report is late on arrival but I assure you it is not. Because of Pinatubo2 in Iceland our players have been arriving home during the weekend almost a week later then scheduled. Here’s what happened:
Sunday morning came with rainy but calm weather. We had suspected that since the tournament was stopped on Saturday the Millennium would make a replay of last year and play only lower division games and hence, cancel ours. We were right. Our moods were also darkened by the fact that Finland was still underneath a cloud of ash and we would probably not go home on Monday like we were supposed to. Luckily it was well past Finn-a-Clock and we knew just what to do. Grocery store, Beer, umbrella and off to the fields to watch games that were going and bet on them. After that to the town and… well, the usual. One thing I have to say though: next time somebody offers me an Arabic water pipe I’m gonna pass…
Monday came with a hangover and the knowledge that the flight for the first two of us (Me and Sami) was canceled and the travel agency offered us a flight on Saturday. Not exactly what we had in mind…. For a while we thought about joining the Swedes in their bus for a 40 hour trip to Copenhagen, but at the last moment we got a lucky break and managed to book flights for Thursday. During the day we found out that the rest of our teams’ flights scheduled on Tuesday were also canceled or rescheduled. So there we were in Fuengirola Beach’s sunshine waiting for flights that would leave soonish or laterish or not at all.
As it happens Fuengirola beach is a winter home to a lot of Finns who are the 3rd biggest minority there and as luck would have it there was someone living there we knew. Well, Tomi knew. A quick call to friends, and voilà, we had a roof over our heads. I’d like to extend the whole team’s awesome gratitude to Mr. Tarkkala and his family for taking six hairy paintballers under his roof. You really bailed us out from a tight spot.
So there we were in a beautiful Spanish villa with a perfect Finnish sauna and a nice pool in the backyard… I guess it could have gone worse.
Pekka and Tomi were the first to go home on Friday morning four days late and Sami and me followed Friday night. As a perfect Cyclone International ending to the trip Sam and HD flew Saturday morning, but not to Helsinki but to Riga, were they met our good friend Richards from Instinct Gemoss for a night out. They finally arrived in Helsinki Sunday morning almost a week late.
Life of a Paintballer aka “peinttielämä”, can’t say its boring.
Here’s me feeling sad and blue in Fuengirola…
