Day 0: Washington DC Meet & Greet

Well, the game is nearly afoot.  Tonight we met up with some of the players and organizer of the race at The Elephant & Castle Pub in DC.

Present at the pub were Josh Czarda, founder of Ravenchase, Mike and Mary of the Kilts, Alex and Anji of A-squared, and two guys we met tonight (Justin and Josh?, not sure on the second name).  It was really great to see some of the old gang from the inaugural GAR five years ago, and they seemed happy to see us as well.

So here are some random tidbits we discovered tonight:

• Josh tells us the first leg will be the easiest and it will get harder as the days go by.
• While they can't play the whole race, Mike, Mary, Alex, and Anji will be teaming up to form a veteran Ravenchase team that will play in DC only.  So this means this first leg might actually be our toughest competition.
• The other two guys that were there make up the only other team that will be playing the entire race.  So they are the team to beat, and the team that we currently have a one hour lead over due to our starter puzzle success.
• Josh Czarda will be along for the entire race this time, and wrote most of the content.
• Mike, Mary, and Josh were interested to hear some of our stories about WarTron and other gaming adventures we've had recently.
• Todd has a real knack for credit card roulette, winning the first battle of the trip, and possibly breaking a record (held by many) with his second consecutive win without ever having lost.  (His first win was in a visit to the Bay Area a while back.)

Afterwards we went on a little night tour of the DC area, checking out the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial, among a few other things, and made our plans for tomorrow morning.  In particular, we decided that we will play with a sense of urgency, but won't be explicitly running from clue to clue as a general rule.  Thank goodness for that, since the heat and humidity might do us in with too much physical exertion.

Well, that's all for tonight.  We start at 10am tomorrow at the Lone Sailor statue.  Can't wait!