This is a collaboration by Three's a Crowd, a group of taskers who strive to complete tasks in tandem, despite being physically scattered across the universe. Here, we combine Vote and Leave Clues to create a fascinating mystery for the concerned citizen to solve.

Garnett - My arrow trail was at the polling place on Fremont Street in Santa Clara, and was a relatively simple affair compared to those of my fellow taskers, mainly because the polling place was nestled in the warrens of an Old Folks' Home. Due to losing most of my video footage I only have a handful of photos to show you, but here they are notwithstanding.


For me, the first arrow was in the voting booth itself.

The re-taped arrowhead of a "Polling Place That Way" sign in the hall (of which I have no photo :/ ) sent the inquisitive citizen down the Senior Center's hallway...

...where more arrows awaited.

Eventually, the arrows head outside by way of an obscure back door...

...and the trail continues on pavement...


...takes a couple of quick turns...


...and soon leads to our message, posted to the side of an electrical box.


Tac - My specialty is doing nothing. You need nothing done, you come to me, I can get nothing done in two seconds flat. But there was something about this day that was different. Something on the wind - maybe the eerie lack of spring pollen on the carpet of pollutants that is the air here - told me that this was not a day to spend doing nothing. This was a day to spend actively convincing other people to take some time off. So I hooked up with these two other gumshoes, injected a little bit of PI know-how into their vote notes, and set out to slay a beast that would devour as much of my day as possible. It all started inside a voting booth in a dreary, middle-school auditorium but that's a story for another time. One step outside, and the fun really began.



I ducked outside of the auditorium and made my mark on the nearest pillar out of sight of the poll workers. The next few were easy to find. Low and large. It wasn't until the trail went across the street that the intrigue began.



With talk sweeter than the donuts on display, I convinced the proprietor to let me lay a clue in his display.



A timely visit from mister Abraham Lincoln also convinced the good shopkeep to pass out free donuts to any would-be treasure hunters. But the delicious donuts were a deliberate diversion. The true trail lead back across the crosswalk.



The sidewalk was like Moby Dick as read by Jessica Alba: Long and hot. I hoped my clues were cool enough to keep my quarry going.





I thought a bit of encouragement might be in order.



My detective's instinct told me the park must be near.



I stopped to wet my whistle, and slyly deposit another arrow.



I checked over both shoulders before ducking under the miniature, child-safe replica of the Winchester House. I left a post-it note as a souvenir. If anyone takes the bait, I'll know they followed the trail.



But I'd made a fatal mistake. I'd forgotten to check my front!



The kid had spunk, I gotta say. When I told him I was hiding from monsters, the tyke up and claimed to be a monster. He chased me halfway round the park before his parents put a stop to it.

Did anyone follow the clues? Don't know. What I do know is that I for one did what the note said to do. I took a day off my job - off of everything - and shook the snow globe of smog and stagnation that is my town. If anyone else follows suit, that's just gravy, baby.

Waldo -- "I found you" is all people manage to muster when I am just walking down the street, and who can blame them. After years of toil, seeking me out with the same fervor the 70s attacked the multi-colored cubes that arrived without explanation demanding to be solved, they just run into me on the street. It is unrewarding, and I understand that. All the years you have been looking for me, I can't just walk out and shake your hand and shatter the childhood dreams and unspoken promises of grandeur attained by finding me. But I do need to be found, and I was rather hoping you would know why. As Machiavelli explained himself to "The Prince" (Yes, The The Prince):

Just as those who draw landscapes place themselves

below in the plain to contemplate the nature of the

mountains and of lofty places, and in order to contemplate

the plains place themselves upon high mountains, even so

to understand the nature of the people it needs to be a

prince, and to understand that of princes it needs to be

of the people.

I'm not sure which of us gets to be the mountain, and which the plains, but it will do enough to see and be seen and come away the better for it. So when the time came to reveal myself to those proud few who could both vote for the future of their nation and follow blue masking tape arrows on a whim in the same outing, I new it was time. So it was written, so it shall be.


My first arrow was also in a voting booth itself (SIIWSISB).


It was not until I left the booth that I realized my note would only be
seen by other people in my area casting republican provisional ballots.
This was more than half-way through the day, and I, as you can see, was
only the eighth such ballot cast. Even waiting for the very next voter to see that polling booth may take a while...



I am sorry to say my close-up shot of the artistically embellished post-it was lost to the demons of film-development. However, I did manage to faithfully document how I made the note at the end, using scholastic supplies and ingenuity.


This of course brought to you by the good people at COMET SCHOOL SUPPLIES, INC. and their partners-in-crime over at Expo (Low-Odor) Markings.





I figured that anyone who might follow the notes would likely follow me out of the polling booth, looking for blue arrows within minutes, as the chance of the note remaining unmolested through several uninquisitive voters seemed low. On that logic, I set up my arrow trail in reverse, starting with the end note on this out of the way table at which I sat in full regalia awaiting the faithful followers of our brand of larrikinism.







The arrows which the gods dids't not protest to develop clearly in the alchemical lairs of "Walgreens Photohut" regressed as follows:



This arrow is hard to spot, not because I am creative in hiding them, but because I am a terrible photographer, despite years of carrying one around my neck. To be fair, I spent more time looking for it once misplaced (or my cane, or my dog, or my hat bauble, or an old guy with a long beard in blue robes...) than I spent using it.



These I laid down with the documentarian aid of a kindly woman who spotted me between seeking the 3000th some signature in her petition to start a feasibility study into starting a new school district as apart from PUSD. Her reward for the find -- 1/7000th more in her epic pollster grinding quest. I bet she can already taste the Epic political-activist mount at level 40.



These arrows led from the only exit from the polling place over that short wall, and towards a staircase, and all the other devious arrows that take you from the foreground of this location to under the red roof in the background where my note (and I) waited.

After a good deal of waiting (and the completion of my Cactus Cooler refreshment packed in anticipation of such delays), I spotted a figure coming down the staircase. As he approached, I snapped a shot of the oncomer, who was most certainly following my arrows diligently.


The fellow was hardly startled to see me, and with some reassuring gestures I was able to convince him to read the note we had made for him.


He was pleased. It also turns out that his name was Phillip, and by virtue of living in my neighborhood and being my age, we were able to work out where our paths had crossed before. Red Dragon Karate, when we were about 5. How we have aged:



We had a lot of catching up to do. Seems he was going to Berkeley for the summer to stay with some friends. Further, he told me that he was part of a group of four of the closest friends you could hope for in his high school, from which he graduated the year previously, and that his leaving to join two of them in Berkeley would be leaving the fourth, Sandy, standing alone here in LA. His dinner plans were about to begin to hang out once more with Sandy before he left for the next three months, and I was invited to join them for Burgers. The camaraderie between the two was clearly reinforced by years of hijinks (the only suitable word; note the triple dotted letter), and an explanation of SF0 quickly gave way to politics, Philip's year abroad in Peru where he built his own mud-brick adobe and guinea pig farm (they eat them).

After a few hours of talking about Obama, Peru, and our generously provided backdrop courtesy of ProjectionsOnLake we took refuge at Sandy's home for some much needed Pool, Halo 3, and reading Nietzsche's teachings into the allegory of Beatrix Potter. It was only at this point that I remembered to document this unexpected success, with the last shot in the roll of film:



About to shoot is Sandy. The tye-dye fellow is named "Kitsch", who is turning 22 soon. Apparently I was the first to point out the joy of being "Kitsch, 22."