RAF Kinloss – Part 3 – Bowling

Still reading? I salute you.

Now, onto the last part of the week. To round things off, we were all taken to ‘Roller Bowl’, a bowling alley in the region of Inverness. I was excited: I USED to be half decent at bowling, however through years of negect my skills appear to have taken a slight deviation to the worse. At least to the gutter. Which is where, almost invariably, the ball ended up.

Seriously, these things are fixed. I realise now that I was probably only ever good at bowling due to the bumpers. However, we were playing a ‘proper’ game and the bumpers would have taken some of the fun out of it.  For the other people. Time and time again, my ball went diagonally into the gutter on the left. After correcting my angle due to a helpful tip from a friend, the ball invariably went diagonally into the gutter on the right. There was only three or four occasions that the ball actually went near the pins, on one occasion I somehow managed to score a half strike *cough*fluke*cough* and this made me happy.

However, I had not forseen that Debbie would be so damned good at bowling. She got almost all the pins down every time, scoring several strikes. Many people marvelled at this. I was simply dumbfounded as to how she could persuade the ball to arrive at the other end of the lane and I couldn’t. My other opponents were similarly good compared to me. I admit now, publically, that I am a hopeless bowler.

The game ended eventually, with the highest score of our group (Debbie) being something like 104 and the lowest score (Mine) being about 36. We all shuffled over to the alley’s impressive arcade. I say impressive, but I never got to actually play any of the games as I was all out of money by this stage. Needless to say, they were taking advantage of us. The best game there, After Burner Climax, cost THREE POUNDS to play. For one game. Only one of us actually went on it, but his experience was slightly limited when someone pressed the seat movement’s emergency stop button. I think he should demand a refund.

Well, that’s all there is to say about Roller Bowl. Go there if you’re up in Inverness sometime.

-James

© James Plant, 2008
All trademarks acknowledged.

RAF Kinloss – Part Two – Inverness Aquadome

Come back for more? Hurrah.

I should probably do some explaining here. Towards the end of the week we did more fun activities, such as a very short lived water balloon fight (have you ever been hit by a water balloon? Those things hurt, man!) and Ten-Pin Bowling which, to me, was deeply unfair.

I’m not crap at bowling. My ball was magnetically attracted to the gutters, I swear!

That doesn’t really bring us to the Inverness Aquadome. But I don’t care.

The Aquadome! Kind of like Europa Pools (Our local moistworld) on steroids. This thing had ‘awesome’ flumes!

The Cyclone

Yeah. You lie down in this one, go very fast then land in some water. Average.

The Vortex

This slide is, quite possibly the most infuriating thing in the history of swimming pools. The idea was that you would go down a normal slide in a rubber donut thing for a bit, then go into a whirlpool at one side, go around 180 degrees and go down another tube. At least in theory. In reality you go into the whirlpool, then go around… and around and around and around for all eternity while a pipe above drips ice-cold water on to you. Pretty much everyone I saw got stuck in the first whirlpool until they gave up, got off their donut, (which would invariably turn over if you even hinted at getting off it), dragged it to the other pipe, hopped back on it (turning it over again) and going down. After TEN MINUTES of rotation that’s eventually what I did. And guess what they had put at the bottom of that little bit of tube?

ANOTHER WHIRLPOOL.

And another one ofter that. This slide isn’t so much a water ride as a life ambition – get down it without starving.

The Loch Ness Monster

Now this was good. This thing has a vertical drop in it. It takes two seconds to get from top to bottom as you fall about four storeys. Riding it is like this: you slide down a slope that gets very steep (like 80 degrees or something) very fast, then you feel zero gravity. Then you hit the bottom of the tube again, doing about mach 4. Then your femurs shatter as you hit a wall of water designed to slow you down, but instead rips your face off. Then you drown. All in all, jolly good fun. And the queue was tiny as people were too scared to go on it. Or they knew it’s wrath.

There is more to the Aquadome than this, but it’s getting late so I’ll write more tomorrow. Goodnight!

-James

© James Plant, 2008.
All trademarks acknowledged.

Return from RAF Kinloss

I have just experienced what is known to most of you as a bloody good week!

I’m back from RAF Kinloss, a (huge) RAF base right up at the top of Scotland, where I looked at planes.. and.. erm.. shot things.

For real now, there was far more to it than that. There were visits to various parts of the base, shooting (with a real rifle) and various other things like the Inverness Aquadome (incorporating the most soul-destroying water slide in the known universe) and ten-pin bowling.

Yes, I’ll admit it publicly here. I am crap at bowling.

Well, let’s start off with my favourite part, the Night-Ex.

*DISCLAIMER*

Due to the secretive nature of an RAF base, I have been told I can’t tell you certain things. So I’m not going to tell you about the base itself or any of the equipment on it, but I’m going to be safe about this. Some of the stuff I censor may well not be restricted, but I’m playing safe. It’s restricted for a reason and I don’t want to be prosecuted for accidentally releasing something I shouldn’t.

Ok then, the night ex. Basically, we go out into a forest at night, do all the sort of jungle warfare – hand signals – keep down sort of things and ambush the enemies. And try not to get ambushed. And get some boxes which were playing the part of ‘important parts’ and the like.

We started with a practice, IE no ambushes or anything and just to go over the moves/ hiding etc. We all went into various parts of the forest and practiced hiding. Then we all came back to our rendevous point  and were briefed. I must say, the scene was a bizzare one.

One of the Staffs was wearing Debbie’s DPM hat – a womans hat it appeared – and looked very silly, Mattheus had affixed some grass to his head and the other Staff had pulled a massive BB rifle out of hammerspace. Pretty much everyone else had applied the wrong type of camo stuff and looked like they’d been assaulted by a five-year-old armed with poster paints.

We were then breifed about getting some boxes, and we all set off into the forest. Running. In a forest. In summer. Resultantly, I was attacked by a herculean bout of hayfever and had to go sit in a van for a while while a cocktail of tablets got to work.

After my head had been released from it’s invisible concrete block, Debbie (or Flight Sergeant as I should be calling her) showed up and asked me and Lucy (who had also had to drop out) if we wanted to go and ambush people. I readily agreed. I quickly found out there is nothing that much more fun than jumping out in front of a load of unsuspecting people and shouting ‘BANG BANG BANG’ until they ran away. As a group, us three ambushed four other groups. It was then EndEx and we were given a cup of mercifully hot green soup. Nice.

Well, that about wraps it up for the Night Ex. Or ‘Murky Twilight Ex’ as I should call it. Damn you British Summertime.

Keep an eye out for RAF Kinloss – Part 2 – Inverness Aquadome!

-James

© James Plant, 2008.
All Trademarks Acknowledged.