A day of "shooting"

"We were like the allies landing at Normandy. 'This is suicide,' muttered one of our teammates, a guy dressed head to toe in black-and-silver camouflage. My son and I were armed with loaded semiautomatics ... "

So begins a story I wrote that appears in this month's issue of Diablo Magazine.

No, I had not enlisted my 14-year-old son and myself in some survivalists' paramilitary training camp. We weren't hanging out in some remote area of Idaho or Michigan.

We were down in southeast Livermore, in a semi-remote area, surrounded by cow pastures.

And we were armed with semiautomatic "markers," not guns.  These "markers" were loaded with marble-sized balls of paint.

We were at a very cool place, American Paintball Park, and we were playing at war as part of an assignment for Diablo magazine's Best of the East Bay issue.  You can read more about our adventure in the new issue of Diablo magazine. Go to page 59. Our adventure turned out to be a very surprising and fun mother-son bonding experience.

This is Diablo's annual Best of the East Bay issue, and American Paintball Park, owned and operated by Clifton Mathews and his family, was named a Best of the East Bay place to have fun and play. (The photo above is courtesy of Mathews.)