The fog was thick this morning. I looked out across the bay on my way to the T, blinking the rain out of my eyes, and streaming water behind me as I lashed my bike to the nearest post and went back up into the office. I love rain.

And then the random phone calls started.

Well, not so random. Apparently one of the questions in the Olin scavenger hunt this year was "Find Mel (100 points)*." The probable backstory to this: at Olin I acquired a reputation for being everywhere at once and simultaneously impossible to track down. After two years of playing answering machine, my suitemates proposed posting a sign by the door:

  1. No, Mel's not here.
  2. No, we don't know where she is.
  3. We also have no idea when she will be back.
  4. Yeah, we already tried calling her.
  5. We recommend you leave a message on the whiteboard.

I actually think it's easier to find me these days; I actually answer my phone and have a home and office that I use. In any case, over a year after my graduation, this was apparently still an interesting enough challenge. I'll also note that this was totally not my idea and I'd been given about 24 hours advance notice by Greg and Ellen (who, as far as I can tell, are responsible for the question in question).

The night I'd heard about it (read: yesterday), I sent Olin's OLPC mailing list a "by the way, there's a MassXO meeting Saturday morning" note by way of a subtle hint of where I might be findable for small slivers of the day. While criss-crossing Boston (I did not alter my usual habits or travel patterns at all for the event) I got 2 emails, 3 voicemails, caught 4 phone calls, missed and tried to return 8 more phone calls, and was ultimately found by 2 teams (out of... I have no idea. More than 2.)

I wonder how the rest of the scavhunt went, and who won, and how confused the freshmen on the 2nd team to find me were. ("Why are we hunting down this random person? Who the heck is Mel?")

Just for fun, here's a list of T stops you could have found me at throughout the day. This only counts stops I got on or off at or stops I locked my bike near, meaning I was actually in the immediate vicinity of the T stop doing something for a reasonably substantial chunk of time. All things considered, this was actually a pretty uneventful day without a bloody lot of travel.

  1. 8am: Maverick
  2. 9:30am: Kendall
  3. 10:30am: Central
  4. 11am: Kendall
  5. 12:40pm: Central
  6. 1:15pm: Symphony
  7. 2pm: Heath
  8. 3:45pm: Symphony
  9. 4:10pm: Kendall
  10. 6:30pm: Maverick