I've been thinking for awhile that this task deserved something more interesting than a standard Halloween glamour shot, but it was only when I got my camera out to take pictures for another possible task that I realized what it needed to be. As an added bonus, it's also an excuse to write up an account of a long-gone task--actually, the very task that clued me into SF0 in the first place--that I never properly documented.

I know it's not that easy to figure out what's going on in that picture, but I'm going to make you wade through a bit of backstory before I explain. Back in September 2006, some awesome people put together the "big games" festival Come Out and Play, which brought SF0 to New York to run the Manhattan iteration of "Journey to the End of the Night". Of course I couldn't resist, and in the end about 15 people I knew wound up coming along for the race. Right at the outset, a few of us split off from the rest of our group and loped off in an excited but spectacularly average start. We made it to the first and second checkpoints in due course, seemingly somewhere near the middle of the pack both times.

We had a few minor chase scares around the first two stops, but nothing particularly exciting happened until we got to Battery Park, where we ran into a bunch of racers we didn't know and spontaneously started sharing tips about nearby chasers and bemoaning the fact that none of us could locate the guy we were supposed to check in with. We finally got a lead that he was a few hundred feet to our east, standing in some tall weeds in a circle of park benches that marked off the safety perimeter around the checkpoint. As soon as we heard that, we started running as hard as possible, knowing full well that there was a bike chaser in the vicinity. I remember looking back to see how much space was between me and the bike guy and feeling relieved that there were a few runners between us; then I must have tripped on my shoelace or something, because I can't imagine how else I could have launched into the massive faceplant I found myself in a few seconds later. From what I could gather from the wounds, I must have landed on one elbow, one forearm, and my lower legs--and, incidentally, sort-of-impaled my left hip on one of the park benches. But all I could think about right then was that the chaser was going to come back and catch me if I didn't get up immediately (he was wheeling back, but I think it was just to make sure that I hadn't seriously hurt myself). Either he took pity on me, or I got up in time, but I made it into the safe zone.

So we signed in with the guy with the lamp. The fourth checkpoint was deemed to be within walking distance. As my adrenaline rush died down, I realized that I was limping, bleeding, and in a fair amount of pain, and that "walking distance" might not be as far as it usually was. But it was dark enough that I couldn't really see any of my wounds, so I just pushed on. When we got there, they said that enough people had made it to checkpoint five by that point that we might as well go straight to the afterparty (in Mouse's sixth picture you can see James, my dear friend Shay who was visiting from LA, and the very top of my head; Yong was off to the side taking the same picture from another angle). The completist in me didn't want to stop with one checkpoint left, but I wasn’t in optimal condition, so I gave in and went along with the crowd. The SF0 folks didn't have a first aid kit (probably because they hadn’t counted on people stumbling over their own feet), but I figured I could stop by a drug store on the way to the bar.

(This is where it gets sort of icky.)

Once we finally got into the light of the subway I inspected the damage. There were some nasty wounds on my arms, but the bad scene was my hip. The bottom left side of my shirt was fairly well soaked with blood, and after I peeled the shirt up it became clear that that was because my hip sported a puncture wound the size of a dime that went all the way through the top few layers of my skin and down to the fatty tissue (totally gross! But also kind of awesome). But because I felt all cool and hardcore, and because I'd really been looking forward to that afterparty, and because I am an idiot, I figured I could just wash it off at the bar and everything would be hunky dory. Shay and I took a quick detour to the Walgreens in Union Square to pick up some antibacterial spray, a bunch of large bandages, and some painkiller; and my crazy plan actually kind of worked for awhile. I briefly considered worrying when I had to run water over my shirt for about two minutes to get it to stop rinsing out blood. But I wasn't in too much pain, so once I bandaged up all my major wounds I decided I could go back to blithely ignoring the whole situation.

We left the SF0 party before too long because Shay and I didn’t really feel like talking to strangers and the bar sort of creeped me out. But a bunch of our other friends from the game were in another bar on Avenue C, which was on the way home anyway, so we stopped by. By this point I was a bit distracted by my tender condition, but I figured I could stick it out for awhile. My resolve lasted for about a half hour, until I took a furtive peek at my hip and discovered that my entire bandage was soaked in blood. Still, I was pretty sure I’d be fine if I just got some rest--and maybe picked up some fried chicken on the way home to bolster my flagging energy levels.

(For some reason this part of the story sends people into hysterics every time I tell it, but I don't see what's so weird about seeking out ighly caloric food when you've just lost a lot of blood).

[To further set the scene, I should perhaps explain that I'd just moved into a new apartment at the beginning of the month; and, furthermore, we'd just prepared said apartment so our (sleazy, evil, insane) contractor could install walls and doors to create bedrooms. This meant that all of my earthly possessions--and my roommates'--were piled in ten-foot stacks on the extreme left of the apartment, and the only furniture Shay and I had access to that night was a mattress in the middle of the empty floor. Pathos FTW.]

As I ate my fried chicken I waffled to Shay about whether I should have gotten medical help; but the last thing I wanted was to drag her to the emergency room with me at 2 a.m.; but I couldn’t help being a little bit concerned that my tetanus shot was out of date. However, all of my concerns were trumped by the fact that I didn’t know my new neighborhood all that well yet, wasn’t really sure where the nearest hospital was, and (most crucially) didn't have an internet connection to look it up. So I finally did something sane and went to bed.

In the morning I woke up to find that I'd soaked yet another bandage with blood, so I decided that it was probably time to grow up and get myself checked out. I still didn't know where the closest emergency room was, so I tried the best plan I could come up with: walking into the giant police station at 8th and C and asking the people at the front desk for advice. They only sort of managed to conceal their alarm and suspicion, pointedly asking me why I was looking for a random hospital; but they eventually decided I wasn’t a criminal on the lam and started arguing about which hospital would be best for my predicament. Finally one of the lady cops declared that Beth Israel was my best bet, and I caught a bus uptown.

It took awhile to get past triage, but the emergency room doctor was lovely when I got there. He explained that if I'd left the wound alone, it would eventually heal into a really ugly scar; but, if I preferred, he could also trim away some of the dead flesh and stitch it up so I’d have a slightly less hideous one. Because I am vain, I went with the latter option. I wound up with a tetanus shot, six stitches (my first ever!), and a bunch of bandages and bacitracin.

I hate to devolve into saying something like “Time spent in the hospital: three hours. Emergency room co-pay: 100 bucks. Antibiotic prescription: $20. Always being able to say that I got that scar from being chased by a guy on a bike while playing a game: Priceless.”... but how can I resist? I have no idea why it took me a year after that to properly join SF0; but I’m here now. I hope this will be the start of many gorgeous (though preferably less costly) adventures together.