Last night I got home from work to find some email in my Spam folder that caught my eye because it was from Adam at Team Strange. Now normally I just delete these emails but for some reason I actually took some time to look over who this one was from because it had an attachment.

When I opened the mail it was like Christmas all over again. They had sent out both the starting and finishing locations to all of the participants so that we could start making plans. They also stressed that we were to NOT let anyone not in the rally know the plans.

The reason for this was that it was going to be in a small town and rooms were limited. So limited in fact that where I chose to stay had a room available when I called shortly after 8:00 but didn't have when another rider called after 9:00. This didn't surprise me at all since, while I was making my reservations, the phone was ringing off the hook in the background. My room was reserved before and after the rally and I planned to just wing it between the post rally stay and the IBA Meet.

The next day, about 24hrs after getting the email from Adam, someone posted a question about sharing rooms. That was all it took for one rider to make the first reading comprehension error and spill the beans over where the rally was starting and ending. All I can say is that I'm glad it wasn't me. Not only does poor Wizard have to live with his slip up for the next seven months, but he will undoubtedly have to put up with some friendly ribbings from the rally masters.

The funny thing is that I almost made exactly the same mistake in the same forum. Someone had posted a question which I had already asked the rallymasters and received an email response on. I had planned on just cutting and pasting the response I had received onto the board and calling it a day. I cut, pasted, and chopped out any reference to the top secret location. Normally this is a quick process but this time it had to take me 15 minutes to complete the task. I read, re-read, re-re-read, well you get the picture. I was going to make sure that I didn't miss anything that might give away the location.

After all that I decided to delete what I had pasted and just type in a summary response and use that as my post. I was convinced that once I hit the "Respond!" button, some twist of fate, electrons, and mystical Internet powers, my post would somehow resort to the original email which would reveal the locations. There was NO WAY I was going to draw the added attention to myself so I opted to play it safe.

So there you have it Wizard. It could have happened to any of us in the rally. I'm just glad it was you and not me blazing that trail.