Urban Capture the Flag

Yesterday night was my first urban capture the flag.

For those of you not well acquainted with the game, here's a short summary.
Two teams, two territories that belong to you, in which you have your team flag located somewhere. Aim of the game is to sneak into enemy territory, capture the flag, and successfully bring it back into your homeland. If you get tagged by an enemy in enemy territory, then you have to go home and start over.

Since I didn't want to run as much, I only played defense. I did border patrol early on, caught a few people and had one guy run on top of a car trying to evade me. Later on I ventured close to my flag and did flag patrol. My friends (guys) wanted to do offense, and they ran into enemy territory with various amounts of success. We each have our stories.

The game was ended earlier than anticipated when the cops came and started threatening to issue fines for us. I guess a horde of 500+ people running around downtown Toronto, around shopping malls and parking lots, got the security upset. Heh. They charged a guy on a bike for crossing at a red, making an example out of him I suppose. One guy broke his kneecap. Other than that, most people enjoyed it. My side won 3-0. After the game was cut short, a lot of people stayed around playing Red Rover (don't want to explain that game, google it if you don't know :) We ended up walking around and having a drink at Marche's.

My friends generally thought it was ok, but too disorganized. The promoters probably didn't expect as many people, and they ran out of glowsticks in the beginning for one thing. The instructions could not be heard by half the people (there were just too many), a lot of people weren't as honest as they should have been (not following rules), and the legal issue wasn't thought out as well. But, most of us said we'd go again, I know I would...it's free, was fun, and you get to hang out with friends. Why not?

Plus, how often do you play tag with 500 other people?

EDIT: Total craziness! Apparently 1200 people showed up! !!! No wonder it was more chaotic than anticipated. They tripled the # they had last time. I definately don't blame them for the disorganization then. Insane! Glad I was a part of it.