The Game
The Game was this weekend. The Game, much like last year's, was amazing. The Game, for those not at Stanford, is a tradition out here: it's a scavenger hunt (technically I guess a treasure hunt, as it's a series of clues each leading to the next) around the entire Bay Area. You race other teams to the finish line. It can take 12 hours or more. This year's took our team 17 hours (from 7 pm Friday to 12 noon Saturday), and we were the third of over twenty to finish (most teams dropped out actually). We drove a total of 263 miles.
I'm not up to describing all the clues in detail, and I don't think many people care, but these are the locations they sent us to:
1. "El Palo Alto" - the huge tree that Palo Alto the city is named for.
2. Chuck E Cheese, Menlo Park (we had to earn 150 tickets, which we vastly overshot and gave the surplus of like 300 to some really happy kid)
3. Saddlerack 21+ club, Fremont (where at least 4 cars in the parking lot had confederate flag decals)
4. Textile and Quilt Museum, San Jose
5. Our Lady of Peace church, Santa Clara - more precisely, the enormous statue outside it
6. Mount Diablo State Park, Danville-ish
7. Hearst Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley campus
8. Yoshi's Japanese Restaurant, Oakland
9. The huge bow and arrow sculpture on the Embarcadero, San Francisco
10. Fisherman's Wharf Hilton, San Francisco
11. Millbrae Caltrain station
12. Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco
13. Angel Island ferry landing, Tiburon
14. McLaren Lodge, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
15. Apparently was supposed to be Half Moon Bay, but they removed that clue because teams were taking longer than planned, and the previous one's clue involved calling a phone number so they just changed the message to direct us to location 16
16. The house of our... uh, I'm not sure what her title (RSAS) means, but dorm supervisor basically, in San Carlos, where we got silly stringed upon ringing the doorbell by Paul the RA.
My favorite clue was the one we found at Yoshi's. It was a list of names, and it said "We have information about a possible criminal gathering. Please provide us with a clue to these 8 people's whereabouts." It also came with 8 (fake) tickets to see The Chronicles of Narnia at the Golden Gate Theater, each with a different seat number and different price. So we had our Google bitch at Stanford (every team had at least one Google bitch, it was pretty impossible to do The Game without one) look up one of the names, and it was a New York Times staff writer. So we grabbed a San Francisco Chronicle from the newspaper box across the street, remembering that that had been on the packing list. Each name was the author of an article on the page corresponding to their seat number, and the price was the paragraph and word within that article to write down. Together, the words made a sentence which was meaningless but the first letters of the words spelled out "embarcad." Which was obviously "embarcadero" missing "ero". So we called Game Control, and John Tan remembered there being a big bow and arrow sculpture on Embarcadero under the Bay Bridge, and it was right, and off we went.
John Tan, by the way, is a human atlas. Definitely our MVP.
Following The Game, we got back to Stanford at 1 pm. I promptly went to bed, and got up at 10 this morning. Yes, that's 21 hours of sleep. It was epic.
On a totally unrelated note, this was in a couple people's blogs on my friends page, and I actually found it interesting enough to try it and see my own answers. So why not post 'em? It's more or less accurate, nothing I really didn't know.
Your dating personality profile:
Liberal - Politics matters to you, and you aren't afraid to share your left-leaning views. You would never be caught voting for a conservative candidate.
Intellectual - You consider your mind amongst your assets. Learning is not a chore but a constant search after wisdom and knowledge. You value education and rationality.
Practical - You are a down-to-earth individual who is not impressed with material excess. You care about the stuff of like that really matters.Your date match profile:
Liberal - You need a person who has liberal opinions and beliefs. You are engaged by political discussions and would find a liberal viewpoint refreshing in a date.
Practical - You are drawn to people who are sensible and smart. Flashy, materialistic people turn you off. You appreciate the simpler side of living.
Intellectual - You seek out intelligence. Idle chit-chat is not what you are after. You prefer your date who can stimulate your mind.
Your Top Ten Traits
1. Liberal
2. Intellectual
3. Practical
4. Sensual
5. Athletic
6. Adventurous
7. Wealthy/Ambitious
8. Big-Hearted
9. Shy
10. Romantic
Your Top Ten Match Traits
1. Liberal
2. Practical
3. Intellectual
4. Shy
5. Adventurous
6. Funny
7. Athletic
8. Sensual
9. Traditional
10. Wealthy/Ambitious
Take the Online Dating Personality Quiz at Dating Diversions
I'm not up to describing all the clues in detail, and I don't think many people care, but these are the locations they sent us to:
1. "El Palo Alto" - the huge tree that Palo Alto the city is named for.
2. Chuck E Cheese, Menlo Park (we had to earn 150 tickets, which we vastly overshot and gave the surplus of like 300 to some really happy kid)
3. Saddlerack 21+ club, Fremont (where at least 4 cars in the parking lot had confederate flag decals)
4. Textile and Quilt Museum, San Jose
5. Our Lady of Peace church, Santa Clara - more precisely, the enormous statue outside it
6. Mount Diablo State Park, Danville-ish
7. Hearst Greek Theatre, UC Berkeley campus
8. Yoshi's Japanese Restaurant, Oakland
9. The huge bow and arrow sculpture on the Embarcadero, San Francisco
10. Fisherman's Wharf Hilton, San Francisco
11. Millbrae Caltrain station
12. Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco
13. Angel Island ferry landing, Tiburon
14. McLaren Lodge, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco
15. Apparently was supposed to be Half Moon Bay, but they removed that clue because teams were taking longer than planned, and the previous one's clue involved calling a phone number so they just changed the message to direct us to location 16
16. The house of our... uh, I'm not sure what her title (RSAS) means, but dorm supervisor basically, in San Carlos, where we got silly stringed upon ringing the doorbell by Paul the RA.
My favorite clue was the one we found at Yoshi's. It was a list of names, and it said "We have information about a possible criminal gathering. Please provide us with a clue to these 8 people's whereabouts." It also came with 8 (fake) tickets to see The Chronicles of Narnia at the Golden Gate Theater, each with a different seat number and different price. So we had our Google bitch at Stanford (every team had at least one Google bitch, it was pretty impossible to do The Game without one) look up one of the names, and it was a New York Times staff writer. So we grabbed a San Francisco Chronicle from the newspaper box across the street, remembering that that had been on the packing list. Each name was the author of an article on the page corresponding to their seat number, and the price was the paragraph and word within that article to write down. Together, the words made a sentence which was meaningless but the first letters of the words spelled out "embarcad." Which was obviously "embarcadero" missing "ero". So we called Game Control, and John Tan remembered there being a big bow and arrow sculpture on Embarcadero under the Bay Bridge, and it was right, and off we went.
John Tan, by the way, is a human atlas. Definitely our MVP.
Following The Game, we got back to Stanford at 1 pm. I promptly went to bed, and got up at 10 this morning. Yes, that's 21 hours of sleep. It was epic.
On a totally unrelated note, this was in a couple people's blogs on my friends page, and I actually found it interesting enough to try it and see my own answers. So why not post 'em? It's more or less accurate, nothing I really didn't know.
Your dating personality profile:
Liberal - Politics matters to you, and you aren't afraid to share your left-leaning views. You would never be caught voting for a conservative candidate.
Intellectual - You consider your mind amongst your assets. Learning is not a chore but a constant search after wisdom and knowledge. You value education and rationality.
Practical - You are a down-to-earth individual who is not impressed with material excess. You care about the stuff of like that really matters.Your date match profile:
Liberal - You need a person who has liberal opinions and beliefs. You are engaged by political discussions and would find a liberal viewpoint refreshing in a date.
Practical - You are drawn to people who are sensible and smart. Flashy, materialistic people turn you off. You appreciate the simpler side of living.
Intellectual - You seek out intelligence. Idle chit-chat is not what you are after. You prefer your date who can stimulate your mind.
Your Top Ten Traits
1. Liberal
2. Intellectual
3. Practical
4. Sensual
5. Athletic
6. Adventurous
7. Wealthy/Ambitious
8. Big-Hearted
9. Shy
10. Romantic
Your Top Ten Match Traits
1. Liberal
2. Practical
3. Intellectual
4. Shy
5. Adventurous
6. Funny
7. Athletic
8. Sensual
9. Traditional
10. Wealthy/Ambitious
Take the Online Dating Personality Quiz at Dating Diversions