Being my first time, I had no idea what I was getting myself into by agreeing to participate in Journey to the End of the Night. I am a suburban mother of three who just wanted to have a fun time with my brother and friend. It was so much more than that. It is almost indescribable how much fun we had from the start to the finish.

At the beginning, we thought slow and steady was the way to go. When everyone started running at the start, we were looking at our maps and planning our route. Then the chaser on the bike with the raquetball raquet came after us. We all ran in different directions and amazingly, all three of us managed to survive the chase. I thought it was so funny I almost peed in my pants. I think we were very lucky to not have gotten caught at the very start of the game. That would have really sucked.

We walked a few blocks and took the el to a few blocks away from checkpoint one. We were so paranoid of getting caught, got off a couple of stops away from the closest stop to the checkpoint. We walked nervously through the side streets until we found a hotel and coffee shop we could walk through. We ended up a block away from checkpiont 1. We watched out the windows until we certain we could make it to the safe zone without getting caught. Once we saw the coast was clear, we ran to the statues and found the amazingly nice woman on stilts. We had a random person who was at the statues take our picture with her and planned our route to the next checkpoint. (My friend Roger took all the pictures, I am hoping he will upload them as we have pictures at every checkpoint and with many people who helped us along the way).

We went back through the hotel and walked in a really zig zag fashion until we found a very helpful woman who took us through her apartment building's dog walking area through a magic door that led us across the street from the Target at the corner of Roosevelt and Clark. She took a little convincing that we were playing a game, but once she realized we telling her the truth she was really helpful. She saved us quite some time as we would never have found the magic door without her. We walked through Target and exited right into the safe zone on the bridge. The "teachers" at the checkpoint were so funny. They asked us questions before giving us a sticker to mark our map. Our questions were easy - what's 3+9 and A+B=? the group that arrived after us was asked A+C=? their answer was air conditioning and was told that was correct. Then they were asked what color is the American Flag - they said purple and was told correct. That made us laugh. :-)

From there, we got on a bus on Roosevelt. Two others from the game got on after us. We were all chatting and trying to decide where to get off. We started to get of at Halsted with the two women in front of us. They got tagged immediately upon stepping off the bus. We didn't get off the bus. We felt so bad they got tagged. The chasers came out of nowhere to get them. We stayed on the bus for several more stops - I think we got off at Blue Island or something like that. By then we were off the map. We made friends with a very nice guy who walked with us for almost a mile and helped to make sure we were going the right way. We weaved our way for what seemed forever until we made it safely to checkpoint #3. The superman/wasp was very funny and nice.

Lucky for us, right before making it to checkpoint 3, we got through to DC and got the info on the secret bonus checkpoint. We made it there and loved to find out we were able to bypass one of the other checkpoints - we picked to not go to checkpoint 4, which turns out was the best decision we made all night. We rode a bus for a few blocks with a group of 4 who were doing the same thing we were. We were more paranoid than they were, so we followed about a block behind them most of the way to checkpoint 5, which was pretty heavily guarded when we got there, but we lucky to have made it to the safe zone just in time. We met the spring chicken and the egg there. They were really nice and helpful. There were lots of chasers coming in and away from there, so we spent a little longer there than probably necessary, but we made it that far, we didn't want to lose from there.

We ran away from there and zig zagged through so many streets and alleys to get to checkpoint 6. By this point, we were definitely slower in our pace as our legs were starting to hurt from all the walking and running we had been doing. Luckily, we found an alley that ran parrallel to the safe zone and once we felt we could make it, we cut through an empty lot into the safe zone. We thrilled to arrive safely and to such a warm reception. We were #37 to arrive safely. We loved to see others that we had seen along the way to have made it as well.

This was a wonderful experience. Everyone was really nice, even the chasers that we met. I'm so glad we did this and am really looking forward to doing it again next year and bringing more friends to participate as well. Thank you for such a wonderful night!