So here I am in one of my favorite places in the world. Toulouse France is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen and you always are hearing about the old school venue that we use to play in. It was a soccer stadium overlooking the city and it was breath taking. The event has now got to large and had to be moved but none the less I am still in Toulouse France and am guaranteed a good time. This is made possible because I am playing with a team called Moscow Phoenix and it is Me, Tyler Humphrey, Dave Fason, Glen Takamoto and Alex Goldman so you know we have a blast for sure.  So my trip starts out normal… get harassed by the French customs for my equipment and then the rental company wants a 1000 euro deposit for some reason from me? It not like I have wrecked cars overseas or anything... So I decide I am just going to take cabs this event. I am there a day earlier than the others so I explore the back of my eyelids to see what I missed on the way to Frank…  I take a small nap and decide I better get started on my overseas diet consisting of drinks, Pizza and McDonalds. You can ask anyone who goes overseas this is pretty much what you eat. Mr U from the Ironmen will tell you that he is in great shape and once he goes overseas he puts on 10 pounds no problem. So this is what I ate in France….  Pizza x 4 (the whole thing) , small salad, 2 fish filet's, 2 Royale w/ Cheese ( yes like the movie.. its real) 2 calzones,  3 ice cram cones, 2 nuttela crepes  and we cant forget the standard airport ham, cheese and butter on a baguette x 2.  So you guys can see how we eat like kings overseas…  Booooo  overseas food.   Onto the pingpong….  They play X ball style race to 5 overseas so there is not much time for messing around. We go out our first game and beat Coselium Dei from Zuric, and then we decide we want to take it easy…  WE come out on Saturday and loose both games to Nexus and the chilly peppers. Game over…  All this way for that. I am on the phone to Candi and out the door in 12 hours. Not really happy right now.  And even better .. I get my travel itin and here is how it goes….  4 am to the airport. 6 am flight to Amsterdam, 5 hour layover in Amsterdam,  8.5 hours flight to Minneapolis, 2 hour layover there and then finally a 4 hour flight to orange County. So I finally get home 24 hours after I started my journey home. So if you think we have an easy life. It is not as easy as you think. I get off the plane and to the baggage claim. See my girl and it makes everything just fine……  Mad love to all of the people over in France that I love to see. And the best night I had was the last night when Me , Dave, Tyler and Glen ended up in some pub downtown and there was a team caller B4 from France that showed up. These guy made my trip worth going and I had one of the most fun nights out overseas. I am not sure what happened but I know it was fun… Thanks guys. …. Mad love and respect as always..

Hmmmm  Montreal…

So here we go on my way to Montreal. I figure since I am going to Toulouse France in a few days I will make it easy on myself and go to Montreal for a couple days and then make the quick 6 hour rip to France instead of the 15 hour trip from Orange County.  I am sitting on the plane and need for sure to give my boy Richmond Italia a call. For those of you who do not know ..  Richmond is the man who started Procaps /  Draxxus /  DXS that you know today. H is one of my very best friends and a genuine mastermind of business and technology. He also started V force and invented X Ball. This is how cool this guy is. So I call him up to see if he wants to have dinner and of course we make plans. I tell him I have a rental car and am staying at a hotel and he will not let this happen. He knows I spend most of my adult life in hotels and rental cars so he gives me the keys to his extra apartment on the water in Montreal. Beautiful place and so relaxing in between trips. I take a cab out there and he decides to give me the keys to the car and I go out side to put my bags in and what do you think he lets me borrow…..??!!  The Porsche Cayenne…!  Super sick ride and OMG fast. The NPPL Buffalo is coming up so I don’t want to kill myself so I take it easy but I look really cool. I remember back in the day when I use o visit Montreal he use to let me use the Viper. Super ridiculous…!!  Anyway what I am trying to say is you don’t find people like this guys often. He is super cool and would give you the shirt off his ask if you need it. Mad love Richmond and thanks for all you have ever done for me and continue to do. 

Party Night in Chi Town

Well it’s the night after the tourney and one of my best friends LB ( brian Fow Infamous) is throwing his new bride a surprise B Day party. There is no way I am going to miss this for sure since I was unable to make their recent wedding and I think she is still real mad about that. So I will take cash and see what happens. I show up and it is an allstar event for sure. Definitely going to be a long night when I walk in and see the whole infamous crew with Travis Lemanski.. along with BC, Alex Eggs, Oliver Lang, Yosh, Ryan Greenspan, Matty Marshall,  Claire and DR Fow, and the Fow sisters,  Jeremy Salm and Wendy..  And god knows who else I forgot. It got to the point when I even forgot what I ordered….  It was a great surprise party and she in great fashion was an hour late so we were plenty happy by the time she got there. She had tears and it was really cool to relax and hang with friends and not talk about paintball for a bit. So around 6 or 7 am I finally get to be and hope I can make my flight in the morning but I know better. Soooo I miss my  11 am flight and wouldn’t you know the next one is not getting out until 6 pm. I of course am not going home as I now have to take a business trip to Montreal… How much fun is this…. Booooooo  airports…

Once again it is tournament time and I have come and gone to the PSP in Chi town. One of my favorite places to party and eat but as far as paintball goes it is HOTT!  I am always guaranteed to lose 10 pounds and come back muddy for some reason and this year Chicago did not disappoint me.  Normal start to the tourney with walking the fields with my new boys from Aftermath. I have not seen a bunch of hungry players like this since the Infamous/ OG Avalanche days. They really hate to lose as much as I do and they are young and already skilled enough to win.  Our first game against the Ironmen was hard fought and since I have just come back from surgery on my ACL I feel a little out of shape for sure.  We ended up losing in OT and we still have Shock, X Factor, All A’s, Infamous and Naughty Dogs and none will be easy. Infamous beats us but it was a great game. We end up beating shock but it still was hard fought but with the tie to the Ironmen it gives us 1 point so we are still in ok shape to make the semis. We end up struggling and only willing or loosing games by a point and have 3 OT games. We go into the last game against Naughty Dogs in a must win situation in order to go on and we end up winning that game. Our draw for the semi’s is X Factor and Dynasty. We go out or first game and beat Dynasty and with my 5 minute major in the end messes up our +/- ratio for the finals. Going into playing X Factor all we have to do is tie or not let them win by more than 2 and we will be in the final. We pull this off in a hard game but it looks like us and Tampa Bay Damage for  1^st and 2^nd. This is a slow game and they end up calling a rain and wind delay at 3 – 3. Once we come back we just dint have our stuff together and they end up beating us 5 – 3. These guys put a lot of hard work into this team and my hat is off to them and Coach Paul. I have a lot of respect for these guys and am happy for Carthy and all of the kids on Damage. Overall a good tourney but the rain tearing up fields and super humid weather I could have done without. Mad respect as always…

The Pony..