Boneheads Big'n 2001 Story
Special thanks goes out to Paul Monfre for letting George use his truck
to tow the tank up to EMR.
Here's a link to EMR
Well this one was quite and adventure! Once again we were working on the tank the night before the event until past midnight. We now have a completely new wiring harness and have relocated the battery. Along with a new set of electric fans on the radiator and a thermostat we no longer seem to be running hot enough to blow a hose. We changed the nose a bit to better hide the front speakers and look more tank like. There's also a new radiator hole that's bigger and looks better. The new dash is now somewhat modular so we can pull out the stereo/PA system along with the amp by taking out four screws. Unfortunately I didn't have enough in the budget for the working cannon. I do have an extremely interesting design worked out on paper but the cost of buying the regulator system I want has put this on hold for the time being. After getting home at 1:00 a.m. and in bed by 1:30 I had set the alarm for 4:00 so we could head out early. George called at 4:30 to let me know he was on his way and from there I woke up showered and got ready. By the time George arrived and the time it took me to get everything I needed together and get us back on the road it was starting to approach 6:00. We spent at least a half hour adjusting the tank and trailer because George couldn't go over 45 on the trip to my apartment. We go back on the road and discovered that the tank/trailer still would not go over 45 mph and so we drove the entire trip to EMR at mostly 45! There was one stretch of route 80 that we were able to get up to 50 but that didn't last very long.
All in all we arrived at EMR around 12 in the afternoon (only two hours late for the start of the game). It was very nice in a lot of ways that we didn't have to rush around like lunatics for missions and attacks and fixing tank problems in the woods! Blue told us that the Boneheads event is one of the smaller events they have there throughout the year. There were only about 150 people there playing so the only thing we saw to shoot at our first run was the other tank. With what we know now next year we'll head out earlier and claim one of the bunk houses and stay the entire weekend. We talked to a few groups of people ranging from Connecticut to Delaware that only play at EMR, after being there I can see why. The refs are top notch as good or better than any other field. The fields are absolutely incredible and the support infrastructure looks like it could easily handle a few thousand players on any given day without any real problems. There are about two dozen or so bunk houses available for people who want to camp out at the field. Most of them are along the line of what I picture any given camp's bunkhouses. They're setup with sets of bunks and can sleep at least 18 people for the regular bunkhouses. Several of these bunkhouses have been claimed by teams that regularly play there. These team bunkhouses are heavily modified to each teams tastes. The Boneheads place has been divided up so that is has a separate living room area from the kitchen and sleeping area. They also built a very nice rear deck and have a satellite dish. One team has adopted two bunkhouses and attached them together. Back over at the EMR rec center, it's a two story building that houses registration/sales/gun repair/air fills/field office along with a player recreation area on the second floor with a grill, several tables, plenty of chairs, pool table, fooz ball table and a small stage for when they have a band playing. Blue also has a fireworks permit and has a fireworks show for many of his events. I only have two pictures of the monstrous castle they have there it's just past the entry gate when you first enter the field. I've never seen anything like this! The castle alone is over an entire acre in size! Blue stages the 'castle conquest' games I believe twice a year (next one is in October). It's set up with 4 attackers for each defender. The attackers get 20 minute re-insertions while the defenders get 10 minute insertions. Although we're not taking the tank, this looks like it's going to be the next event we all go to.
As for the Big'n we were pretty laid back throughout the event. Only George, myself and my girlfriend Dawn went on this trip so Blue had us take out a lot of players in order to fill out the gunners positions. I think they would have had more fun if there were more people to shoot at but with the music playing we really didn't see very many people at all. I only managed to take shots at less than a dozen or so for the entire day and I'm pretty that I didn't hit a single person (although they all ran deeper into the woods). Dawn is pretty sure that she got three people one of which popped up from behind a wall to throw a grenade at us right in front of her. We were out in the parking lot when we found out that the other tank had one of it's turret windows shot out. This one we had nothing to do with, just another example of the need for lexan over Plexiglas. They had some sort of other trouble and spent the second half of the day up near the bunkhouses
If you've never played at EMR it's a place that should be on all paintball players lists of 'must go' places. They have everything and more that any paintball player could want. Much like our tank it's also constantly improving. Blue is always replacing buildings and field structures. At the end of the day he took us out for a tour of the entire field and there is stuff there that must be seen to be believed. One of my favorite fields had a center structure that had an H shaped trench complete with tunnels! As Blue drove around I spotted a whole mess of tee-pees that put the cones over at PBLI to shame, when I said that George wanted to know 'What tee-pees?' I told him that the plywood cones on the far end of Dodge city where supposed to be tee-pees, he thought that was funny all along he just thought that those were just some sort of 'modern art things' for the players to sort of hide behind.