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OP: Giftwrap

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 

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No Responses to “OP: Giftwrap”

  1. September 19th, 2016 at 1:57 pm

    D'Artagnan says:

    So bad ass

  2. September 19th, 2016 at 3:24 pm

    Maggie Coyne says:

    I knew you could do it!!!! Great work Debbie Gates on the op and on the sitrep!!!!

  3. September 19th, 2016 at 3:31 pm

    D'Artagnan says:

    Also, got to have a nice date with my match on reswue. She was totally DTF. #reswueisfordating

  4. September 19th, 2016 at 3:38 pm

    Clayton P Blackolivelover says:

    😘💚

  5. September 19th, 2016 at 3:53 pm

    James Papalia says:

    Windex … looking glass … i get it 😘

    Me to ENL once both fields go up: “that’s not how you do a diamond! I thought they learned!”

  6. September 19th, 2016 at 4:05 pm

    Nicholas Dalfonso says:

    Chasing RES around central Indiana, Priceless.

  7. September 19th, 2016 at 4:07 pm

    Maggie Coyne says:

    Too bad you flipped Nicholas Dalfonso​ or you could have been on the winning side of that battle on Saturday.

  8. September 19th, 2016 at 4:09 pm

    Brian Boyer says:

    Awesome🖒

  9. September 19th, 2016 at 4:24 pm

    Debbie Gates (stoopedtollers) says:

    Maggie Coyne Thanks! 🙂 And James Papalia, you just hush, LilBadBarbarian… I was crazy enough to tackle an Indy cover at 5 o’clock on a Saturday for my first op… I wasn’t going to tack on the particular level of crazy it would have taken to make it a real diamond and deal with that stretch of Ohio, ’cause, well, you know that hashtag…

  10. September 19th, 2016 at 4:32 pm

    Kat Getts - WinterrRose says:

    I had an awesome time out there. Love my team. Couldn’t have asked to work with better people.

  11. September 19th, 2016 at 4:38 pm

    Kat Getts - WinterrRose says:

    I also want to add thank you Debbie Gates​ and Jarome Allen​ for all your hard work. You guys rocked it. The teams that switched into defense mode and flew into action, thank you. #noflyzone