San Francisco Photos and Travelogue
Thu Jul 15 - Training for the Pandora Tomorrow Tournament
Thursday was the beginning of our two day tournament with UbiSoft and the ZiffDavis dudes. But it was early yet. We drove to Gelb Music in Redwood City and looked around at guitars. None were interesting - I played with the rhythm eggs that I love so much. Then we headed north. We got into SF with no problem, but getting TO the Handlery hotel in Union Square was another story. What a maze of slow-moving no-turning streets! Even though we were near there with 1/2 hr to spare we barely got TO there by 11am. Two adults and four "teens/tweens" were in the lobby and I guessed those were them. Two were asians and were looking inscrutable and silent. They made me very afraid. The other two looked like teenagers and one was talking up a storm. I was less worried about them. I'm told the 4th team is stuck at their airport and might not make it.
I head up to the room and it's VERY nice, two separate suite areas with a bed and TV in each area, plus the bath area. Bob comes up and we head down to begin.
We all get a cab over to the offices - we go with one of the asians, and learn that he loves guitars too and that the two of them are from San Francisco. They didn't get to fly in! Soon we're at the offices where the fourth team does show up - they're grandparents and have never played before three days ago. We get pizza and soda in the conference room and are introduced to everybody. An intern, Alex, gives us a quick briefing of the controls which we all know and then he offers up practice. None of us really want to "show each other our moves" but the older couple takes over 2 of the TV/PS2 setups to learn the game with one of the helpers. The other 2 TV/PS2 pairs are then cycled through the rest of us, with me taking notes and trying to figure out what the favorite strategies of the other 2 teams are.
I quickly realize that I had my estimations backwards. The asian pair - Shawn and Paco - have only played single player before and are uncertain in mulitplayer. On the other hand, the teen pair are actually an 18 yr old (the original winner) from the east coast and his 20 yr old partner from Seattle. They'd never met each other face to face before but have been playing daily - all day - for the past 4 months. They are GOOD.
These two begin asking numerous questions of our rules, about jumping on heads and teleporting and triple-firing grenades. They're told not to do these things but it's soon apparent that their level of skills is far beyond the rest of us. They have the maps down to a science and zip through them without even thinking about it.
We did start to help each other out as we relaxed, showing each other keys and techniques and such. I think realizing that one team was a shoe-in helped with this. People really liked the maps I'd done up of the levels, not that those would help me much. We were only going to play on Hospital, and that uber-team was just amazing in it.
To our surprise, we hear that all the "real" first winners were either under 18 and had lied on the sweepstakes form or thought it was a scam and refused to participate. They had to work their way down to us!!
Touring the Office and Dinner
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