Want some Candy ?

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Ingress

I offered up bursters on the hangouts channel, and one of the Glendale guys asks for some.    He has only 16 level 7 ones.    The next thing I knew, I had organized a four-man meetup in Glendale – 2 Glendale guys and 2 Burbankers.    A Rolling Four, in Ingress-speak.

Despite it being next to the best place on Earth (Burbank), I rarely find myself in downtown Glendale.    I have never Ingressed there, and the last few times I’ve been, I’ve stopped at the mall and left.    So it was refreshing to head to the local McDonald’s, sit down, and meet up with the local big dogs.

I passed out gear with my favorite phrase – “Want some candy? ” , and we set to hacking the McDonald’s portal (A baseball artwork is in the middle of the restaurant).   Big Macs were consumed, with loud complaining from the guy watching his diet.    Afterwards, we headed out and did the Glendale walk.

Downtown Glendale is pretty portal dense, and the two locals knew the area backwards and forwards.   So I was treated to a different way to Ingress – just follow the other guys around and let them tell me what to do.    I hacked every portal that came in range.   “If you stand **right next** to the street here, you can reach that portal across the street”.   So I did.    We crisscrossed from streets, to alleys, up Brand Blvd and back, and down the sidestreets to the parking area behind a business where you could just barely reach the portal on the other street.

I have very little idea what the portals I hit *were* – Damon’s restaurant, a local iconic place was one, along with a tiny burger stand I’d never seen.    The other ones didn’t really stick with me.    Some stained glass.   A buddha head.    Painted utility boxes.    Just different enough from Burbank to be interesting.

It’s more clear to me now how to pick out an Ingresser – it’s all about the neck.    We have this weird head posture, where your neck is tilted at about a 60 – 70 degree angle.    Nobody else on their phones does that.   I wish I’d snapped a picture of the other three walking down the street like that, but I chose discretion.

We settled on a formula of letting me capture the portals, and I’d throw down the first four resonators (8, 7, 6, 6).   They were modding the portals up, after using the newly gifted bursters when needed, and filling things out to Level 7 portals – 2 8’s and 2 7’s apiece.     I threw links whenever I could, given that I didn’t plan to keep any keys from the area, and they linked when appropriate as well.

The walk was somewhere around 5 blocks, and we lamented the hot sun on one stretch, enjoyed the shade on another, and laughed at the portals literally on top of one another at another intersection.   Being guys, we also enjoyed watching the girls walk past, but were clearly more focused on controlling the area.

Talk about a different experience.    Every link is considered before I throw it, normally.   I know my areas, and if I’m in a new spot, I usually use the Intel map to carefully think through what I’m doing.   Not this time.    Every link was a yolo, and when they made a field I was very happy.     I was assured I wasn’t screwing up the local area either – I think my longest link was maybe 800 meters anyway.

After we had made it back to Mickey D’s, I had 905 unique captures and 1,911 unique hacks.

Not many left now for gold.

We parted after about an hour and I made it back to work in 1 1/2.   That was certainly a lot of fun – good company, and a great game.   I have to do more of this kind of thing.

The Glendale Intel map