This was marked in my calendar as an ingress event but – I thought work would not let me… so I really booked late, but I really needed that time-out. No person telling me what to do. Noone needing me „right now“. Sitting at breakfast, coffee cup full as long as I want to…. So I did book late, after having told everyone that I wouldn’t go.
So, I went. In a way that I could have a few hours of the city without ingress. Sightseeing, taking in the weather, the Sea, the buildings. Porto is a beautiful city but when I climbed up the hill from the station to my apartment I kind of started regretting not to have booked an electric bike. The bike rental person then told me, that they wouldn’t rent out electric overnight, anyway, and – that I’d better have the bike indoors at night. For my flat was in the first floor, that then was fine with me, and I just thought that there aren’t too many hills I can’t get up. Sometimes you gotta push the bike.
So after renting I took a tour to the Atlantic. Yay. Eurovelo Portugal. Just a teeny part of it but I have been there. The All-along-the-Atlantic-Ocean route. Ant Ocean it was. Really high waves so that they barred off the part of the beach where you could be wiped away.
Eurovelo. Why does this appeal to me as much as the PanEurope? Really because I STILL don’t believe in borders. Look from outer space, there are none. There are only people creating a „they“.
The next day I took my bike over the bridge, made some stuff blue, enjoyed the boats, the narrow stairs, the touristy market, and the purely amazing scenery along the river.
And then it was GORUCK day. This was such a weird event, this time. We got to do slinkies. I knew what they were but doing it on a train bridge, in between tourists, with trains passing but barely space. I rarely feel unsafe, but this could have gone deadly wrong. It didn’t though. We all are adults and – oh well. this means weare reasonable.
Our team performed as well as we could, but we largely lost. In fact we didn’t get a single point. How disappointing. A few things I considered not quite fair, for example, who determines which team a non-ingresser joins, but – fact is, we lost and the ENL just performed better. Cadre changing rules mid-challenge – that’s just the regular calvinball thing you get with GORUCK…..
After GORUCK it was sleep because for the first time I had also signed up for Urban. ANd this meant out, ruck again. No problem, and Urban we got us a few points back. Weren’t allowed to adopt the non ingresser (who by then probably anyways was spoiled by the froggies). I am not listing the challenges here, but things involved glyphing, more slinkying and more.
Anomaly time. Yay. And with my bike I had had a bit time to figure out where to ride and where not. I was perfectly fine with sylvi-powered. Catching a shard out of our range was the most fun. Just zoom down the hill and hope, anomaly is over by then so you don’t have to climb it… Resistance won, and it was high time to celebrate. With ieach time biking at anomalies I notice I learn. Small tactics. But I guess that’s the same for everyone.
On my way up the hill I met an Italian group who shared some treats and had some good wine. This whole thing had been exhausting but fun fun fun. Returning my bike was next.
My plane was scheduled for Sunday noonish, so I did the missions for Mission Day right around Midnight with a few others. There are unsafe areas in the city and one agent had gotten his cell phone snatched while playing. We went in a small group, finished our missions, and one of the guys called an Uber to bring us uphill… And from there I walked to my apartment. Actually I integrated my daily mile into the „walk“.
Group picture and then leave. This time no time for OCF but – so be it – I had my time-out. So I found my way to the airport, set foot into the plane and flew home. Monday was calling with it’s English lesson 🙂
