Well, we didn't get smoked as bad as they did in San Diego, but we lost Salt Lake City 699-558, mostly on portal control; it looks like we split the shards and were even in links & fields. Our team got changed from a cluster team to a flex team two days before the anomaly, which was a bad move - in addition to myself, two of my teammates were heavy and slow, plus one of our guys had been on GORUCK ops Friday night and his feet were a mass of blisters. Combine this with poor intel and (possibly) worse dispatch, and it's a wonder we did even that well. We seemed to be consistently outnumbered by the frogs, which made holding and taking portals difficult, and their intel advantage meant we were always having to react to them. Didn't help that our team had no clearly assigned roles, so everyone did what they thought best, and that ended about as well as it usually does against people who know what they're doing. Now that I know that, I'm more inclined to regard my team chief, MasterTony, kindly; he got bogged down trying to comprehend the weird pronouncements coming down from On High. For my part, I was completely shot out by 1800 - I had not one burster or ultrastrike left, just three ADAs and three Jarvises; my stock of resonators was likewise depleted, though I had a few dozen of each L4-L8 reso.

I'd hoped to make level 12 out of this anomaly, but that was foolish. Unlike Baltimore, the play area was much smaller, and what with driving in Friday and the exertions of Saturday, I didn't feel much like wandering around Salt Lake City more than I already had. I did take some time on the way home Sunday to wander off I-15 into a few small towns that looked like they might have portals, but again, by the time I got to St. George, I was tired and just wanted to eat my burger and cheese curds and go home without any further drive-by hacking. Besides, it was 110 degrees out. Anyhow, with all that hacking, I'm now only 211 short of going gold in Explorer and 244 in Pioneer, but I'll probably get Explorer first since I only have to hack, not capture. Of course, that means I'll have to actually devote a little more time to Ingress than I have been lately.