The Hunt, My Sixty Hours. Part I.

I've been writing this slowly, so I thought I'd post the beginning:

In recounting the tale of my vacation, I begin with the last day, which took about sixty hours.

On Friday morning, I awoke in Providence and packed my bag with toiletries, extra clothes and some warm-up puzzles to work on as I rode into Boston. veek drove me to the Providence Commuter Rail Station and I boarded the train into the city. It was a calm ride. Once there, I switched to the T and exited at Kendall Square, near MIT. davidglasser had provided me with some rather convoluted directions ("Turn right onto the street whose name I can never remember . . ."), but I was running out of time and followed them to the best of my ability. Although I went off track about half-way through, I still managed to end up in Building 4, my destination, and I quickly found ACRONYM headquarters.

It was about 11:50 a.m. and the entire team was heading off to Lobby 7 for the opening of the Hunt. I barely had time to drop off my things before I ran outside to follow Codex out the door. It wasn't until we were all gathered in the large main entrance of MIT that I got to stop and introduce myself to some of the team members who had assembled. This was the beginning of what was to be, for me, a weekend of many NPL introductions. It began with finally coming face to face with bookishfellow, thedan and saxikath, our team leader. I also got to finally meet davidglasser, whom I'd known from ifmud, and NPL member jangler, who happened to wander over to our camp (for values of "camp" equal to "pillar we were huddled around"). This was only a small corner of the huge room, packed full with people, all waiting for the puzzling to start. I distinctly remember on person holding up a large turnip. (I later learned that this was Team Turnips. Should've guessed, eh?)

This, by the way, at noon on Friday, is when the sixty hours began. All chronology henceforth is subject to being slightly muddled.

( Introduction )

( Round One )

( Round Two )

By now, I was very tired. I went into the sleeping room and took a nap. By the time I woke up, the Hunt had exploded.

To be continued . . .