Level 7 when The Fat Lady sings!

We had tickets to see BB King in concert at the Fox Theatre in Oakland.  I got there around six and played a bit of Ingress before going to Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe for dinner. 

My wife still wasn't nearby when I left so I played a bit more Ingress before meeting her by the Fox Den lounge and walking her dinner to the car before heading in to the venue.

After the show, we headed to the car and I took over the Greyhound Bus Station Ingress portal while my wife ate some of her dinner.
We headed to Jack London Square's Yoshi's location after that and caught a set from the Daniel Fabricant Trio, featuring Dan, Dina Maccabee and Rob Reich in the lounge.  It was great to hear the three of them and a nice surprise.
I noticed that Jack London Square had been taken over by the opposition in Ingress and decided to use the portal at The Fat Lady bar to level up.  I hit Level 7 and the fat lady sang, but my screen capture video sadly crashed while it was happening.

Farming at Civic Center

I spent the evening farming for Ingress supplies in San Francisco's Civic Center, discovering an organic foods market and a building with awesome murals painted along the sides of it somewhere on 9th Street.  I left Civic Center less than 14,000 points away from turning Level 7 and started to plot out how I would reach that with some form of memorable fanfare.

First Portal Submission in Game!

We visited Fremont Hub in the afternoon and I hacked the high level portal in the coach house that was in the parking lot of the shopping center while my wife snapped some pictures inside the Nothing Bundt Cakes shop.

We went to Sprouts Market and got some almond butter and Jamba Juice, where I hacked the portal and captured it for the Resistance.

After a brief visit to Goodwill, we took a rather long way home, going to Berkeley so that I could confirm that my portal submission of the Freight and Salvage Coffeehouse complete with Vienna Teng marquee was indeed in Ingress.  I took the liberty of capturing it and taking screenshots before we left.  We stopped by Ashby Stage and I submitted it with the marquee for The Fourth Messenger.  I hope that one gets accepted as well!

Ingress in the Mission

I decided that it was warm enough outside to take the walk to Tartine bakery and see Dina Maccabee, Lisa Mezzacappa and Diana Strong play while enjoying some tea and maybe a dessert.  I plotted out a course that would allow me to play some Ingress along the way and hopefully get me there before 6:30.

The Ingress gameplay got me to Powell Street and I had to take BART the rest of the way to the Mission.   After getting there, I took a bit of a wrong turn, but not so much, and ended up on Valencia and not Guerrero, wondering where Tartine was for a moment and discovering that Clarion Alley was full of high level portals that I could hack for items. After a nice dinner and evening with a friend, I hacked the Clarion Alley portals and we headed back to BART.  It was a fun and random Friday night.

A Bit Under the Weather

 I thought I was okay when I woke up last Monday morning, but my morning Ingress walk lead to me feeling pretty bad.

After work, I needed steps for my walking goal and I wandered north along Market Street, playing Ingress.  I introduced myself to a Resistance agent named "Jab" who was just about to turn Level 7.  I was a bit jealous that he was further along that I am in the game and he was perplexed as to how I knew he was playing and that I was on his side. 

Today,  I did a bit of Ingressing at lunch time from inside the nearby Jamba Juice and dodged raindrops on the way back to the office.

AKA Harajuku Madness

Last night after work I took MUNI to the Haight and played some Harajuku Madness (or "Ingress" as they call it now) before a Cory Doctorow book reading at The Booksmith.

Now in the Niantic Project

Wednesday morning I did a nice walk through the city, hacking, linking and upgrading Ingress portals.  I had a somewhat busy workday and headed immediately to downtown Berkeley after work.  I intentionally exited BART at the downtown stop and played Ingress in the 1.2 mile walk to the Ashby station.  All told, I had around 50,000AP earned in the game by the time we got home on Wednesday night.

My efforts in the Redwood City Dead Drop last week have lead to my likeness actually being featured in the Niantic Project!

Verum Inveniri (my first Ingress Dead Drop recovery)

On Friday night, I looked online and noticed that the Niantic Project ARG dead drop of a storyboard to a scene we haven't fully seen in the game was still unclaimed at the Redwood City library.  The drop was stuck inside a Isaac Asimov book titled The Neutrino.  The drop, a single piece of paper, was a piece of the larger story of the ARG and in two days, no one had claimed it.

On Saturday morning, the library opened at 10:00.  We did some prep work by looking in the library system from home and finding the location of the book, on the shelf in the adult non-fiction section with the catalog number 539A.

We got there a few minutes after 10 and someone was hacking the library portal when I walked in, but no one had claimed the storyboard.

I excitedly took the book from the shelf, dropped it like a klutz and put it on a table.  I found the drop, snapped a couple of photos and went outside to show my wife.  She was gone.

It turned out she had driven to a shopping plaza nearby to grab a Jamba Juice.  I walked over and she took a photo of me with the storyboard and I posted to Verum Inveniri like the game's storyline said to do.  I earned three invite codes for the game from that and became internet famous for about ten people that actually follow the game. 

The funny thing is, I posted the invites to the local Resistance communities and they were all claimed within minutes.  The people took the free handout but couldn't do the small amount of work to claim the drop themselves.

I am glad that I am a part of the organized, willing to work together San Francisco Resistance and not just the South Bay Resistance.  If I was only a South Bay member, I may have given up on Ingress by now.

Transamerica Operation/Swap Meet and a week's worth of walking (My first Ingress Resistance team operation)

Yesterday began with the realization that my Pebble activity tracker step goal was likely higher than I would be able to achieve due to the fact that it was 9900 steps and getting out of BART and walking two extra stops distance was just over 2000 steps.  

I decided to take drastic measures and signed up for an hour on the walking workstation.  As that hour came to an end, I was at around 7000 steps when I saw a post in the Ingress community I am a part of about a planned Ingress raid on the Transamerica Pyramid area with two gentlemen that have become frequent cohorts.

We captured portals like crazy and being at Level 6, I even captured three at a high level on my own.  It felt good to turn the area blue and the small amount of effort and in game resources I used got me over 20000AP, which is what I used to average on a "good day".

Yesterday in Ingress was far more than a "good day". 

When I got back to work, I was already at 11,596 steps and met my step goal.  The rest of my walking would just be for me and not toward any arbitrary goal.  I worked through the rest of the afternoon and went to a planned Resistance meet up to swap in game items after work.  The swap had some technical glitches but we still had enough items that me and another Level 6 agent attacked the Enlightened portals in Justin Herman Plaza and the Embarcadero.  We turned most of it blue before I ran out of XM and decided to walk up Market and head for my destination for the evening, The Warfield to see Ben Folds Five.

Along the way, I noticed two Resistance portals were under attack.  I slowed down my pace to drop some resonators on them and in doing so, witnessed a major car accident where one car hit another which spun out and then hit a bus.  The spinout was in the crosswalk that I would have crossed had I not slowed down to drop those resonators on the portals.  Ingress likely saved my life.

After trading blows with the enemy for a while, I won the battle and the portals and kept walking.  The cable car turnaround on Powell Street was green and low level, so I captured that one proudly and then ate some dinner at Carl's Jr. 

My wife was still commuting, so I placed some resonators in the portals in the mall that were already blue but not yet full.  At the end of the day, I was over 41000AP higher than the previous day.  It was my best Ingress day yet, and to put it into perspective, 41000AP would have taken me from Level 1 to Level 3 and part way to Level 4 if I was just starting in the game. 

I am still around 240000AP away from Level 7, but I'm having fun playing and meeting new folks along the way.

A week's worth of walking:
On Friday, my evening Ingress hike was in San Francisco, starting on Howard Street at the temporary bus terminal, walking to approximately UN Plaza and doubling back a bit on Mission then going to the Marines Memorial Theater and back to Powell Street BART.  Saturday's hike was in Yosemite Valley, first through the icy trail to Bridalveil Fall, then to the Visitor Center area, then to the lower half of Yosemite Falls and eventually around the Ahwanhee.  Sunday was a bit less because of being a bit tired from Saturday and the inclement weather.

On Monday, I walked along the Bay Waterfront hacking Ingress portals, went to the Stephen Tobolowsky reading, walked from BART to Oracle Arena and then did a big lap of the Level 8 portal farm in Jack London Square.

On Tuesday, I took a slightly longer lunch than anticipated and worked with some Resistance teammates in the Embarcadero/Justin Herman Plaza area.  I went back out after work due to the new Jamba Juice and Zipcar Location portals becoming active.  The Zipcar portals pushed me to Level 6 in an exciting Ingress achievement and also kicked me over 10000 steps again.

Wednesday was my "off" day from Ingress.  I needed to take a day to not play and Wednesday just felt like it was the right time to do it.  It was difficult to not go out and play but my phone crashed on Wednesday morning and I took that as a sign to just not go out.  My step goal was rather low for Wednesday as well, so a bit of rest wasn't a problem to do.

Yesterday was huge.  I thought I was screwed due to the high step count goal and the low anticipated actual step count.  I added a new morning walk to my routine that I really enjoyed and hope to continue in the future.  I used the walking workstation at work for an hour.  I did another Resistance strike at lunch time, working with the same teammates to take down the Enlightened portals in the Transamerica Pyramid area.  I met up with a different set of Resistance teammates after work for a bit of a swap meet of in game items.  Then I walked around the Embarcadero destroying Enlightened presence there and walked up Market to The Warfield for the Ben Folds Five show.  It was my biggest step day, almost 10 miles of walking and nearly 20000 steps.

It was an awesome week.  I'd love to have an even bigger step total for this week, but a bit of rest wouldn't hurt either.