Last Saturday, I participated in a social media scavenger hunt with my friend Chico (http://twitter.com/chicofc). We had to take pictures, post updates to Twitter and Facebook, and use Foursquare to share our exact location. Chico and I really got into it. The night before the event, I tried to explain it to a friend from college who thought I was possibly the biggest geek in the Midwest. “You’re that excited over Fiji water and an iPad?” Of course!

Preparation

Before the event, we split up the tasks: I would do the social media and Chico would navigate. I bought a Clear mobile hotspot so I could use 4G (faster internet) on my phone while we were running around. I tried to explain my need for more technology to another friend, and she laughed and laughed and laughed at me. Apparently, I’m not only a nerd with a tea company, I also have something called a mobile hotspot and that sounds dirty.

The Event

It did not start as planned.

• Failure One: I picked the wrong water taxi. Are water taxis so popular as to need two of them? The answer is not only yes, but there are multiple lines for each water taxi.
• Failure Two: Chico looked around for the right water taxi while I searched on my phone for a map. I found the map, and Chico found the dock. Unfortunately, that dock was closed.
• Failure Three: At this point, we decided to run straight to Hotel 71, which we thought was owned by the Doubletree and the answer to a clue about a Phoenix. We were wrong, that’s the Wit hotel.
• Failure Four: After we left Hotel 71, we realized that it was actually a stop and we had blown right past it.

Now, we were fired up. We sprinted over to the Wit hotel, made it to the Phoenix Lounge, and took a picture. We’re pretending to be phoenixes in the picture:

Right around the corner was the Hard Rock Hotel. We ran there, quickly checked in and got our points at the guitar.

Hopped on a bus going north on Michigan, and during the rest I filled in the gaps by uploading our exploits. At the Hancock building, like any good tourist, we took a picture of us with a giant blue cocktail.

Ran from there all the way to the W hotel and the Whiskey Sky lounge where we danced.

Then ran to Navy Pier for the Bubba Gump shrimp stop where we learned about a drink with Veev vodka and sang happy birthday to a girl named Rachel.

Then, water taxi debacle number two. Shoreline, the correct water taxi, has about 4 docks in and around Navy Pier. We went to the three wrong ones first. Made it, and rode it to Union Station, chatting up the tourists. This guy from New Zealand laughed and said we were huge nerds, but his son took a great picture of us with the Opera House.

The water taxi was a nice break, and I took the chance to go a-twittering. Then, ran to Ogilvy station and Berry Chill. Ran back to Hotel 71 to pretend to be Bruce Wayne from The Dark Knight and finished it off with yoga just west of the Merchandise Mart.

I might have missed some things. Maybe on purpose, because we plan on defending our title.

I sent a quick text message about winning to one of my friends, and the response: “So what are you going to do now… update your blog with your iPad on the train?”

Yup.