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in which I am smarter than I think
Komarr is the exact right thing to read, right down to the "lovesick mania for volunteerism."
And last night I did something that was the exact right thing to do: Journey to the End of the Night Seattle. Wim told me about it in the afternoon, so I wasn't really prepared for a footrace, but I got him to bring me better shoes and ditched my backpack at the lab and we went. I was so very tired, but getting chased through the city was Not Remotely Like Work and I took a chance on it (assuming I could ditch at any time and go home).
Having figured out what the meeting place was, which turned out to be an unintentional hurdle, we quickly got food and went to the tower at Volunteer Park, where we met Willow of Jigsaw Renaissance, one of the organizers. There was waiting around, but eventually all the necessary people and about 22 runners were ready. We got yellow ribbons to display as runners and dread red ribbons to keep in our pockets, in case we were caught and turned into chasers. Everyone had to show the ribbons prominently at all times, of course. We all got maps showing the checkpoints and safe zones (most of them, mostly accurate) and were set loose!
Wim and I took a stealthy ninja-like approach to the whole thing, and indeed we never saw a single chaser. (Game balance seems to depend very much on number of players, which is sadly unpredictable; more chasers would have been much harder, more runners would have given a herd effect but also converted to more chasers, etc. Imagine an unusually instantaneous wolf-rabbit system without the rabbit reproduction. This might be fun to computer-model.) We sneaked out the northwest corner of Volunteer Park and overshot Broadway to walk to Cal Anderson Park, the next checkpoint. Once there we met up with other runners: two walking women and a man riding a mobility-assistance scooter. My knees were sore already, but we had to perform a task -- balancing on pipes and other hardware, including a slack line, without touching the grass, which was lava. The only way this does not represent my entire childhood is that in childhood we felt the need to clarify that it was HOT lava. We all teamed up to make it through, and handily enough the scooter was ruled to be impervious to lava. Wim actually walked the slack line with help from me and another nonce-teammate, making him an utter badass.
We continued our sneaky approach, creeping over to Marination Station, or at least where Marination Station was marked on our map, which was wrong. Eventually we found it outside the safe zone, got tinfoil hats to help hide our brainwaves from chasers, and received a hint for the next checkpoint: at Vito's, we were to find a dame and unbreak her heart.
The level of constant awareness this all required was much higher than normal: where are bus stops (all were tiny safe zones); is that person a chaser; how can I get from point to point with visibility, concealment, and mobility? It was, honestly, an incredible relief. Living in the moment at its finest. Also so simple: people are allies, enemies, or neutral, no complexity. I began to understand the appeal of team sports. (I also started to suspect that my particular experience of grad school has made me into a bit of a stress addict, but that's for another post.)
We found Vito's and the dame was immediately obvious, but so was![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
drakemonger, who had been hunted all the way to the door by two chasers and was taking a break to order a small pizza. The dame had a delicious drink with tequila, mescal, and a sprig of rosemary in, and a funny sob story about a husband who ran off with a fourteen-year-old. I took the obvious unbreaking strategy -- my initial thought had been Tegan and Sara, but that's definitionally impossible, so I went with "say you love me again." Wim had to do something different; I stage-whispered that he should compliment her dress, which really was awesome, and that worked well.
We took the bus (transit vehicles were also safe zones) down to Pike Place with another runner, Jeff, who'd been a little ahead of us in Vito's, thus confirming my ID of the dame, and DM caught up too. Fun interactions with people on the bus: we explored the perfect correlation of tinfoil hats with seeing no chasers, and the driver asked me as we got off, "Do you guys know you have tinfoil hats on?" Me: "No!" The Pike Place Pig was a tolerably obvious goal, but kind of situated in a killbox. We debated going down all those stairs into Post Alley to come at it from the back, but I demurred due to knees. We sneaked as best we could on the 1st Ave side. We got there with no problem, only to be met with "Your princess is in another castle. You need to level down."
Stairs after all, alas. I suppose it's inevitable that a footrace not be optimally set up for folks with mobility issues, and the individual checkpoints handled it well, but one of the organizers was talking later about far more physically challenging stuff as possible checkpoints and I didn't much like the sound of those. In this case there actually is a Pike Place elevator that we could've taken if we hadn't wanted to check each market level. I sort of wish we had; my knees are all right today thanks to prompt aspirin, but I slipped on the stairs and the arm I caught myself with is skinned, bruised, and strained.
I headed for the bottom, assuming we would see a pig of considerable stature, and indeed found a fine brass one, regally seated, with an agent in attendance. I explained that my team was trying to come down as little as possible, and he signed my checkpoint list without making me do anything else. Perhaps I got points for still wearing the tinfoil hat. When the others arrived, they had to do PIG JIGS. (Wim was uncertain later whether he had invented this requirement himself; as the last to arrive he hadn't heard the initial demand, and had in fact duplicated it independently. I think he added the pig-kissing component, though.) Jeff did a fine truffle dance.
We were down to less than an hour left! Jeff was both antsy and athletic, and chose to simply run down Second Ave to Pioneer Square when buses didn't immediately materialize. The rest of us went up to Third, grabbed a bus immediately (though we had our hats blown off by the wind and found ourselves unable to put the sweaty foil back on, ugh), and rode down to James. We had to backtrack a little, but these things help you avoid chasers, so it was all good. On arriving at Utilikilts, we met Jeff. Dang. He immediately approached two women at the pizza (?) place next to the closed Utilikilts shop, who demanded card tricks of us. DM totally had one! It turns out that cards have secret Braille, and so he was able to identify one without reading its front. The rest of us had to go through stacks and name the missing cards, which we did fairly quickly. The agent wrote "Penis! ♡" on my list, which is the only time I didn't just get initials or a squiggle. (Some people got explicit drawings at various times; glad I didn't. Sex is great, scrawled genitals are just stupid.)
Last stop, the party at Jigsaw! We hurried over, arriving maybe ten minutes before our 10pm deadline. Luckily Wim knew where it was; the other thing this whole setup really expected you to have was a smartphone in case of problems. I'd never been to the new location and I don't think the others had either.
I never did see Team Scooter again, which was too bad, but we got to meet up with agents and other runners, explain the whole thing to random Jigsaw-goers, and eat dill pickles which are OMG the best thing after chasing all across the city and sweating like crazy under tinfoil. The yellow and red ribbons worked very well to as bows to tie up my hair in pigtails, and that is what femme means to me.
So fun! Really good exercise, too, no doubt. I slept like ten hours, which was wonderful. And now that it's 2:30 and I've been up four hours, I should probably see about going to the library. Maybe I won't go to work.
He would not, could not, work through it all in an hour, or a day, or even a year; each day must have the challenge and response appropriate to it. One damn thing after another, Vorkosigan had said. But not, thank heavens, all things simultaneously.
And last night I did something that was the exact right thing to do: Journey to the End of the Night Seattle. Wim told me about it in the afternoon, so I wasn't really prepared for a footrace, but I got him to bring me better shoes and ditched my backpack at the lab and we went. I was so very tired, but getting chased through the city was Not Remotely Like Work and I took a chance on it (assuming I could ditch at any time and go home).
Having figured out what the meeting place was, which turned out to be an unintentional hurdle, we quickly got food and went to the tower at Volunteer Park, where we met Willow of Jigsaw Renaissance, one of the organizers. There was waiting around, but eventually all the necessary people and about 22 runners were ready. We got yellow ribbons to display as runners and dread red ribbons to keep in our pockets, in case we were caught and turned into chasers. Everyone had to show the ribbons prominently at all times, of course. We all got maps showing the checkpoints and safe zones (most of them, mostly accurate) and were set loose!
Wim and I took a stealthy ninja-like approach to the whole thing, and indeed we never saw a single chaser. (Game balance seems to depend very much on number of players, which is sadly unpredictable; more chasers would have been much harder, more runners would have given a herd effect but also converted to more chasers, etc. Imagine an unusually instantaneous wolf-rabbit system without the rabbit reproduction. This might be fun to computer-model.) We sneaked out the northwest corner of Volunteer Park and overshot Broadway to walk to Cal Anderson Park, the next checkpoint. Once there we met up with other runners: two walking women and a man riding a mobility-assistance scooter. My knees were sore already, but we had to perform a task -- balancing on pipes and other hardware, including a slack line, without touching the grass, which was lava. The only way this does not represent my entire childhood is that in childhood we felt the need to clarify that it was HOT lava. We all teamed up to make it through, and handily enough the scooter was ruled to be impervious to lava. Wim actually walked the slack line with help from me and another nonce-teammate, making him an utter badass.
We continued our sneaky approach, creeping over to Marination Station, or at least where Marination Station was marked on our map, which was wrong. Eventually we found it outside the safe zone, got tinfoil hats to help hide our brainwaves from chasers, and received a hint for the next checkpoint: at Vito's, we were to find a dame and unbreak her heart.
The level of constant awareness this all required was much higher than normal: where are bus stops (all were tiny safe zones); is that person a chaser; how can I get from point to point with visibility, concealment, and mobility? It was, honestly, an incredible relief. Living in the moment at its finest. Also so simple: people are allies, enemies, or neutral, no complexity. I began to understand the appeal of team sports. (I also started to suspect that my particular experience of grad school has made me into a bit of a stress addict, but that's for another post.)
We found Vito's and the dame was immediately obvious, but so was
drakemonger, who had been hunted all the way to the door by two chasers and was taking a break to order a small pizza. The dame had a delicious drink with tequila, mescal, and a sprig of rosemary in, and a funny sob story about a husband who ran off with a fourteen-year-old. I took the obvious unbreaking strategy -- my initial thought had been Tegan and Sara, but that's definitionally impossible, so I went with "say you love me again." Wim had to do something different; I stage-whispered that he should compliment her dress, which really was awesome, and that worked well.We took the bus (transit vehicles were also safe zones) down to Pike Place with another runner, Jeff, who'd been a little ahead of us in Vito's, thus confirming my ID of the dame, and DM caught up too. Fun interactions with people on the bus: we explored the perfect correlation of tinfoil hats with seeing no chasers, and the driver asked me as we got off, "Do you guys know you have tinfoil hats on?" Me: "No!" The Pike Place Pig was a tolerably obvious goal, but kind of situated in a killbox. We debated going down all those stairs into Post Alley to come at it from the back, but I demurred due to knees. We sneaked as best we could on the 1st Ave side. We got there with no problem, only to be met with "Your princess is in another castle. You need to level down."
Stairs after all, alas. I suppose it's inevitable that a footrace not be optimally set up for folks with mobility issues, and the individual checkpoints handled it well, but one of the organizers was talking later about far more physically challenging stuff as possible checkpoints and I didn't much like the sound of those. In this case there actually is a Pike Place elevator that we could've taken if we hadn't wanted to check each market level. I sort of wish we had; my knees are all right today thanks to prompt aspirin, but I slipped on the stairs and the arm I caught myself with is skinned, bruised, and strained.
I headed for the bottom, assuming we would see a pig of considerable stature, and indeed found a fine brass one, regally seated, with an agent in attendance. I explained that my team was trying to come down as little as possible, and he signed my checkpoint list without making me do anything else. Perhaps I got points for still wearing the tinfoil hat. When the others arrived, they had to do PIG JIGS. (Wim was uncertain later whether he had invented this requirement himself; as the last to arrive he hadn't heard the initial demand, and had in fact duplicated it independently. I think he added the pig-kissing component, though.) Jeff did a fine truffle dance.
We were down to less than an hour left! Jeff was both antsy and athletic, and chose to simply run down Second Ave to Pioneer Square when buses didn't immediately materialize. The rest of us went up to Third, grabbed a bus immediately (though we had our hats blown off by the wind and found ourselves unable to put the sweaty foil back on, ugh), and rode down to James. We had to backtrack a little, but these things help you avoid chasers, so it was all good. On arriving at Utilikilts, we met Jeff. Dang. He immediately approached two women at the pizza (?) place next to the closed Utilikilts shop, who demanded card tricks of us. DM totally had one! It turns out that cards have secret Braille, and so he was able to identify one without reading its front. The rest of us had to go through stacks and name the missing cards, which we did fairly quickly. The agent wrote "Penis! ♡" on my list, which is the only time I didn't just get initials or a squiggle. (Some people got explicit drawings at various times; glad I didn't. Sex is great, scrawled genitals are just stupid.)
Last stop, the party at Jigsaw! We hurried over, arriving maybe ten minutes before our 10pm deadline. Luckily Wim knew where it was; the other thing this whole setup really expected you to have was a smartphone in case of problems. I'd never been to the new location and I don't think the others had either.
I never did see Team Scooter again, which was too bad, but we got to meet up with agents and other runners, explain the whole thing to random Jigsaw-goers, and eat dill pickles which are OMG the best thing after chasing all across the city and sweating like crazy under tinfoil. The yellow and red ribbons worked very well to as bows to tie up my hair in pigtails, and that is what femme means to me.
So fun! Really good exercise, too, no doubt. I slept like ten hours, which was wonderful. And now that it's 2:30 and I've been up four hours, I should probably see about going to the library. Maybe I won't go to work.