06.18.06
Journey to the End of the Night
Saturday night in San Francisco was spent running from the east side of
the city to the west side under the directions of sf0.org. We started out with registration
where we signed up with s4xton, bananachunks, and me. While we were
waiting we met and added Britt to Team Bruce. A last minute dinner of
pretzels and a powerbar, a briefing by Ian on the game, and at 7:45 a
large group of sf0’ers sprinted out of the park trying not to run into
the confused bystanders or get hit by traffic. The next 3.5-4hrs was
spent running from “chasers”, hopping buses, and basically getting lost
in San Francisco. We hit 3 of the checkpoints before the time limit of
10:45 hit. When we decided to call it, we had a long wait for a bus
before we flagged down a cab and sure enough just as the cab pulled up,
the bus came.
Then it was off to Ocean Beach for the bonfire party. We sat around the
fire, drinking wine, getting to know the other players, meeting friends,
and drinking. The cops tried to kick us out, but after ditching the
alcohol in a car, we were right back out on the beach.
The connections between people were a weird surprise. Many of the sf0
guys moved to San Fran from Chicago. People were very familiar with the
hiptop community, recognizing skholla, hiptop3.com, etc. We met Nicole
and Rubin who are part of the people responsible for Dance Dance
Immolation at Burning Man that I had already learned about. They were
out there spinning fire on the beach. I mentioned that I had wanted to
learn how, and after an excellent 20 minute lesson from Nicole, I lit up
some poi and actually did some spinning myself. Quite the experience,
and I’m hooked. The sound of the fire flying through the air was
exhilarating to say the least.
The crowd dwindled down to only a few as the night continued. Finally
around 4am everyone decided it was time to head out. I called a cab, we
waited, Britt called a cab, we waited, s4xton stood in the middle of the
street, we waited, finally a cab showed up, and of course so did the bus
10seconds later. We finally made it home and allowed our tired bodies
some rest just as the clock turned 5:11.
All in all, a great night! Many thanks to sf0 and all the excellent
people involved in the event. I can’t wait for the next one.
