It's Rated Arrrr

This post is intended for my fellow treasure hunters. Sorry, everybody else.

Max is rather down. Ravenclaw placed 3rd out of four in the scavenger hunt, and the fourth team quit after their captain had to leave. So, we lost big time. Now I'm tired and dirty and disappointed, mostly in myself. Plus, I had to go to friggin' marching band practice and missed out on post-hunt fun time. Goddamnit. But, moving on:

Thoughts on the scavenger hunt: The clues were better this time around. I was a big fan of the bluebirds, the pamphlet map, and the picture sequences. The Brekken's clue was pretty weak, but other than that the clues were reasonably straightforward. I don't understand how we screwed up the church one, but that was all our fault. Sam and Josh, you guys wrote good clues and got this thing together and for that I thank you. But...

What was lacking this time around was the structure and the human touch.

Structure: We ran into other teams way too often. Several clues seemed to just lead every team to the same place. The little collisions were fun sometimes (mostly because we got to give them the finger and spit at them and stuff) but mostly they were a distraction. We had to worry more about how we would find the clue without alerting the other team to where the clues were. Also, it kind of breaks some of the magic of the treasure hunt when you end up searching the same place for 20-30 minutes with another team right there with you.

The human touch ("warm fuzzies"): Our only personal contact with the organizers was a single, poorly executed water-balloon ambush. The half hour check ins worked well last time to make sure everybody was on track and provided ample material for post-hunt analysis. Speaking of post-hunt, the ending was disappointing. We figured out the clue, ran all the way down that buggy, muddy path, ran over to the red flag, looked in the box...and found a small note reading "sorry, too late." What a terrible way to end a scavenger hunt! I'm sure the other, earlier finishers were a little more excited, but it would have been nice to at least have had some people there to say "good job, dudes." Hell, we did that for everybody last time.

Next scavenger hunt: Pammy and I (and perhaps others?) will be planning this one, probably to be held sometime in late July. What works for everyone? I generally work thursday, friday, and sunday, anywhere July 17-19 or 24-26 works great for me. Or a saturday time, or a possible tie-in with Pammy's grad party if people have already planned for that? All interested parties, please leave comments. We'll try to set a date as soon as possible.

Say, here's a concept. How about for the next one, each team will have 20 minutes to figure out a clue and find the next one. After this time, they can call the organizers and get the answer. This will prevent 40 minute hang-ups that waste time and drain morale, and it will get this motherfucker moving. Or is 20 minutes too long, or too short? Perhaps we could estimate a time for each clue and include that number with the clue. Longer times for harder clues, less for what we think will be easy. Also, I think it would be good to have at least 4 per team, and also have a way to track the teams' progress. Personal logs? Video diaries? We shall see.

Oh man, I'm already starting to get excited about the next scavenger hunt. Good times.