I am much more interested in organizing street games than actually playing them, so I asked Dax if he could use my help again for Architect.

We started out by taking two very long scouting walks through the areas that Dax intended to use for the game. Each walk took about eight hours and was pretty grueling. One of the checkpoints he ended up using - the fountain in Old Town - was discovered because we decided to stop and soak our aching feet in it, which perfectly suited the theme of the game. We sat on the edge with our feet in the water twice, for about an hour each time, once in the middle of a walk and once at the end, since we'd left Dax's bike in the neighborhood and had to go back to get it. We got stared at but not asked to leave, and people actually joined us - one tired gentleman who had spent all day at Lollapalooza and then walked all the way to Old Town, and one very drunk girl who was having some unspecified argument with her drunk boyfriend and decided Dax and I would make good relationship counselors (we did our best!).

During these walks, I did that thing I do and scavenged bunches of rusty metal stuff, which I then used to make the awards for the top two runners-up, the first six players in with full manifests, the top two best photo winners, and the top two best story winners. I had a lot of materials, but really surprised myself by using almost all of them to make the prizes. Dax and I really liked the idea of using industrial detrius found on the actual route to make useful items as awards for the game, as it carried the theme nicely.

On the day of the game, I was in charge of setting up the finish line at the Heart of Gold performance space. I picked up the finish line equipment and the wonderful Kid A from Dax's house and drove over to Heart of Gold - if I didn't have Kid A with me to haul all that stuff up four long double-flights of stairs, I couldn't have done it! :) Our finish line costume theme was post-apocalyptic, so I dressed for the occasion and set up to wait for the players to start coming in. As players arrived, their manifests were checked and stamped with the official finish line stamp, their Names counted and logged, and their photos downloaded for the photo contest. Some players had lost or given away their manifests, and had stamped various parts of their own bodies as proof instead, which was awesome. I also added the final stamp, of course.

Dax graciously let me share in handing out the prizes during the awards ceremony. Afterwards, he entertained the players with songs on his accordion, which resulted in a Jewish-wedding-like circle dance with him in the middle, which was full of both hilarity and the warm feeling of being part of our beautiful SF0 family.