Oregon or Bust: Hosking Field

All I can say about my October trip is WOW!  First I was in Colorado paintballing one Saturday and then the next thing I know, I am paintballing the following weekend in Oregon.  If you are keeping up with my blog entries, you read that I paintballed at Dynamic Paintball Park in Aurora, Colorado on October 16.  On Friday October 22, I flew from Colorado to Oregon to part take in a Big Game at Hosking Field in Lebanon.  The original plan called on my fellow paintballers Leslie Ireland and Chris Cotilla to pick me up from the airport, then we would drive together to the field and camp out for the weekend.  Unfortunately Chris had knee surgery the week before, so Leslie had to take care of him.  In jumps Donnie McFarlin (Spike) to the rescue!  Leslie spoke with Spike and he was awesome enough to not only pick me up from the airport but also provide lodging in his house located about 5 minutes from the field.  FYI, his fiancée Kristen makes a mean ass spaghetti and meatball dinner.

Hosking Field is located in somebody’s back yard; literally.  Gijsbertus Eikelenboom or "Gijst" owns the land and lets Charles Allen of TAW Scenarios put on games on his property.  The size of the paintball playing field is 120+ acres.  That is nearly the same as SC Village here in So Cal.  On the field are a small castle, 2 dugout bunkers, a boat, a truck, an outhouse, a city, trench line, and a forest.  The cool thing about fighting in the forest is the wild blackberry patches.  If you find yourself waiting for the fight to come to your hideout or you’re trying to get around the other teams six, pick a few berries for a yummy snack (but always keep your facemask on!).  For Saturday, there were about 50 people in attendance.  Unfortunately during the night, the rain and wind swept some people back home before the start of Sunday’s game.  Sunday’s attendance was roughly 35 players who didn’t mind the rain and wind.  I was not part of that group for half the time though.  I chickened out as soon as it started raining because I didn’t want to get my DM10 wet and ruined in the process of playing.  Say what you want, but I if I had my Ion it would have been a different story.

For both days of game play, Damien was the man assigning missions to both teams.  This was not going to be like the other Scenario games I have been to where a General gives out the missions.  This game was going to be played with both teams taking turns attacking or defending a certain location.  Or both teams attempting to accomplish the same objective while thwarting the opposing team in the process.  The most fun seemed to be when Damien had us all concentrated in the city playing speedball.  6 buildings, 50 players, and unlimited re-spawns until Damien yelled out “Elimination!”  Once he yelled out Elimination, the players could not re-spawn once hit.  One of the cool advances a player made that Damien and I commented on was by Timberghost of Cascade Commandos Scenario Team.  He was able to move from his start point to the second middle building without being hit.  Outside the structure were three opposing players and another opposing player inside.  Timber used CQB techniques and cleared the inside player out.  From inside the structure, he was able to take a couple of other players out who were behind another building.  The opposing members outside the building had no idea that Timber was inside picking people off.  Once Timber made it outside, both sides became aware that the building was a HOT bunker and could only be cleared by a suicide run.  Red team had a couple of players attempt to remove Timber.  They made it, but Timber was able to eliminate both players as well.  The money shot I saw was also at the same structure.  After Timber was eliminated; a young women ran up and retook the building for yellow team.  As she is firing to her right, a Red player advanced up and saw a shot all of us could only dream about.   One shot to the distracted players back landed squarely on her spinal column.  In the end, Yellow Team was able to clear Red team out and control the city.

As I said before, it rained Sunday and I think Mother Nature was playing games on us that day. Normally I don’t mind playing in the rain but this was the first time I've played in Oregon when it rained.  The morning was more drizzle than rain and somehow we almost had clear skies.  I was able to play for an hour at most before the rain really began to fall.  After that I treated my paintball marker like my “Precious” and packed it in.  The fun part about paintballing in the rain that I saw, were the puffs of air coming from the markers.  No matter if a player was running on CO2 or HPA, every time someone fired you could see the marker puff a small cloud of air with every shot.  With the rain coming down harder, everyone started firing as fast as possible.  As the rain slowed, people’s rate of fire slowed with it.  Once everyone had walked off and Damien was doing his closing speech, the rain decided to stop and the sun shined down again.  Some of us took a look up at the sky and just shook our heads in disbelief.

With that, my trip came to an end and I had to fly back to the OC Monday morning.  Oregon was a great trip aside from Mother Nature laughing at us.  I got to meet new people and reconnect with others I met the previous year; Russ Griffin of Reaper Army, James Waldroupe a fellow Denver Broncos fan, Xander Eikelenboom a great paintball medic, "Lil D", his dad Joel, and the Fuesler Family. The ones I missed slinging paint with were Leslie and Chris, Spike on a paintball sabbatical, and Robert of Team Side of Beef.  My thanks also go out to Charles “Damien” and Nikki “Twofishes” of TAW Scenarios for making it all happen.  I also want to give a shout out to Gijst for letting paintball players run around on his property shooting each other up and snacking on the blackberries.  So if you are ever interested in paintballing at Hosking Field, check out the TAW website because Charles has the date of the games setup for 2011.  As for me, I have to be ready in December for my first time as a General for a scenario game in Oroville, California.  Ready or not, Game On and I hope to see you in the middle.

Internet Links:

http://www.hoskingfield.com/HoskingMainPage.htm

http://www.facebook.com/reqs.php#!/taw.scenarios
http://www.tawpaintball.com/