MX02102010

Estación Uno - Fuente de Las Cibeles
Fountain of Cybele - Checkpoint One

Susy made this Journey so amazing!

She designed a great route though and around the neighborhood of Roma where the streets are intersecting grids with circular enclaves all bisected by diagonal streets- disorienting, even for locals. The game started at Parque Mexico, then there were five checkpoints and one bonus checkpoint with the end in a little plaza out front of a stretch of taco places, including one called El Farolito (just like my favorite taco place in San Francisco).

You can view a map here: MX02102010.

I volunteered to be the station agent for the first checkpoint:

My checkpoint was the plaza surrounding this awesome fountain with a statue of Cybele which was all in the middle of a busy roundabout connecting five streets - including one big, busy Oaxaca boulevard which is a diagonal short cut to the biggest cross-town thoroughfare, Insurgentes.

I mention how busy the traffic was because of this fine young lady, who nearly got squished by a speeding taxi cab as she ran across the roundabout trying to escape Spidere (our lead chaser) who was prowling around the end of Oaxaca boulevard. Standing in the middle of the roundabout, it was hard to know where runners would be coming from... until I'd hear a bunch of people scream - and there Spidere would be, absolutely covered in red ribbons chasing them into the safe-zone. (Lady-Defier-of-Death made it to the end point alive, but as a chaser. She had three kills and early on it seemed like she might win the medal she's holding.)

I had been given the secret instructions to tell runners: "Look for the red umbrella." I didn't know what this meant, nor did I know how to say 'umbrella' in Spanish. Turns out that the bonus checkpoint (which could substitute for any of the first three checkpoints) wasn't manned at all. Instead, there was a phrase written in giant chalk letters around the base of the fountain, "the red umbrella = paranoia". Some people figured this right out, and wrote 'paranoia' on their manifests. Others didn't - and once they gave up on finding the official checkpoint staff, they improvised:

Several got boy scouts to sign (this one from Troup 320) and another woman had a police officer sign her manifest.

Susy had these beautiful medals made for the top runner and top chaser: they are a 10 peso coin encased in a silver frame that has "Viaje al Final de la Noche 2010" engraved on it. Plus, because she's amazing there were medals for the three of us who flew down to play - that's the green ribbons you're seeing in the photos.

People had fun. Lots of fun. One group of students really wanted to run the game on the UNAM campus - there was a lot of talk all around about doing it again next year. Later that weekend, exploring Teotihuacan, we thought it would be really spectacular to run the game there, with the last checkpoint on top of the pyramid of the Sun. Those of you with connections to El Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, you just pass the word along that we're interested, ya' hear now?