Thanks for a great game! This was a really fun night.

So here's the thing: I am colorblind. Not so much that I don't see colors, but certain colors get mixed up and impossible to distinguish if there is little light, the distance is large and the color nuances are in certain categories, such as - you guessed it - thin green and orange plastic bands tied around the arms of people far away on a pavement in the middle of the night. So this was going to be an interesting night.

I came to the game with my girlfriend Elena, she is really tough but I'm not, so this was going to be a night of stealth and sneaking around rather than playing of cat and mouse with scary chasers.

(Also, I'd been burnt before - in JTTEOTN: Oakland I got caught in a sad, sad way, when I was sneaking up to checkpoint four, seeing some nice guys I'd been running along with earlier in the evening, so I waved at them... and suddenly realised that they had turned to the dark side. (Did I mention the thing about being colorblind?) I ran until my lungs hurt, and thought I had lost them - that is, I had lost the three guys, but this girl kept jogging after me. So I sprinted some more, turned and by golly, she was still there. So I continued, by now coming full circle around the block, limbs aching, my lungs collapsing, and I had to stop. Which she didn't. Very sad story.)

Seeing the crowd at the start we where overwhelmed with fear, but somehow managed to grab some of the very last waiver forms and get in the game.





As the start signal went off, we decided to take it easy and walk to checkpoint one, following something of a detour along the waterfront. This worked excellently, but on leaving checkpoint 1 we saw a lot of chasers and realized we had to stay alert. So we hustled up Brannan and approached cp 2 by passing under the freeway on 5th street. There was a chaser, but we heroically confused him by splitting up and running each our way, rendez-vousing inside the safezone. No sweat! Well a little sweat actually, but hey, we're not 18 anymore.



So we decided to take the bus to cp 3. Dead easy! Except there were chasers on the bus, who followed everyone of the bus and caught them from behind. Surely that must be a violation of the Geneva convention. Anyway we got away cause we were chickens and stayed on the bus for a couple of stops further.

And this prisoner's dilemma thing on cp3? Bah! No bell-wielding secret agents could threaten the strength of our scandi-latino passion. One small bell each.

Except we nearly got ourselves killed when we exited the safezone, nearly ran into the arms of a couple of chasers and opted to jump on the hood of a passing taxi instead. Better dead than red! (or orange - did I mention the colorblind problem?)

We got away and found a bus stop, got to cp 4 with no effort and decided that this bus thing was a great idea. Except that by now there were 30 chasers between us and the bus stop. "Luckily" the bus took half an hour to arrive, and by then the chasers were fed up and gone. From there and in it was all a-cruisin. Well if sneaking around and throwing nervous glances over your shoulder counts as a-cruisin.