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First Person: Deadeye Dick’s Axe-Throwing and Bullseye Bar

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“First Person” is a new Whatzup column in which I try a relatively new pastime or regimen and report back to you, whoever you are, with my findings, such as they are.

By Steve Penhollow

After I scheduled my session at the axe-throwing emporium called Deadeye Dick’s, I went around my home imitating Gimli, the axe-wielder from the “Lord of the Rings” movies.  

Although I think I do a fair impersonation of John Rhys-Davies, the Welsh actor who portrayed Gimli, my wife was not amused.

She retaliated by suggesting I would injure myself at Deadeye Dick’s in a manner reminiscent of Ed Ames’ tomahawk throw on The Tonight Show in 1965.

If you don’t know what she was referring to there, it’s well worth googling.

I wanted to tell my wife that she was being unfair, but I had to admit to myself that I am a clumsy person.

For example, there are people who spill things and then there is me.

My spills regularly have an upward trajectory, defying logic. If Sir Isaac Newton had seen me spilling in 1687, we would not now know what gravity is. My clumsiness is apparently more elemental than the laws of physics.

Sometimes, the liquid flies in so many unlikely directions that you’d swear a small detonation must have been involved.

Luckily, Deadeye Dick’s is fully prepared for people like me.

The business was started by Jennifer Rao. Rao is a former nurse turned entertainment mogul. She cashed out her 401K to open an Escape Room in 2016. The Escape Room was so successful that she expanded her recreational holdings and opened Deadeye Dick’s earlier this year.

Throwing axes sounds dangerous and it is. But Deadeye Dick’s takes every precaution.

Every group that comes into Deadeye Dick’s gets its own axe-throwing expert. If you think I am going to describe these people as “axperts,” then you obviously take me for a less principled feature writer.

Nor will you find the following sentence in my column, except as an example of what not to do: “If you have an axe to grind, try axe-throwing. Any way you slice it, it’s cutting-edge entertainment. It is everything you could possible ‘axe’ for in a pastime.”

Any feature writer who uses such puns in earnest should be forced to write a first-person account of a more obscure sport: Axe-catching.

My personal axe expert was Antione Brewer.

He demonstrated several safe and effective axe-throwing techniques and advised me of rules that seemed designed to curb my natural idiocy tendencies.

If more things in nature (not to mention, nurture) were designed to curb my natural idiocy tendencies, the world would be a better place.

This is probably as good a place as any to raise the specter of that viral axe-throwing video in which a hurled ax bounces back like a squash ball and sails over the thrower’s abruptly ducked head.

Rao said there are many things wrong in that video: inadequate equipment, poor throwing technique (and, by extension, poor training).

“Axes will bounce back, don’t get me wrong,” she said. “But I am in a forum with owners from all over the world and we have never seen anything like that. That axe took a beating. Thank God she didn’t get hurt.”

As extreme as axe-throwing seems on the surface, the pastimes of which it is most reminiscent are bowling and darts.

In bowling, you choose the ball that is right for you and in axe-throwing, you choose the right axe.

In bowling, you play in groups. Everyone watches while each player takes his or her turn. The same is true in axe-throwing.

There is no such thing as special axe-throwing shoes, but you’re not (for obvious reasons) allowed to wear open-toed footwear.

If I ever dropped an axe while wearing sandals, I just know that it would be one of the few times that the laws of physics worked for me the way they are supposed to.

Scoring in axe-throwing is similar to scoring in darts.

Throwing axes involves one of two techniques: One-handed throwing and two-handed throwing.

I tried one-handed throwing first.

It should surprise no one who has read this far to learn that I am not a very coordinated person, although I continue to insist that I am a passable dancer.

I was not adept at throwing axes one-handed.

If I had tried throwing dead egrets instead, I might have looked more graceful.

Brewer, who was having a tougher time training me than Master Shifu had training the Kung Fu Panda, suggested I switch to a longer-handled axe and a two-handed throwing technique.

So I worked with that for a while.

Folks, you will probably disbelieve what I am about to type and accuse me of empty boasting.

But in the last 30 minutes of my 60-minute session, I hit the bullseye nine times.

I thoroughly ruined my reputation as the Inspector Clouseau of Participatory Journalism.

Here is what I learned about axe-throwing: Despite its seemingly aggressive and macho nature, ax-throwing isn’t about power.

It’s about flow.

Women tend to be better axe-throwers than men, Rao said.

The reason for this is that most men’s solution for poor axe-throwing is to throw the axe harder.

“Women don’t throw as hard,” Rao said. “Often, you’ll see a woman throwing and you’ll think, ‘That looked like it was moving in slow motion. How did it stick?’ And then a guy will just throw harder and harder and harder…”

It doesn’t work.

I went in thinking axe-throwing would be a great way to “blow off steam” and get my aggression out.

But I think it’s closer to meditation, even though I’ve never meditated. Or closer to yoga, even though I’ve never yogaed.

I wanted to try yoga, but when the teacher saw me in tights, she said, “Why not try axe-throwing instead?”

She was right, as it turned out.

(Link to the original column: https://whatzup.com/places-food/first-person-no-dull-moment-when-you-pick-up-fort-waynes)

First Person: iCRYO Cryotherapy

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“First Person” is a new Whatzup column in which I try a relatively new pastime or regimen and report back to you, whoever you are, with my findings, such as they are.

By Steve Penhollow

If you have watched a lot of science fiction movies, then you might recognize the whole-body cryotherapy chamber at iCRYO.

Does hypersleep ring a bell? All those movie astronauts who are quiescently frozen so that they can survive long journeys through space?

That rarely ends well. In “Alien,” Sigourney Weaver awoke to find that she had to fight the title character. In “Alien 3,” she awoke to find that she’d been impregnated by the title character.

Even though the whole-body cryotherapy chamber at iCRYO does resemble a hypersleep chamber, it is not the same chamber. It is not designed to prepare you for the journey to Jabba’s palace. It is designed to help you with a host of health complaints, swelling and inflammation being the two most common.

There are people who believe that it also helps with weight loss, arthritis, stress and depression.

The FDA does not currently support any of these claims.

When I drove up to iCRYO to give whole-body cryotherapy a try, what I saw were a lot of giant photos of Indiana athletes.

I am not an Indiana athlete. I am not an athlete in any state, territory, realm or dimension.

Athletes use whole-body cryotherapy to recover from athleticism. At best, I was a skeptic who wanted to use whole-body cryotherapy to recover from skepticism.

I had done some research beforehand and here was my understanding of the whole-body cryotherapy process and result: The subject strips down to his underwear and dons shorts, mittens, socks and earmuffs.

The subject exposes most of his body so that his body can be exposed to temperatures that would be considered a bit nippy on the surface of Mars.

He enters the chamber, and the chamber is flooded with vaporized liquid nitrogen.

The subject’s brain, thinking some calamity has befallen the subject, shifts the body into survival mode.

Blood is sent to the core where it becomes the best blood it can be.

After the three-minute session, the fortified blood goes to where it can do the most good.

That’s a simplified explanation, but I am a simple man.

I read an article that said the brain is essentially tricked into responding in this way. This alarmed me a little because every time I had ever tried to trick my brain before, it had sought revenge.

As I was filling out the necessary paperwork (and liability waivers) at iCRYO’s front desk, I felt a little guilty about not having some injury I needed to assuage.

I thought about rubbing my shoulder and telling the desk clerk, “I just want to be able to throw a football again.”

But I hadn’t been able to throw a football before. My shoulder wasn’t the problem. Cryotherapy isn’t the solution.

My first minute inside the chamber was a true test of my resolve. Now, I am no wimp where cold is concerned. I am a native Buffalonian who tends to take the garbage out in shorts in the dead of winter.

But I knew it was going to get at least 50 degrees cooler than the coolest recorded temperature in Antarctica.

And Antarctician scientists are smart enough not to go outside semi-nude. They’d rather fight a shape-shifting alien than do that.

I am not nearly that smart. Even though my brain was telling me to get out of there, I forced myself to stand there for the requisite three minutes.

The song I had picked as the soundtrack for my session, The Commodores’ “Brick House,” was somewhat reassuring. But the music I heard in my head at times was not: Jerry Goldsmith’s “Ave Satani” from “The Omen.”

Afterward, an iCRYO employee told me the temperature in the chamber had sunk to 178 degrees below zero and the skin temperature on my leg had gone from 88 degrees to 48 degrees.

Some longtime whole-body cryotherapy customers endure a temp of 300 below zero.

How did I feel afterward? Great. The experience had raised my spirits and given me a blast of energy.

But I wondered if this is same sort of reaction that people who crave extreme experiences (and spell them “Xtreme Xperiences”) have. You feel good because you fought your fear and lived to tell the tale.

Is there a placebo affect involved here? Maybe. But I am ok with that. It has been especially difficult in 2020 to achieve the placebo effect.

Until scientists devise a drug that can trigger the placebo effect, we will have to find other means.

I will visit iCRYO again.

(Link to the original column: https://whatzup.com/places-food/first-person-coolest-place-in-fort-puts-you-in-deep-freeze)

First Person: Spectrum Virtual Reality Arcade

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“First Person” is a new Whatzup column in which I try a relatively new pastime or regimen and report back to you, whoever you are, with my findings, such as they are.

By Steve Penhollow

When staycations are mandatory, as they have been for most of this year, they lose whatever dubious charms they’ve been granted by whoever grants dubious charms — feature writers, probably.

As I type this, Chicago has banned Indiana residents from taking short trips there. Things sure aren’t looking rosy for the suspension of staycations.

So I got to wondering whether the local virtual reality arcades known as Spectrum are good places for pretending that I am not where I am.

I am not referring here to games in which you shoot zombies or cowboys or your-mouth-off. Those can be transportive in their own way, but what I was looking for was calmer games for old farts like myself who deplore violence unless it is directed at household appliances that have been constructed according to the principle known as “planned obsolescence.”

Virtual reality gaming, for the uninitiated, involves headsets that immerse wearers in virtual worlds.

Waylon Fisher, founder and CEO of Spectrum Virtual Reality Arcades, helped me find the peaceable games I sought.

The first game I played at the Covington Plaza store is called “Richie’s Plank Experience.”

“Richie’s Plank Experience” is often described by virtual reality entrepreneurs as a “gateway drug,” which is not the sort of thing you want your mom overhearing when she is dropping you off at the arcade.

What these entrepreneurs mean by this is that it’s a good introduction to the singular (and non-narcotic) pleasures of virtual reality.

In one part of the game, the player finds him- or herself having to walk a wooden plank which has been nailed to the side of a skyscraper for some reason, perhaps a remnant of a particularly hostile takeover.

If you have a fear of heights, the game will trigger that fear. If you have a fear of wood, it will trigger that fear too. And if you have a fear of heights and wood…well, perhaps you should sit this one out, preferably in a non-wooden chair.

There are gentler chapters in “Richie’s Plank Experience,” including one that allows you to soar above a city just like Marvel’s Iron Man would if his jet pack were powered by paint.

Paint being one of the jet pack industry’s more inefficient fuels, you end up soaring very slowly while painting a city like the vengeful ghost of Christo.

It is delightful and relaxing.

Another game that allows you to float above a city doing magical things is “Santa Simulator.”

In “Santa Simulator,” you assay the role of the Jolly Old Elf. In that capacity, you guide the reindeer (including Rudolph) and you deliver presents while heart-tugging music plays.

Your enjoyment of “Santa Simulator” is probably dependent on the robustness of your Christmas-induced sentimentality.

As for me, I didn’t get misty the first time I played it and no one can prove that I did. After all, it’s dark in those VR chambers. Then too, I was wearing goggles, so anyone who says they saw me cry is a dirty liar.

Even if it’s my son.

If you want to float many miles below sea level, “The Blu” and “Free Diver: Triton Down” have you covered…with virtual water.

“The Blu” is sort of like a giant ocean-sized aquarium that the player inhabits. When a humpback whale swims very close to you, you might be tempted to lose control of your bladder but try to remember that you aren’t really underwater and you aren’t really wearing a wet suit.

In “Free Diver: Triton Down,” you play a person who dives to great depths without an oxygen tank and goes on adventures, the main one being finding oxygen at great depths.

If you want to float many miles above the planet, try “First Time: Zero Gravity.” It’s a short game but the view of the earth from space will take your breath away…and you won’t be required to search for oxygen afterward.

Job Simulator, in which the player pursues mundane-but-honorable occupations in a future ruled by awkward-but-benevolent robots, may be too cartoony to be transportive. Then again, a future ruled by awkward-but-benevolent robots might be the setting of your most fervid fantasies right now…for reasons that can only be guessed at.

Perhaps the best game for transporting you to another place is Google Earth VR. If you have fooled around with Google Earth on your laptop or desktop, you know it allows you to peruse panoramic photos of street views and landscapes in cities around the world.

Google Earth VR fully immerses you in those photos and it also sends you soaring above computer- generated cities and pastoral utopias.

Then too, you could always visit Fort Wayne in Google Earth VR, as I did.

This may seem counterintuitive on the surface. If I want to feel like I am taking a break from locked-down Fort Wayne, why would I visit a virtual version of Fort Wayne in a virtual reality arcade located in Fort Wayne?

My reasoning was that all the photos had to have been taken before the pandemic. What is visiting a pandemic-free Fort Wayne if not a vacation from pandemic-affected Fort Wayne?

Your reasoning may differ. Whatever your reasons, you really need to give Spectrum VR a try.

Given the layout of its VR rooms and the sanitation regimen practiced by its employees, Spectrum VR offers one of the safest pastimes a person or persons might enjoy right now.

(Link to original column: https://whatzup.com/places-food/first-person-step-away-from-reality-arcades)