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Summary: conquered a gym for the first time during the (also inaugural) walk to That @#$%ing Landmark! Visited a stripmall area I hadn't yet for great pokestop justice; also happened to get my first Research Breakthrough which netted me my first legendary, Raikou.
Today's Pokemon Walk was pretty pleasant! I managed to scamper outside juuuuust before sundown, which just barely let me do the full circuit I planned out days ago. The one shitty section (micro shoulder, no sidewalk, large plants grown most of the way to the curb as barrier) turned out better than I'd feared! But that made me adventurous and I roamed a bit to another Pokestop. While it turned out fine because that road gets scarcely any use, it was turbo bad to walk: no shoulder, no sidewalk, frightening combo of hidden potholes/ditches covered in unknown depth of leaf drifts & mud– forget cars, I was worried about breaking an ankle.
After I'd hit the bad stop and the second gym (hello Meltan, thanks for the Pokedex) I shuffled back to the first and considered it. I'd only attacked a gym once before and it had proven to be a confusing experience where brightly-colored animations played and then I was informed I'd lost. But this one only had three defender pokemon, and on my first pass I'd tried fighting them and... won...? So I gave it another go.
Lessons learned: Slaking looks scary but barely tickles; Zigzagoon doesn't even look scary; Whiscash was slowing me down but then I found the "swap out pokemon" button and Treecko had fun dunking on the poor carp.
It's been hours now and my Mantine (I have a Mantine?!) is still sitting lonely yet uncontested in the gym. Good times.
After that I resumed my path! I had the opportunity to discover that PGO's insistence on there being a path down near That @#$%ing Landmark was, for once, correct: apparently they asphaulted a little strip down into the trees. I couldn't see very far on account of dark woods at night but presumably it runs along the creek for... a ways. I couldn't see where it reconnects to anything on the map, it went too far into the distance. But that will be a fun adventure on another day! >:)
Speaking of That @#$%ing Landmark: I was (fortunately, thank Arceus) correct that I can spin it from the far side of the road. I considered crossing since the sidewalk switches sides right there & there's another 'stop further up, but four minutes of waiting for a break in the traffic offered me no opportunities. Probably to be expected from 40-50mph-with-shit-visibility. Let me repurpose the MMORPG DPS chant: "youdo 0 damage catch 0 pokemon while dead." So I'm writing off the landmark further up but EYYY I can get That @#$%ing Landmark pretty easily! Nice.
I wanted to do a full loop to get home because that way I had good sidewalk but it happened to path me along the creek (ish– I was twenty feet up and away, but close enough to hear the running water) and surprise surprise, I caught heretofore unseen water pokemon doing so– Poliwag. I am excited by the prospect of finding out if that really does count as water biome because hooooo am I hard up for water-biome specialties. Past that there's not much to say about the rest of the walk beyond "I'm glad I made it back UP all that damn hill" and also "why the hell are all the things I lack apparently deep inside the other neighboring neighborhood, which I can't get over to on short notice to catch, bawww I wanted that Nidoran-F and Arcanite." I did injure myself trying to... pull my pants higher up my waist... but honestly, if that's the worst that happens to me I'll take it.
And then I got home and deleted all my normal Potions and spent an hour combing through my pokemon hoard assessing & transferring suckier duplicates. I'm back to 200/300 now which is... urf. I still want some item-inventory upgrades but maybe I'll lean towards hoard expansions. Goodness knows I could just trash more of those potions I have no use for if I need emergency pokeball space.
Mid-day shopping: so many pokestops
Today's walk: 6.6km, 1hr 45min
Weather conditions: clear, as dry as Mud Season gets, hint of breeze, definitely below freezing
Caught: Surskit, Treecko, Yanma, Ledian, Poliwag
Hatched: Smoochum, Anorith
Weekly Research: Raikou
Caught while sitting here at my desk typing this up: Dunsparce
This post took an unnecessarily long time to write up because the REAL highlight of the day was slamming into the pokemon/item limits for the first time. Why didn't I do something about my 19 cyndaquil before this... I still have 10 eevee and I haven't touched the mareep yet....Today's walk: 6.6km, 1hr 45min
Weather conditions: clear, as dry as Mud Season gets, hint of breeze, definitely below freezing
Caught: Surskit, Treecko, Yanma, Ledian, Poliwag
Hatched: Smoochum, Anorith
Weekly Research: Raikou
Caught while sitting here at my desk typing this up: Dunsparce
Today's Pokemon Walk was pretty pleasant! I managed to scamper outside juuuuust before sundown, which just barely let me do the full circuit I planned out days ago. The one shitty section (micro shoulder, no sidewalk, large plants grown most of the way to the curb as barrier) turned out better than I'd feared! But that made me adventurous and I roamed a bit to another Pokestop. While it turned out fine because that road gets scarcely any use, it was turbo bad to walk: no shoulder, no sidewalk, frightening combo of hidden potholes/ditches covered in unknown depth of leaf drifts & mud– forget cars, I was worried about breaking an ankle.
After I'd hit the bad stop and the second gym (hello Meltan, thanks for the Pokedex) I shuffled back to the first and considered it. I'd only attacked a gym once before and it had proven to be a confusing experience where brightly-colored animations played and then I was informed I'd lost. But this one only had three defender pokemon, and on my first pass I'd tried fighting them and... won...? So I gave it another go.
Lessons learned: Slaking looks scary but barely tickles; Zigzagoon doesn't even look scary; Whiscash was slowing me down but then I found the "swap out pokemon" button and Treecko had fun dunking on the poor carp.
It's been hours now and my Mantine (I have a Mantine?!) is still sitting lonely yet uncontested in the gym. Good times.
After that I resumed my path! I had the opportunity to discover that PGO's insistence on there being a path down near That @#$%ing Landmark was, for once, correct: apparently they asphaulted a little strip down into the trees. I couldn't see very far on account of dark woods at night but presumably it runs along the creek for... a ways. I couldn't see where it reconnects to anything on the map, it went too far into the distance. But that will be a fun adventure on another day! >:)
Speaking of That @#$%ing Landmark: I was (fortunately, thank Arceus) correct that I can spin it from the far side of the road. I considered crossing since the sidewalk switches sides right there & there's another 'stop further up, but four minutes of waiting for a break in the traffic offered me no opportunities. Probably to be expected from 40-50mph-with-shit-visibility. Let me repurpose the MMORPG DPS chant: "you
I wanted to do a full loop to get home because that way I had good sidewalk but it happened to path me along the creek (ish– I was twenty feet up and away, but close enough to hear the running water) and surprise surprise, I caught heretofore unseen water pokemon doing so– Poliwag. I am excited by the prospect of finding out if that really does count as water biome because hooooo am I hard up for water-biome specialties. Past that there's not much to say about the rest of the walk beyond "I'm glad I made it back UP all that damn hill" and also "why the hell are all the things I lack apparently deep inside the other neighboring neighborhood, which I can't get over to on short notice to catch, bawww I wanted that Nidoran-F and Arcanite." I did injure myself trying to... pull my pants higher up my waist... but honestly, if that's the worst that happens to me I'll take it.
And then I got home and deleted all my normal Potions and spent an hour combing through my pokemon hoard assessing & transferring suckier duplicates. I'm back to 200/300 now which is... urf. I still want some item-inventory upgrades but maybe I'll lean towards hoard expansions. Goodness knows I could just trash more of those potions I have no use for if I need emergency pokeball space.
