One day, my friend Angie emailed me about a Groupon for an “Extreme Driving/Weapons Training course” and asked if I was interested.
Note: This never needs to be a question. Everyone can always assume my answer to something like this will be yes. Just sign me up and send me the bill.
The Groupon did not disappoint.
I'm now even more convinced that I'm meant for something more dangerous than creating PowerPoint presentations.
Well, maybe not meant for it as in I'm good at it, but meant for it in that - I LOVE IT.
Who cares that I accidentally shot the hostage I was supposed to be saving?
...multiple....times....
Maybe we should start from the beginning...
Angie and I arrive at the training facility after a three hour drive. Actually, we arrive at Cracker Barrel first because I was so afraid of being late for
WEAPONS! TRAINING!
(I can't stop saying it...) that we got down there way too early and had time to kill. And the best way I know how to kill time is to eat biscuits.
I am southern. Don't judge me.
We start to get out of the car at Cracker Barrel and I realize my shoes (light pink Converse sneakers- because what else would one wear to weapons training?) are ridiculously dirty. Angie notices too and I have to admit to her that the last time I wore them ...was in a mosh pit at a punk rock show.
I am in my 30's.....
Angie mumbles something about not being able to "take me anywhere..." and I can see she is second guessing our upcoming travel to Africa together; not to mention the fact that we are about to shoot guns together at a Special Ops training facility somewhere in Virginia....
Anyway, we eat and get to the facility and find out how the day will go. We break into teams and spend the morning shooting things, and the afternoon driving things.
Yes. It was that awesome.
We start by shooting various guns with live amo at targets like so:
Then we moved onto: The shooting house.
The shooting house is set up so that teams can move in to "diffuse a hostage situation" and engage in "force on force" action with pellet guns.
Me and Angie looking somewhat tough...mostly because the masks hide that we are giggling.
I feel pretty good about our team immediately when we are all standing around waiting to "storm" the building and a giant bumblebee flies over - and one of the guys on my team shoots it.
Yes! We might actually do well in this part!
Our instructors tell us stories about how intense the house can get and how they've seen teams freak out and start shooting each other once inside.
Dear goodness, it is untelling what Angie and I are going to do in there....
Then the instructor goes over general guidance. About how we should enter the rooms, and what our objective is. And how we shouldn't shoot the hostage. Then he says "everyone must enter each room, no matter what. Don't just stop and stand in the doorway."
So we finally get into the house:
And I get shot in the thigh in the very first room.
Sigh.
Which surprises me...so I stop in the doorway.
Dang it!
But we do well after that, clearing room after room until we finally find the hostage. Except I don't
see the hostage, I only see men inside a room. So I start blasting them like I'm Al Capone. And then slowly through the haze I see something out of place.... hmm....*bang bang bang*....that one guy doesn't even have a gun...*bang bang*....and it appears he's being held by that other guy....
Doh!
At the end of the exercise, our instructer shakes his head and states how "it didn't pay to be a hostage today...."
(Apparently I wasn't the only one to shoot him. At least my team didn't shoot itself, right?)
After that, we moved on to driving....
(which will have to be in the next post :)