Got into a pickle the other day.
We ended up with a dead battery, and were stranded. It wasn’t good at all. Being a bit out in the boonies made summoning help difficult at best and overly expensive at worst.
Then, all of sudden, an idea hit me, from nowhere.
I fired up Google+ and sent out a message to the local Ingress chat group. Within 10 minutes, I got a message back from a local EMT who had just gotten off work. He got on the horn with another coworker and Ingress player who had also just finished a 24-hr shift. He drove all the way out and helped jump our car. In the time we took to get the battery up to par, we talked, and discovered a common interest in books, travel and technology as a whole.
He wasn’t just a guy who was in my faction and hacking the same portals that I did; he was a family guy who went out of his way to help what had been hitherto a name on a screen… after a shift of work.
Ingress, fun as it is, can be more than just a geek’s paradise. I am seeing plenty of new friendships formed and older one’s fostered. Local dinners, group outings and lunch get-togethers are not unheard of, as are the knowing smiles when you find a new acquaintance in the same area, friend or foe, who is destroying your portals as you are putting them up. You feel it every Sunday, when the wife (an Ingress vet herself) and I make our weekly post-service hack runs on our way home.
Deep down, Ingress is about bonds. It was cool to make some new ones. Big ups to Russell and Mike!!!
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