We eventually moved to collecting patriotic covers , Zeppelin transatlantic airmail covers and tons of other variations . A fun hobby at the time that hasn ’ t exactly remained in vogue today .
Eventually , in 1998 , my elementary school friends and I discovered paintball . We drooled over the silver model of the Tippmann 98 and received them for our birthdays and Christmas ( although I ended up with standard black ). We started playing in various friend ’ s backyards . I lost interest in FDCs , but my experience didn ’ t go to waste . I ’ d search Ask Jeeves and Alta Vista ( 1998 based internet search engines ) for the same details I ’ d find so abundant on FDCs but there was “ virtually ” no information online and very few books in print to answer my questions about the majority of the facts I was craving .
I was already obsessed with playing rec ball and I quickly became consumed with paintball history . I found rec . sports . paintball which had years of posts I could search and read . As time progressed I found and joined the activity on Doc ’ s Machine ’ s Tinkers Guild , PbNation and eventually mcarterbrown . com . This was before Facebook and these forums were very active . I found and purchased some wrecked cheap pump guns and started digging for info on them . After a couple years I realized the info was there , but again not indexed well , ( search engine action of bot crawling and displaying links in search results ). sake of having items , it was for the sake of documentation and to absorb details I could learn from disassembly , studying variation and learning where each puzzle piece fell ( or at least I tell myself to avoid the fear of material obsession consuming me !).
I wanted to know names of locations , variation , failed attempts , inspiration , teams and anything else relating to whatever was on my mind . It was thrilling to find the answer to what would otherwise be a lost fragment of history . In about 2004 I got a call from a somewhat local paintballer named Tim Firpo , aka Mr . PaintballTek . com . He shared the same passion for paintball history , and along with another player , Peter “ Whaarfrat ” Simpson ,” hosted a pump game in Sacramento .
The next week I drove a couple hours to go play with their group , and met some of my best friends in the game that I still paintball with today . A group of players that loved pump , truly enjoyed paintball history and appreciated all the details about classic paintguns and gear I did .
Today I still play pump , with the Sac Pump day guys ( although there ’ s no more Sac Pump day ) in Northern California , and the So Cal Stock group in Southern California . Discovering a bit of history today is just as much of a thrill as it was in 1998 . And the information to be found is just as abundant ( although even more obscure )!
I started taking notes , asking questions , sending emails and doing anything I could ( essentially cyber stalking ) to answer questions . Sure , I collected paintball equipment but it wasn ’ t really for the www . paintball . media
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