Mood: Paranoid, I'll be happy if we make it to the first checkpoint without getting caught!

After we were released at the ferry building, Meredith and I ran down into a BART station to look at the bus maps, because we are silly and clueless like that, and are, more specifically, city-and-bus-ignorant. There was this one beachlady at the MUNI counter who told us to walk to some store to buy a map, but we promptly ignored her and went to the other MUNI counter and planned bus routes with a red pen thing we borrowed from the counter. This was antsy-making, but very worth it, in the end. But, at the time, this put is Behind The Herd. As we walked down Market, we discovered that we have no sense of proportion, and one block actually felt like forever to walk. Additionally, we did this thing where we kept looking over our shoulders for people, and we kept crossing the street whenever we saw other people period, so that was quite fun and racist, probably. OH MY GOD THERE'S A WHITE MALE AGE 30SOMETHING, WE MUST FLEE. We got to the first checkpoint after a very long, meandering journey through the city, and up long flights of stairswhichwereARG because neither of us knew what Coit tower looked like. (we would have followed the signs, but we were pretty bad at orienting ourselves... shut up! Don't look at us like that!)

The view from there was superpretty, as it was sunset, and we could basically see the whole city from where we were, and we would have stayed up there longer, but uh... at any rate, and we got little cups of water and coca cola from the GM's mom and dad (*Amused*) and made them sign our slip. They said they were about to leave, so, evidently, we were Very Behind. We then trundled down through Chinatown, and that was fairly quiet as well. Highlights would include this really fast moving hobo that looked like a dementor or one of those enemies in Valkyrie profile, with the billowing cloaks and everything. We thought he might be a chaser or something so we pointedly crossed the street and were horrified when he crossed to the other side but still managed to keep up with us. We lost track of him eventually, and saw this other person behind a pole. We ran away and went up a few side streets to avoid him. We eventually got to the next checkpoint, and it was fairly uneventful. We then went to this place on Nob Hill or something called CALA foods and that was fairly terrifying because we saw bunches of chasers talking and being chatty with other players in the parking lot and yeahhhhh. Scary. The sudden realization that we were sort of in the middle of everyone else rather than far behind was pretty OMG! but since we were already Fairly Paranoid this didn't affect us so much. We got the Morton salt girl to sign our thing and then we boogied the hell out of there as quickly as we could. I trusted Meredith to orient us, and this wasn't an awful choice, but.

About two blocks away from the store, I looked behind us and saw something, and said to Meredith, "I THINK I SEE A TRAINSTOP BEHIND US" (That was our code word for ohnertz run away) and when we started hearing the thump thump thump of running feet we were all "AAAAAAH" and headrushes! and insanity! and runninglikeacrazyperson! ensued for three blocks while some balding-30-something-white-male (I didn't bother to look back over my shoulder, this is what Meredith tells me) chased us. Meredith crossed the street a few times, almost running into oncoming traffic, and I just dove into a liquor store. Eventually she evaded the person, and I was busy spouting apologies to the liquor store owner because he screamed at me "GET AWAY FROM THE WINE!" Because I was in sort of a precarious spot. He also said things such as "HE'S IN HERE!" or "WE SHOULD KICK HIM OUT!" but generally I was unperturbed and continued spouting out my apologies until I decided that I should call Meredith. She was hiding in another liquor store across the street, having hidden behind a car for a while (that tricky girl!). We continued on our way, deciding that perhaps it was time to take a bus to the next stop, as not only were my feet killing me, but we'd also get out from the middle of the herd.

Of course, this ended up being a poor idea. We got on the bus that went straight to where we wanted to go, but these other players came on, and they were all like "We're cool, we have these cheat buttons because we found this creepy guy who was giving them out!" (He was part of the game too) and it was kind of Arg. Then this large group of some 6 chasers got on on the stop which we should have gotten off of, and I was like "Maybe we should get off" but we were kind of paralyzed. We went a few more stops, and more chasers got on, and we decided to make a break for it even though it was kind of nowhere near where we were supposed to be. Someone tagged me but then I pointed to the bus stop and said "BUS STOP! HA!" or something far less dramatic and that was the end of that. Oh, have I mentioned that we were both fairly traumatized by this point? Well, we were, I was all jittery and incoherent and AAAH! and Meredith was very proud of herself but also kind of AAAH!

We were in Japantown, at this point, and well, we dove up a few side streets that were very dark and tied our shoes in some alleyway because that was the totally intelligent smart thing to do. We kept crossing the street whenever we saw *people* running about and yeah. We didn't pay attention to the address marked on our map so we just went into the Japantown center and had foreign sodas which were really awesome (mine had chunks of mango in it!) at this little cafe that was open late. It was a very cool pit stop, and there were bathrooms, so that was nice too, as our bladders were fairly full. We went to the Denny's across the street, and at that point Meredith said to the guy "You were hard to find!" and the person who was there was all like "Is there anyone else behind you?" implying something similar to "You're late, buttfaces." except in an amusing accent.

Japantown was my favorite part of the trip.

Uh, yeah, then we took a bus to some person's house, and the stupid bus kept not coming, so we waited forever but eventually caught it and yeah. It was basically the little apartment from heaven, because we were invited in and offered things like bathrooms and drinks and such and it was so incredibly pretty and sophisticated. The lady there then asked us to write down directions to the Space Needle (we're not sure why, but I know I wrote something about traveling through the eye then impaling one's self and then going to space) and it was nice. We then wandered around in the dark because the bus never came, and we caught the 43 to the Presidio.

Meredith and I didn't really understand what the Presidio was, but I did remember that there had been shootings there, or something. As we rode the bus we noted that it was the large, forested area. We then remarked that sf0 is making us do some pretty... hardcore stuff. Who the hell would run through the forest past midnight? I swear, does nobody have no grasp of werewolf-maulings? Anyway, we got off at some random stop, and the bus driver was no help at all, so we ended up being lost somewhere in the Presidio. We wandered around for a little while, chasers appeared behind us, Meredith ran, the person behind me ran, and I thought to myself "MAYBE THEY WON'T CATCH ME IF I DON'T RUN." Of course, this was an idiotic idea, but then again, I didn't have much run left in me anyway, so that was the end of that. Meredith made it to a bus stop that was like, 20 feet away. I then said to Meredith, relieved, "YES! Now all I have to worry about is rapists and gunmen." And I really shouldn't have been that relieved, but I was.

We then stole the map from our chasers, and looked for the next checkpoint which was something called "Lover's Lane" which is actually just some ickypath in the middle of nowhere. There were these flickering lights that were terrifying, and I wasn't kidding when I said it was a ickypath. It was literally a dirt path that ducked downwards into the woods. After wandering around in the dark for a while in the woods we decided that this was far too sketch and that we'd just go to the last checkpoint and die, quite possibly, in some cult sacrifice (in the end there turned out to be no sacrifice). It was hideously far away on this marina thing which was basically, like, uh, a peninsula that was so incredibly long and dreadful. We made it, though, after we met up with a few other people who evidently were the people that were at checkpoint #6 and who seemed to have phone numbers they could call in order to get us where we needed to go.

Anyway, now, whenever we go anywhere, we look over our shoulders, wherever we are, and desperately hope to God we don't see people with red ribbons. It's kind of humorous.