Wednesday, April 07, 2010

April 2010 Activity -- Spy Mission


Spy in the City Mission
The Spy Museum
Washington, DC
Saturday, April 17th
9:00 - 10:30pm
Cost: $14/person

How could your four Mata Hari wannabes Dilettantes not want to participate in an activity described thusly:

Time is ticking… terrorist operation is unfolding in DC…sleeper agents are ready to activate a device that will bring the city to its knees. Can you find the hidden password to deactivate it before the terrorists launch their attack? In the ultimate intelligence game, you will piece together clues and decipher messages that reveal a world of ruthless terrorists and deadly choices. As a Special Security Division (SSD) agent armed with a Geo-COBRA, the latest high tech device issued to counterintelligence field agents, you prowl the streets of DC uncovering secret messages, tracing hidden signals, scanning for fingerprints, and breaking codes. Can you foil the plot? Only your wits and time will tell…

Being good spies, the Dilettantes did their best to blend in...and by that, I mean that Dilettante Kathleen used her pink ear buds and Dilettante Amanda wore a bright red beret.

Our first order of business was to choose spy names. Nicole went with Pilar, Amanda went with Natasha, Amy went with "The Umbrella Maker" and Kathleen went with Brutalism. We received our briefing on how to use our COBRA devices and off we went into the gorgeously sunny DC day, receiving audio and video messages from our contact and also from special agent "catbird." (Our GPS devices also issued each of us a "special code name" when we first logged in. We found out later that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US was "Tango 009". Not only is that completely not secure and probably what caused us to have an unsuccessful spy mission...it also kinda makes me regret the "Tango 009' tattoo I got.)

The mission was a lot of fun. With the exception of Nicole's GPS device not working after the first five minutes of the activity. That required a call back to HQ to try and get things sorted out, but it was not to be. (Though they did refund her money at the end.) All in all, a fun way to spend an hour an a half on a beautiful sunny day in the city.

Lunch at Teaism followed (after a failed attempt to go to Gordon Biersch -- shocking that so few other people want beer before 11:00am).

2 comments:

John said...

I was just about to ask what happened on the activity, but then I looked at the planned date. We all know what happened that weekend....

Brutalism said...

Yup. Blizzard o' the century. Hopefully will be re-scheduled.