This is how the day went, from my vantage point in my secret vast limestone cave hideout; I also wandered around a bit between some of the stations of the hunt (there were a total of ten). I encourage any other Evco participants to post their observations in the comments to this entry. I am minimizing mention of other participants because I of course want to hog credit for this
production, and also for reasons of privacy – maybe someone doesn’t want to be mentioned by name in a public forum like this. Again, if you do, you’re encouraged to comment.
Including myself, there were about ten Evco conspirators and associates involved in providing logistical support to the scavenger hunt on site in Vienna throughout the day. Beta and her friends, how many of them were there… seven, I think, on the day of the hunt.
1. The kids met at the first station, a certain university library, at 9.15 AM. There they went to the information desk and asked for a certain gentleman, Dr. Cosma, who was summoned and arrived in the form of Evco conspirator H. wearing a white lab coat, I believe dark glasses? and an odd accent. He took a couple of the kids into the library archives, which I had inspected beforehand and can testify were suitably dark and scary, with steel grate floors between the bookshelves enabling one to see three floors down. H.P. had selected a perfect starting place. The kids had found the reference number of a book in their online search, and looked for it on the shelves. H. had however made it more difficult for them by selecting a book at random that was too large to fit on the shelves and was stored in a secondary location elsewhere in the archives. So after the frustration of not finding the book where it should have been, they finally got it and found a postcard of St. Stephen’s cathedral inside, and a key to a locker.
The locker contained several red herrings, I believe, including a tin can of herring in tomato sauce. Dr. Cosma also gave the kids a brightly colored rucksack; the kids argued the rest of the day over whether it was neon green or neon yellow – it was in any case visible at a distance, making it easier to see them before they saw us (I thought) and for strangers to recognize them. The pack also contained
N. says she had a lot of fun especially with EVCO contingent staff like M., J., and m.
All her colleagues envied her for doing such a cool thing. Ok, just those five she told she was doing such a cool thing.
She got a very interesting tan around the places where she applied the 30-sunscreen. At least no sunburn.
N. made two major mistakes: She placed the clue for the Basilisk House at the wrong house and she pronounced pew like poo.
This sounds very fun! I’m inspired!
Fer cryin’ out loud – don’t you have a TV to sit in front of?
Yeah, Suzette’s right – you creative people drive me nuts… Go get yourself a X-Box or something…
@Suzette: This is in fact the – erm – fact. Speaking for myself I don’t have a TV and am therefore forced to create my own action movies.
1) I’ve never realized how few of the people involved even *have* TVs. We don’t have one either. Are we Weirdos?
2) Speaking of weirdos, I could tell that the skinny shirtless guy would eventually cause us trouble from the moment I arrived at MQ. He was just standing in the fountain w/o his shirt, but wearing soaking wet jeans (thankfully). He stood and stood and stood. I was playing it cool, becaues I didn’t want to put the bottles in *too* early because, well, they attracted a bit of attention. But I was really crossing my fingers that he’d leave before i got the call from N. that the Targets were en route.
In the end, he left and was totally invisible to us for a long time — even after the bottles had been in place for 20 or more minutes. When T. showed up and said the arrival of the targets was imminent, followed by N.’s arrival from Sch
I think that pretty much qualifies as a roaring success, my friend. Congratulations.
Thanks to all you guys, D.
scott: the now-legendary N. smackdown. really sorry i missed that.
Is the answerphone hell still available to listen to? That sounds riotously good
@D: No, I deleted it that evening, ’cause it’s my private phone. The night before, just after recording it, someone called and I barely made it to pick it up before the voicemail started.
But I am still thinking about recording it for the video.
Absolutely. Please do. Or at least a sound file.
I don’t have a tv either. Small world, eh?
Interesting. Somebody who has too much time could write a thesis about the relation between “creativity” and the possession of TV.
I’m jealous — it sounds like an amazingly good time was had by al. If you do it again, I’m half-tempted to fly to Vienna to be a minion.
You may be the best dad ever.
I’m very impressed. Sounds like a lot of fun.