Minneapolis is not a city I've ever called my own, but one I have gotten to know well enough over the past several years to love it and to help plan the psychogeographically unique experience of it that is Journey to the End of the Night.



After serving as a staff chaser in the Chicago game, I decided to plan how to make better use of the staff chasers so as to prevent the problem of runners making it to the last checkpoint before the finish line without ever being chased - which meant that I took charge of coordinating the staff chasers. The plan was for staff chasers to be far less passive than we had been in Chicago, and the other chasers were encouraged to call me for advice while I received strategically-important updates from our main organizer, Senator Burn Unit.

So I arrived at the starting line about fifteen minutes early, so I could connect with a couple of my fellow staff chasers, put on our red ribbons, and help them familiarize themselves with the map on the manifest (I'd seen it already, but they had only gotten a list of the basic checkpoints) before we all went to wait at or near the spots where I had assigned each chaser to begin the race.



I then proceeded to experience firsthand every part of the Journey experience save that of the checkpoint agents.

To begin with, I was to lurk somewhere near the corner of 13th Avenue and University Avenue, with the expectation that a decent fraction of the players would take the direct path along University. While waiting for the pursuit to begin, I moved two blocks west to where a large bush provided an excellent location for ambush.



I chased a group of very determined runners a bit two blocks before making my way back to the bush - at which point I immediately saw the next cluster of runners coming down the sidewalk. I gave chase, focusing my attention on the nearest of them (Rao), but he evaded me without trouble as I was still winded from my previous pursuit.

Then, after a moment of catching my breath, I successfully tagged a runner who didn't work very hard to evade me.

He had on a special "resurrection ribbon" - a blue armband with secret rules attached. When you tag somebody with one of these special ribbons, you put it on and take their manifest - after which you have thirty seconds to escape before trying to fill out the rest of the manifest and complete the race.

As a staff chaser, I was supposed to not keep such a ribbon, but instead try to be caught.

Right about then my cell phone battery died.

I attached myself to a group of runners that was taking University Avenue, with the hopes that any chasers we saw would be attracted by a group and I could be enough of a straggler to get myself caught. We made it to checkpoint one without incident, and under the guise of handing the agent (Mean Jeannine) my camera to take a group photo,
I was able to step away from my erstwhile comrades and quietly tell her, "Call Jon and let him know my cell phone died. He'll know what to do." (As I would later learn, he opted to notify all the staff chasers that Oliver X was now coordinating them, and made Oliver immune to resurrecting, which as far as I am aware worked out quite nicely.)



The four of us split into pairs; I was in the pair going straight for checkpoint two rather than trying for the bonus. (I didn't think there would be as many chasers if we went out of our way to collect the bonus checkpoint.)

We encountered an ambush set up near Willey Hall, exactly where I had encouraged one of my fellow staff chasers (Jane) to lurk. I knew it didn't matter whether she got my ribbon or not, since if she did she'd have to ditch it - but the second chaser waiting very nearby who we hadn't seen as we approached had no trouble catching me. As it turned out, he was the very guy I had taken the ribbon from in the first place, and he was eager to complete his manifest.

I went fairly near checkpoint two, the aptly-named Hard Times Cafe, while on my way to somewhere further along. There I joined up with a group of four other chasers (the Plan B team) and encouraged them to leave that checkpoint (which had become something of a death trap) and move ahead with me. One of them proposed that we go to somewhere between checkpoints three and four, by way of a bonus checkpoint at the Band Box Diner.

On reaching the bonus checkpoint, one of my fellow chasers remarked that he wanted to see what the bonus stamps looked like, so we went to check it out and found the stamp missing.



I borrowed a fellow chaser's cell phone and called Journey Central (aka Burn Unit) to report the loss. He said he figured anyone else who found it missing would call him, and he'd give them a way to verify that they had been there. So we left a note in the bag the stamp should have been in that read "Stamp missing - call Journey Central" and went to be on our way.

No sooner had we left the ten-foot radius of safety around the bonus checkpoint than a runner (Loki) appeared, going for the bonus. One of my fellow chasers tagged him, at which point Loki revealed that he was wearing one of the fabled resurrection ribbons, and the chaser who caught him now had thirty seconds to escape, as a runner. Then he handed over his manifest, with signatures from the first two checkpoints.

The chaser didn't want to resurrect.

Asked if he could just keep the ribbon and escape, Loki said he didn't feel entirely good about that, since he had after all been tagged fair and square. The Plan B chaser who caught him observed that the directions had detached from the ribbon and pondered whether or not it would be fair play to just keep it as a blue ribbon to let it count toward his score as a chaser, at which point I said "If you're that desperate not to resurrect, I'll take it."

I took the ribbon, sprinted in a random direction until I was out of sight, then figured out exactly what I thought the most chaser-ridden path would be to checkpoint three. Since most chasers leave the bonus checkpoints alone, there wasn't an obvious path to pick, but I went north to fifth street and sauntered along it at a leisurely pace until I reached the third checkpoint, where I got a signature and joined forces with a fellow staffer with a resurrect ribbon on - Mean Jeannine, who had become a chaser when her checkpoint closed.

We ambled to Nicollet Mall, figuring it would be the most chaser-ridden route to checkpoint four. The only chasers we encountered were my former allies in the Plan B group. They caught us as we passed the finish line, and were in what was maybe a safe zone. (There was a little confusion about the boundaries of the safe zone, later removed by moving the safe zone signs.) They tagged us, Jeannine said she thought we were safe, and I let them know they didn't want to get us anyway because of what we both had on. They politely thanked us for being in a safe zone and let us escape.

We took a slight detour from Nicollet Avenue as it turned off the mall, through a path to Loring Park (where checkpoint four was located) that Jeannine knew was sufficiently riddled with hiding spots that it would either be an ambush we could get caught in or a shortcut to somewhere with chasers.



We found ourselves safely reaching the fourth checkpoint, where the agent (Curiou Sir) signed our manifests and broke the eerie silence he was maintaining to tell us where to look for chasers. We split up and left the checkpoint.

Now by this time a funny thing had happened to me. I guess you could say the blue armband was going to my head, because even though I was actively looking for paths I could get tagged on, reaching checkpoints three and four safely felt like a huge accomplishment.

So when a chaser in a trenchcoat popped out from behind a tree where I had managed to get within ten feet of him and not even know he was there, I panicked. I bolted away from that guy and ran as fast as I could to save myself from the very fate I had carefully set myself up for. He ran me down, but he did not have an easy time of it. I handed over my ribbon with a sense of relief that the pursuit had ended, and he resurrected with a manifest signed by the first four checkpoint agents.

I then retired to the finish line to enjoy the after-party, having felt firsthand both the thrill of the hunt and the terror of being the hunters' quarry - all while cut off from the communication network I had set up to keep my fellow staff chasers work going smoothly.

My legs are still sore from going the vast majority of the length of the course (entirely on foot) and my sleep schedule is going to have been horribly thrown off by getting to bed at 4 AM after the event, but I'll be damned if it wasn't one of the greatest experiences of my life.

And one day, I am going to be a runner at one of these things on purpose.