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The Scavenger Hunt

By Mike Beris - 2008-09-15

The scene: Philadelphia, PA

Our task: navigate Center City, finding clues Daniel had placed for us.

Daniel had spent several nights in the city, planning an elaborate scavenger hunt for us. But what made this a "training activity" and not just a high-school youth group game, was that we were all given focus points that were more important than the hunt itself. Dan W, who loves exploring and meeting new people, was tasked to hold back, to be our anchor. Chris M was to be the initiator of conversations with strangers, to use his analytical skills, and to be the scout in clue-finding. Chris T was to keep us all on task and focused without being overbearing. My task was to purposefully get to know Dan W. and Chris M. better, which was hard to do, since Chris was often 10 feet in front of us, doing exactly what his job was.

Oh, also, we weren’t given any food, money, or cell phones.

Being clever kids, we started off by heading over to Whole Foods, who have a veritable buffet of free samples on weekends. After filling up on cheese, watermelon, broccoli salad, pound cake, and a few other organic delicacies, we headed off to find our first clue in the courtyard of City Hall.

After 45 minutes of searching, I was feeling a little discouraged. Actually, I was pretty mad. Was this what the entire day was going to be like? Daniel said he had around 25 clues to hide; at this rate, we’d be there all weekend! Chris M finally found the first clue, and we were able to gauge the language in Daniel’s hints to help us determine how literal we should be reading them.

The next several hours took us up to the art museum, the Franklin Institute, the Free Library, Logan Circle, Love Park, and everywhere in between. Once we got the hang of deciphering the hints, we were able to pound out the next few pretty quickly.

We called it quits at about 5:00 and debriefed outside Subway, having our first real meal of the day.

We each discussed our primary tasks and what it was like to try to work on them individually, without the other guys knowing what they were. On the way back to the car, we had a beef session where we talked about possible personality clashes and other potential intra-team problems. It was kind of awkward to have to be so frank with each other, but good to start getting everything out on the table now. The success of the trip requires us to communicate honestly and tactfully with each other, so today was a good practice run.

One clue was hidden smack dab in the middle of the Logan Circle fountain. Chris had ventured in to find it, but was a bit confused, so we all used that as an excuse to spend the next half hour playing with the little kids and hobos in the water.