it's a fuzzy fuzzy world…

Happy Birthday, Christine Jeffery!!! 💙💙💙Love you!!

Best thing about Ingress? The amazing people you meet and the friendships you make. Being on Team KoaBFsD with you has been a blast!

#HeartsForVJ #IHeartIngress #TeamKoaBFsDForever

Midwest RES did a thing. It was very blue (also very fun).

I love my team… working on this op was a blast, not just because we made big blue triangles but because we did it with friends and we had fun.

#ilovethesepeople #whyiingress #somuchblue #stoopedisfamily

Originally shared by Victor Linares

Operation Smurfin 2: Electric Bugaloo!

Unlike some of my crazier ops, this one was conceived long ago, in a galaxy far, far away… During the spring of 2016, I hatched a plan to cover Chicago, Milwaukee and Indianapolis in layered fields. I was making contacts throughout the Midwest and had a sets of keys to areas in Northern Illinois and a little highway rest area just outside of Iowa City. So, with that I began asking for help from the Indy locals and Stinkiehippie helped to farm keys for that area. We met in St. Louis for Via Lux, transferred keys and were ready to set the plan in action that fall. Then it happened – Chicago got Via Noir and the plan was postponed.

As time went on, we still had the plans in the backpocket in case we ever needed a large field. More time passed, more localized Resistance fields were thrown, so much so that the Resistance won every cycle in AM01-Juliet07 for 2017!

With 2017 over, I decided it was time to go back to some of my old plans and checked with all locations to make sure keys were still in place. I pulled in some of my contacts from throughout the region and within 2 weeks we were able to gather nearly 100 agents to assist. The day of the operation was a nerve wracking one as green links blocking the lake had to be taken down and replaced with blue links. During lunch time, a few agents were able to gather along the lake and simultaneously drop the blockers and throw blue links to Big Sable Lighthouse in Michigan. With the anxiety of lake links over, we could now concentrate on the night’s activities.

The plan was to throw the fields for the first checkpoint of the new cycle at midnight Central Time. An hour or so before that, agents began to gather along the lanes in near freezing temperatures to drop all blocking links. As our throw time came closer and closer, the call went out to drop all links, but then there was a sudden stop as a new blocker came up and the nearest participating agent was 20 minutes away – which would have put us over checkpoint. Frantic calls were put out and luckily, unbeknownst to us, an agent was playing at the opposite end of the link and took it down, saving the day! The call to drop all links was put out and the first field went up successfully for over 8 million MU! Agents in Iowa and Indiana carefully went through their areas and put up all 11 layers with only a few minutes to spare to checkpoint. At checkpoint, our final tally was: 11 fields for 96,725,155 MUs! And, as a bonus, 2 newer agents that were included in the field throwing (FernMae and LilFern) were able to get their onyx Illuminator medals with 25 million and 17 million MU captured respectively!

Info:

11 Layers

96,725,155 Mind Units (Average of 8.79 Million per field)

109 Total Participating Agents

1 Accidental Video Call

And now it’s time to roll the credits:

PARTICIPATING AGENTS (In somewhat alphabetical order)

(redacted)

(redacted)

(redacted)

adrenalinejunky

aoideanthousa

biddlet

bkartheiser

bodiehi

Boooooop

bulletstopper13

cammyb63

CaptainMalsGal

CaptainObvious9

Ccdkp

chibri

ChuckStake

coolbluewaters

daddyoak

DavidOneOne

DBQMARAUDER

DeathsHead2

Delaney83

Dirtheart

DrTookie

Druesyllia

DrunkenBrewer

ebonyhoof

ElKrem

failedgeometry

FernMae

Finntrinsic

FirinMaLazers

fl00d

flowerhopper

geneodude

Genres

GoochDI

hapto

Harleyrider

HoorayJen

ig88hunter

Intemerata

Katablue

kenisazO

kramerus

Kresh42

KwanLi

LilFern

LilMissObvious

mamatazzi

Maniac15

MrsDirtheart

MsAuntSue

MsDirtheart

Nihilistproxy

nr0x

Pamagica

pewpewski

PhaseolusV

QuantumThumb

Redfox1701

RehdBlob

Revenge2U

roha257

sassydew

semanticdm

SerranoChic

ShadowPhox

ShadowsDragonX

Silverhawk1

simontauer

skategod

SleepyfishRPSGT

Sofakat

soyabeansouplvr

SpectralSage

Stinkiehippie

stoopedgamertag

stoopedtollers

superpanda85

Swiftsquire

SySperling

TastesLikeChkn

TheBraydon99

TheHamlinHooker

TheRatt1994

TheRattsWife

Theundeadsoul

timphawk

titanup

tripledeuce

Toxoplasmolly

UndeadSoulMate

Vanteo

Vicious1016

Victor73

VWThing

WinterrRose

wrenchmaster

Xim3

xChalupaBatmanx

xxKelikinZxx

xxxMATZOxxx

YamaOnan

yourarmyboy

zatodog

zatoitchi

Ziggymom

zipcode52

A special shoutout to my Intel crew & the cat herders!

#Sitrep #Ingress #IngressReport #BlueLove #MidwestResistanceDoesItBest #ACrayCrayProduction #

So… I guess there was an Ingress anomaly last weekend? 😀

I just remember spending the weekend with a whole city full of my friends… some from home that I go to every anomaly with… some that I only see at anomalies and maybe a few times in between… some that I spent many long nights talking to during shards and finally met in person in Ann Arbor… and some that I met for the first time this weekend or in the run-up to the weekend. Ann Arbor… it was great! I’ll be back, for the banner missions I didn’t get to this time and to see more of the city without a scanner in my face.

I can’t begin to thank everybody that I should, so I’m not gonna even try. There are a few special mentions who can’t escape, though… Marinda Darnell and Barry Faust… you were the best co-leads I could have asked for. Team India thanks you. Katie Ronar, I’d have no A2 banners without you (not to mention no hotel room keys for Thursday night!)!!

And to the guys that I spent waaaaay too much time in Hangouts/Discord/Zello with in the two weeks before the anomaly (you know who you are)… it was downright weird not talking to you all every night this week (though actually sleeping was kinda nice).

(Also, thanks to the photographers whose pix I borrowed… I forgot to take many…)

#ingresslife #blueteambestteam #whyiingress #teamindia #HEYWEWON #annarborwillbeblue #midwestdoesitbest #itbeginsandendsindexter

Has it only been two years? Has it already been two years???

My two-year Ingressversary snuck past while I wasn’t paying attention.

I look at my scanner today and I don’t see the badges and the AP and the MU and the levels… I see the people and the places and the events. I see the road trips to New Orleans, Orlando, St. Louis and Chicago for anomalies. The last-minute road-trip to Cincinnati for Disturbed. First Saturday road trip in the snow to Grand Rapids. Thanksgiving and Christmas spent with people I can’t believe I’ve known less than two years…

And mostly I see the people… not just Resistance and Enlightened… not just Smurfs and Frogs… but people who make my life better. People who’d still be part of my life, even if Ingress ended tomorrow.

Two years ago, I tried this game as a way to start walking more. I had no idea where it was going to lead.

#whyiingress   #ingressversary   #myingressfamily  

OP: Giftwrap

9/17/16

*This is the Sit-Rep for the South field of the combined Indiana operations. Jokingly called..

“Operation Windex”

It’s been awhile since IndyRES BAFfed Indy. But then Jarome Allen  was planning this op to our north and he said “Someone should do something with this lane north of Indy I’m going to open up.”

That sounded like a good idea, but I don’t op and surely somebody else would take it and run with it, right?

Right?

Then I looked at my calendar and realized that Jarome’s date for Sandra happened to be on Christylee Vickers  birthday. Ooooh… ChristyLee doesn’t have onyx Illuminator, does she? And last year… well, let me let Christylee tell you about last year…

Call it my Birthday but in the last year it has become more than just a day to mark the day I was born. It is also the day I almost died, and fought the hardest battle of my life. To live.

A year prior I was in the deepest darkest Depression of my Entire Life. And the day after my birthday, I self-admitted myself into the hospital, because I needed help. Or I would die. This is where my Ingress Family stepped in. Not only did I get a card, while I was inpatient. They would stay checking in on me, coming to my home to just sit with me, or answer the phone. They helped me and my family by being the support and safety net I needed to work on getting out of the darkness.

So we had a lane, a date, and a reason.. the motivation we needed to kick us into gear and actually Do This Thing! A quick conversation with Amos Vickers  ensued and Operation Giftwrap was born, ’cause an op is way more fun than a birthday party, right?

And here’s what happens when you take someone who’s never run a big op before (that would be me) and you plan an Indy cover… See, I didn’t know all the reasons to avoid certain areas… this big frog lives here, and those problem areas are there, and who in their right mind covers Indy at 5 o’clock in the afternoon on a Saturday anyway? So Jarome sketched out a triangle using part of our existing southern lane of Sandra, and I played with it some, and moved the southern point ’cause there was this tasty row of portals in Seymour, and next thing we knew… it looked like a plan. 19 layers, with an anchor reasonably close to Christylee and Amos and one close to the west anchor of Sandra. And yeah, there were a bunch of areas that people who Knew More About Indy Covers looked at and went “Really???” but for some reason they humored me…

Keys were procured. Whoa. So many keys. So many nerves. Suddenly it was op week and holy crap, I really have to do this thing, don’t I? But, ummmmm, I don’t op, people! Okay, I think this means I need an IO, ’cause I’m sooooo not running an Indy cover by myself. Note that I was still denying that I was running an op at all. Nope. Not gonna happen. I’m just herding cats. (Denial… not just a river in Egypt…) With the IO question answered, but knowing that [redacted] was very busy with work until op day, I settled in to finish wrangling the details. And there were a lot of details. Targets to mark. Zones to assign. People to position… the list goes on.

I could bore you with a lot of details here, but instead I’ll give you a few memorable moments from the day…

About 2 p.m., finally admitting to myself, after a week of denial, that yes, I am in fact about to run an Indy cover.

4 p.m., discovering we had an agent stuck in traffic 50 minutes from his target. Moments later, having a pair of agents volunteer to split up and one be on his way to cover the vacated target. Problem solved.

Shortly after 4:40, getting ready to spin up Giftwrap after Sandra had started, and hearing the words that BlackOliveLover was at Sandra’s anchor. My heart sank… but I couldn’t listen… or watch… and I had to drop out of the Zello channel for Sandra and focus on getting Giftwrap moving.

16:52 created a Control Field @ Welcome to Portland Mural +1147110 MUs

Eep! Everybody said we’d go 800k or 900k per layer. But we caught Muncie in addition to Indy. Guess that bumped it a little. Stopped to catch my breath and clear my throat before I could call the next throw.

5:03 The excitement I felt when I saw the first Sandra layer go up to our north. Still didn’t have time to listen in on their Zello, but was so glad they’d resolved their frog problem and gotten the op up!

5:20: A Frog Arrives in Crawfordsville… We were waiting out the Jarvis timer to drop the first set of fields and rethrow for badges when Katherine Getts – WinterrRose radioed that Strifu had arrived and was tearing everything down. “I’m sending JJ after him!” By this time the ENL giga field was up out west and intel had slowed to a crawl. My map wouldn’t refresh and I had no idea what was going on. Kat took charge like a rock star, threw small children at the “enemy,” rebuilt the portal, rethrew the base, and got the Fezzes and Roars their onyx Illuminators before we were shut down for good. Best Ammo Ever. We were confused, though… it was after checkpoint and we didn’t expect such a fight over just throwing for badges. Didn’t realize ’til shortly after that it was because our combined ops were in the way of an ENL gigafield and that was why he was so determined that Giftwrap had to come down and stay down! Watching both field teams shift into defense mode was awe-inspiring!

I love my team. I had no idea if I could pull this off. Would people come out for a rookie op-runner? Jarome kept telling me I could do it. Jay D  just kept pulling more people out of thin air like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat. Everybody allowed me my delusion that I wasn’t really running an Indy cover. And all these amazing people came out to sit around in cars on a Saturday afternoon. Most of them had one thing to do. One Jarvis to throw. One portal to kill. A few just got sent to sit and wait… just in case. Everybody was awesome and I love them all.

When can we do it again?

Stats:

Giftwrap (South):

Layers: 30 (16 on first throw, 14 on second throw)

MU per layer: 1.1m

Total MU thrown: 32.89m (18.143m in first throw, 14.748m in second)

Total MU to CP: 9.046m (8 layers)

Badges: 8 Onyx Illuminator

Sandra (North):

Number of Layers: 11

MU Per Layer: 1.00 million

MU to CP: 0 (bummer)

Total MU thrown: 11.0 million

Onyx Badges: 2

Sandra Sitrep: https://plus.google.com/+JaromeAllen/posts/c4ee2FKYgCw

Op Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNU2q1CZ5tw

Supreme Overlord (Ops Sandra and Giftwrap):

Jarome Allen 

Anchor Teams:

Christylee Vickers  (our birthday girl!) – Onyx

Amos Vickers  – Onyx

Katherine Getts – WinterrRose  – Onyx

Spazzer  – Onyx

Jay D 

Elle C 

Support:

[redacted]

[also redacted]

Dana Armstrong

Diana Ayers

Neil Ayres 

Chris Blackwell

Tina Blackwell

Elle C 

Roha 

Zac Coghill 

Mary Coghill 

Maggie Coyne 

Geoff Estes 

Barry Faust 

Peter Hanshew 

Cody Harbaugh 

Ryan Kennedy 

Kevan Knox 

Joe Krupa 

Brandy Neice 

Michael Norton 

Shadow Phox 

Laurie Rohrer  – Onyx

Michael Rohrer  – Onyx

Annie Schuster

Eric Shriner  – Onyx

Melissa Shriner  – Onyx

Jen Schmetzer 

Emily Steele

Bradley Stone – Sumo911 

If I’ve missed anyone, I’m so so sorry. I deeply appreciate everyone who helped, and the one hazard of trying to list people is the fear that a name will get lost in the shuffle. I truly hope that hasn’t happened here!

#whyiingress   #sitrep   #bigbluetriangles   #awesomesauce   #indianaresistance   #noflyzone   #IngressReport   #BAF   #RGNN  Resistance Global News Network #RGNN Ingress Linda Besh  Ethan Lepouttre 

First off, holy cow I’m tired (18 hours at the fire department today), so this may be a little rambly, but here’s my brief #whyiingress  moment before I go fall over and get some sleep.

I started this game in late January as a way to make walking more interesting and to get my highly unmotivated butt off the sofa and out of the house. I know that worked, because I can see my Trekker stats, and my Fitbit stats, and I know how much weight I’ve lost (almost 45 pounds to-date) and how much better I feel. but some things really bring that home more than others. Tonight was one of those ah-hah moments.

I had a 12-hour shift EMS shift at the department today (it’s a volunteer department, but in order to ensure that the ambulance gets out the door on a timely basis, the EMTs and drivers sign up for regular shifts where we’re on station instead of responding from home). It was actually a pretty quiet day… had a nap, breakfast, washed the ambulance, trained on the grass truck (playing with water! Woo!!), late lunch, another nap, rode around while another driver trained on the engine… an exciting day, right? 😀 Then we had our regular monthly fire training tonight, which was at the Anderson Fire Dept’s training tower. I griped that the Fitbit said I’d already met my step count target for the day so I shouldn’t have to do any more, but I didn’t really mean it, and off we went. And this is when I started to realize how much better shape I’m in since I started Ingressing.

See, last time I went to that tower… probably two years ago… it just about killed me just to climb to the top. Today? Made it to the fourth floor without even being out of breath, then up the ladder to the roof for the view from the top (Hey, the fire trucks look tiny way down there!). And while I’m tired now, it’s more from having been up since 5 a.m. than from the physical exertion.

So thanks, Ingress! I love my fire department and I love being on the fire department, but it’s all soooooo much better with less weight, lower blood pressure, better stamina and better flexibility. And all just because I started walking from one portal to the next.

So grab your scanners, agents. Let’s go walking! (Well, okay, I’m gonna sleep first, then we can go walking…)

#ingress