A year of Ingress - Invite Day - 7

I've heard a lot of talk about Ingress Anniversaries or Ingresaries.  That got me thinking about the early days and how far things have come.  I actually think I have two Ingresaries   Of course there's the day I got my scanner which was November 25th, 2012 but 7 days before that +Bryan Kroger got his scanner.  That was my first glimpse down the rabbit hole.

For about the first hour he had the app installed I was a little bit dismissive of it asking him why would people ever want to play that.  Truth be told I was jealous he found out about it before me and I I've never really handled jealousy well.

After he went through the tutorial he said he was going down the street to collect some "XM" I had no idea what that was or why he was doing it but all of a sudden I was curious and I wanted to know more.  When he got back he told me he was Resistance whatever that meant.

Bryan checked something called "Intel" and he said he thinks there were "portals" down in Kent Station then small movie shopping complex down the hill from our house.  I was still a bit annoyed at this point that I didn't get to play but I begrudgingly agreed to go to Panera Bread for lunch and maybe we could go look for these portal things afterward.

On the ride down I could hear ADAs voice telling us how much XM Bryan had and I was even more curious.

Through lunch we talked about the game and other stuff and I was getting antsy to see how this worked.  After lunch we walked around the building and across the street to the King County Law Library.  This is actually part of the courthouse that was attached to the Regional Justice Center but I had no idea there was a law library in there.  The first of many things I've learned over the next year.

I tried to watch over Bryan's shoulder while he deployed resonators because I wanted to see what was happening.  It was a grey portal so he was the first one to claim that portal and I was so excited.  Then he noticed on the scanner that there was another portal off in the distance, he looked at me and asked what I wanted to do did I want to go with him or go back to the car while he went and claimed the portal.  

It was typical Northwest winter day, cold and drizzly.  But I had a warm coat on and my husband was asking me to go for a walk outside so I was like Hell Yes! Let's Go!  We trekked across this gravel parking lot and and as we got closer he discovered it was the Kent Library.  As he was capturing the portal I realized connected that libraries must be in their default database of portals.  At the same time Bryan realized there was another portal 2 blocks away that was a post office, another possible database to look up!  I was totally on it!  At the time I carried around my large iPad so while he captured the post office I pulled out the iPad and tried looking up library's and post offices.  That was the first version of intel I ever did and I was absolutely giddy!

When Bryan got back to me he said said "I got the keys I think if we go back to the courthouse I can make a control field, do you want to go home or do you want to make a control field?"  I responded the only way I could "Let's go back to the courthouse!".  We made our way back over the gravel driveway and I remember feeling almost a euphoric feeling to being out on an adventure with my husband.  As he created his first control field and we heard ADA say "Good Work" something shifted and I knew I was hooked I would do anything to be a part of this new experience.

I remember on the way home I wanted to go claim the post office closest to our house but Bryan was tired and ready to go home.  I was so incredibly excited the first thing I did when I got home was sign up on Ingress.com for an invite and then came the wait!