Most excellent!
Most excellent!
Originally shared by Alex Richards
It all started as a race to platinum explorer. At the time, there were a few of us in the Northeast contingent who wanted to explore all the things. The goal was ten thousand, which at the time seemed difficult to foresee.
It’s not a secret to those in the DC area that I,@SgnfyngMnky, play with my then boyfriend, now husband,@CloubreakerRD(Cloud). We are affectionately known to the DMV ENL as MnkyCloud. It’s really his desire to continue playing ingress and start traveling that kept me motivated. It’s significantly more fun to play with someone else if for no other reason to be known as a power couple in the area.
So we started small with explorer visits to Gettysburg, and Philadelphia, PA. The world was younger and we were not efficient at all with visiting a large number of portals. Cloud and I would vie for the same unique capture, AP from destruction, links thrown, etc. After some initial travel, we decided to split the badges as we knew this contest was not sustainable and I was delegated Liberator and Pioneer. Keep in mind the original goal was just to simply hack portals to get to 10k unique visits.
After a few trips around the DMV, Boston, and NYC, we were able to get platinum explorer in July 2014. Soon after platinum pioneer was procured in Texas in August. We took a break after those trips because 10k visits and 5k unique captures were enough. Plus having a few platinums under my belt was enough for me, and both Cloud and I just like playing the game, especially the social aspect. Also, life.
One day, Cloud comes home and, in all seriousness, says “So you’re going to get onyx pioneer. Get on board.” At this point in time I was only around 5500 upcs. It was already difficult to think about the last 16k of unique visits that we still hadn’t decided if we wanted. Now we are going to go for pioneer. That’s a tall order but I replied, “I’m in.” . We talked about it and as he laid out his plan I got excited and was ready to do whatever needed to be done.
We both came up with plans for which cities to visit and which states/places would be easily accessible by plane or by car. We also needed to take into account life, so we had to navigate how to maximize our upv/upc visit in a small amount of time. Our record is somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 upc in a weekend 36 hour trip.
It’s crazy to think about all the farming and glyphing that’s been done, and the map studying that Cloud has done such that when wheels hit the ground we knew which park and downtown cluster was easiest to get to and capture. Things got easier when Niantic released the intel mission map that shows you portal clusters. Such a time saver.
So eleven months later and with over half the country visited, we are now at the end of June 2015. Onyx explorer happened unexpectedly in the same city where we unkowningly started this explorer endeavour, Philadelphia. I’m less than 2k away from onyx pioneer and I can see the finish line. There’s still only one known onyx pioneer in the world, Amhehu, in Germany (https://plus.google.com/+SilvioTristramAmhehu/posts/MWLeDXUKZAj). So as it stands I’m going to be the first onyx pioneer in the USA.
I’m now married to the love of my life, have a masters degree and a new job—told you life happened—and we’ve got one trip left, Los Angeles. I’m determined to minimize the number of upcs needed before we head out west so that we can enjoy breweries, wineries, and general LA shenanigans.
So may I present my onyx badge, obtained at the Space Shuttle Endeavour portal. It even has greater meaning because of my love of the Space Program ( NASA ) and I can now say that I’ve seen all four Space Shuttles around the country (the other three being Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour).
I am eternally grateful for all the agents who have helped donate gear, the agents who cheered us on, and to all the RES agents who provided the resonator destruction so that I could capture the portals. Ingress is such a phenomenal game that has formed new friendships, and gave me the reason/motivation to consider traveling to some wonderful places in the US.
Special thanks to everyone in DC: current players, retired players, and all the original players who took me under their wing to show me how to play the game like only an OG player can.
Special thanks to the Explorer folks who gave myself and Cloud the idea even consider starting the unique portal quest.
Special thanks to the seers around the country who had portal approvals in the following tweny-seven states to help me get to onyx pioneer:
Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
And finally a special salute to Joubert X. Glover (@CloudbreakerRD) for all the background work he did in helping find the portals, drive around to all the cities and obscure locales that had the portals I needed that weren’t green, were blue, had just decayed, etc. I love you so much and thanks for telling me that I was going to get onyx pioneer. We did it!
NIA Ops Niantic Project Brandon Badger Joe Philley
#Ingress #OnyxPioneer #BlackPioneer #BlackGayAmericanPioneer #Trifecta #ENLorGTFO #ShowMeYourScanner
Originally shared by Alex Richards
It all started as a race to platinum explorer. At the time, there were a few of us in the Northeast contingent who wanted to explore all the things. The goal was ten thousand, which at the time seemed difficult to foresee.
It’s not a secret to those in the DC area that I,@SgnfyngMnky, play with my then boyfriend, now husband,@CloubreakerRD(Cloud). We are affectionately known to the DMV ENL as MnkyCloud. It’s really his desire to continue playing ingress and start traveling that kept me motivated. It’s significantly more fun to play with someone else if for no other reason to be known as a power couple in the area.
So we started small with explorer visits to Gettysburg, and Philadelphia, PA. The world was younger and we were not efficient at all with visiting a large number of portals. Cloud and I would vie for the same unique capture, AP from destruction, links thrown, etc. After some initial travel, we decided to split the badges as we knew this contest was not sustainable and I was delegated Liberator and Pioneer. Keep in mind the original goal was just to simply hack portals to get to 10k unique visits.
After a few trips around the DMV, Boston, and NYC, we were able to get platinum explorer in July 2014. Soon after platinum pioneer was procured in Texas in August. We took a break after those trips because 10k visits and 5k unique captures were enough. Plus having a few platinums under my belt was enough for me, and both Cloud and I just like playing the game, especially the social aspect. Also, life.
One day, Cloud comes home and, in all seriousness, says “So you’re going to get onyx pioneer. Get on board.” At this point in time I was only around 5500 upcs. It was already difficult to think about the last 16k of unique visits that we still hadn’t decided if we wanted. Now we are going to go for pioneer. That’s a tall order but I replied, “I’m in.” . We talked about it and as he laid out his plan I got excited and was ready to do whatever needed to be done.
We both came up with plans for which cities to visit and which states/places would be easily accessible by plane or by car. We also needed to take into account life, so we had to navigate how to maximize our upv/upc visit in a small amount of time. Our record is somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 upc in a weekend 36 hour trip.
It’s crazy to think about all the farming and glyphing that’s been done, and the map studying that Cloud has done such that when wheels hit the ground we knew which park and downtown cluster was easiest to get to and capture. Things got easier when Niantic released the intel mission map that shows you portal clusters. Such a time saver.
So eleven months later and with over half the country visited, we are now at the end of June 2015. Onyx explorer happened unexpectedly in the same city where we unkowningly started this explorer endeavour, Philadelphia. I’m less than 2k away from onyx pioneer and I can see the finish line. There’s still only one known onyx pioneer in the world, Amhehu, in Germany (https://plus.google.com/+SilvioTristramAmhehu/posts/MWLeDXUKZAj). So as it stands I’m going to be the first onyx pioneer in the USA.
I’m now married to the love of my life, have a masters degree and a new job—told you life happened—and we’ve got one trip left, Los Angeles. I’m determined to minimize the number of upcs needed before we head out west so that we can enjoy breweries, wineries, and general LA shenanigans.
So may I present my onyx badge, obtained at the Space Shuttle Endeavour portal. It even has greater meaning because of my love of the Space Program ( NASA ) and I can now say that I’ve seen all four Space Shuttles around the country (the other three being Atlantis, Discovery, and Endeavour).
I am eternally grateful for all the agents who have helped donate gear, the agents who cheered us on, and to all the RES agents who provided the resonator destruction so that I could capture the portals. Ingress is such a phenomenal game that has formed new friendships, and gave me the reason/motivation to consider traveling to some wonderful places in the US.
Special thanks to everyone in DC: current players, retired players, and all the original players who took me under their wing to show me how to play the game like only an OG player can.
Special thanks to the Explorer folks who gave myself and Cloud the idea even consider starting the unique portal quest.
Special thanks to the seers around the country who had portal approvals in the following tweny-seven states to help me get to onyx pioneer:
Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming.
And finally a special salute to Joubert X. Glover (@CloudbreakerRD) for all the background work he did in helping find the portals, drive around to all the cities and obscure locales that had the portals I needed that weren’t green, were blue, had just decayed, etc. I love you so much and thanks for telling me that I was going to get onyx pioneer. We did it!
NIA Ops Niantic Project Brandon Badger Joe Philley
#Ingress #OnyxPioneer #BlackPioneer #BlackGayAmericanPioneer #Trifecta #ENLorGTFO #ShowMeYourScanner
That's an amazing journey Alex Richards well done, from M42 (Resistance Agent from Australia)
ReplyDeleteThat is really freakin' awesome. I doff my smurf's cap to you Alex Richards on that accomplishment!
ReplyDeleteExcellent!
ReplyDeleteWow! 🐼
ReplyDelete