Anyone playing Google's new game Ingress?

Yes, this is indeed a bike-related post.

If ever there was a game that was made for playing while riding your bicycle this is it.   While this game is a MMORPG online -it also takes place OUTSIDE.  You can't just sit on your couch and play this game all day (at least not in the early levels where your "range" is very short)  you have to actually go out and wander around the real meat-space world with your GPS on and actually move to where stuff is happening in the game and on the map.  

You could walk, but stuff is too far apart to really do that the way the game is set up unless you are downtown or have all day to play.  On a bicycle you can cover great distances and find the "portals" and hack them and set resonators on them and do all sorts of geeky gamery interactions with them in cyberspace that just happens to be overlaid onto meat-space. You also pick up your power/mana points (they call it XM in the game) just by moving around and collecting it randomly.  Again, riding your bike covers more area/distance faster than walking, just take a few spins around the block, ride a mile or so and your XM is all recharged and ready for the next battle with an enemy portal.   Usually just riding from one portal to the next is enough to recharge.   

So if you see folks riding around town and stopping all the time to yank out and peer at their phones this is probably what they are doing.  If you are playing the game too and are on the #Resistance side you might run into me in the Logan Square/Avondale area.

The game is still in beta-testing but there are a ton of folks playing it right now in this area. It's hard to get an invite code but if you can swing one it's worth it. 

Have fun and be careful out there.