After a long hiatus from sf0, Azure 75 and I decided to participate in Minnesota's Journey to the End of Night. Rather than run, we opted to help out Burn Unit & JJason by hosting a checkpoint.

We found out that our checkpoint was going to be on the Franklin Ave. bridge. The location drove us fairly quickly to decide that with only sidewalk to work with, we'd just have to have a sidewalk cafe. A French sidewalk cafe!

Aside from the obvious table, chairs, and stamp, components of the checkpoint Cafe du Pont included:
*a candle
*French flag (flown from microphone stand)
*2 pots of coffee
*water
*baguettes
*croissants
*grapes
*Nutella
*dark chocolate
*brie
*Alouette cheese
*French music playing
*copies of French books, including a slang dictionary
*book in which players had to write or draw something creative before receiving their stamp
*hand mirror and eyeliner pencils, for application of mustaches and/or beauty spots
*the hosts, clad in black-and-white stripes and neck scarves

We set up on the bridge, admired the view, and commenced enjoying our sidewalk cafe. We soon found ourselves attracting the attention of passersby, who honked (in solidarity?), waved, smiled, and shouted "Viva la France!" Some stopped and inquired what we were doing, giving us a chance to plug the game and encourage them to find out about future events.

Throughout the night, the runners had varying reactions to our checkpoint, mostly very positive. (Some were slightly frustrated by the delay of having to do something creative in our livre des artistes, but if they'd only experienced DC's Red Tape checkpoint they'd have known better than to fret at our minor delay.) As the evening wore on runners became more enthusiastic about our culinary offerings, and by the end of the time for our checkpoint we were gaily adorning all runners with the facial hair/marking of their choice.

...in a few days, I hope to add scans of some of the artwork left in the book for us, but I really wanted to get this posted! Thanks for a great night.