What Do 30 Somethings Do At Easter?
What happens when you hit that in-between age when you’re technically too old to join an Easter Egg hunt and don’t have children yet to use as a guise for running around like a lune chasing hidden chocolate treats?
You follow Tony Hawk of course! For those who aren't in the know - he's only the most famous skateboarder in the worls who does an Easter treasure hunt each year!
I’m a bit of a tweeting novice to be fair, and my fiance, Alex rolls his eyes every time I ask “what’s a Follow Friday?” and “How do I do that hash key thing?” So as a tweeting novice, I needed some cool people to follow and after we heard about the THTH phenomenon last year, we decided Mr. Hawk would be a cool person to follow…so here’s our messy THTH story!
It was Easter weekend, so naturally, Saturday night started with a few tipples in the local with friends and a slightly hazy walk home…after all we didn’t have to get up on Sunday – or so we thought.
Sunday morning we woke up with the blissful 'lie-in' feeling. We’re big Iphone fans so most mornings start with checking the facebook/twitter/emails/breaking news stories etc. “rock’n’roll” eh!... I digress.
Anyway, we had somewhat forgotten about the Tony Hawk Twitter Hunt the night before, so we woke up to Brisbane and Sydney morning tweets – The Hunt had begun!
The UK clue had been posted 30 minutes ago. ”A yellow envelope under an Enigma, near a Listening Post contains directions to the prize”. Hmmm….So, we thought that Mr. Hawk would want to hide the prize somewhere accessible and free in London so that’s where our thought process began. As a bit of a film buff, the “Enigma” conjured up images of Kate Winslet, Bletchley Park and the WW2 code breaking machines. But Bletchley Park is in Milton Keynes, not London - so we ruled that out. The tricky bit was “the listening post”.
Still curled up in the warmth and comfort of the duvet, we googled “listening post” to find the ‘modern portrait of online communication’ exhibit titled “the listening post” at the Science Museum. It then dawned on me that this was a likely place to also find an Enigma machine, but what about the Imperial War Museum, it could be there too? I was convinced that the Science Museum was our best shot.
So that was that – well done, we had solved the clue and we could now go back to sleep, read the papers, have a cooked breakfast and generally chill out and meet our friends at 11am for our Easter walk with the dogs… 10 minutes passed and the discussion of “what if we’re actually right?” but “it’ll take us 2hrs to get into London as there’s a dreaded Bus replacement service on due to rail works”…no we’ll just stay in bed.
Oh my god! We’re not resigning ourselves to old age just yet…how often do you get to do an adult treasure hunt!
| We literally tossed a coin – heads we go, tails we stay….(as the coin flipped through the air – I knew, even if it was tails, we were going – this was too exciting now!)
Heads! We were up, running around the bedroom scrabbling for clothes – no showers, no breakfast, just get on the road. Archie the poor dog must have thought the world was about to end the way we were running around, threw his breakfast at him and left the house in a whirlwind, with the promise of a long walk later.
No Trains – so was it a Bus or just drive – Drive! – We were in a hurry baby! So Alex was driver and I was tweeter/iphone direction girl in this double act. Sat Nav said 58 minutes to get into London (and probably another 30 to find a parking space.) The ensuing car journey turned into a giggle fest of “oh my god, what if we’re wrong?...we’re in our 30’s, what are we doing?...Our friends are going to kill us! |
| With the science museum in sight, the gods were looking down on us, as a space appeared a couple of streets away. After a mini discussion about getting clamped, we were off with a newfound attitude of careless abandonment!The calm stroll turned into a semi-run…or adult ‘speedwalk’, because adults don’t run in treasure hunts! Yeah right. In through the main doors – Alex was looking around like a big kid saying “I can’t believe I’ve never been here before, always wanted to go, and now we’re here on a mission”. I could see he was losing focus as he picked up the ‘guide’ to the science museum…”Come on! “ With a sense of urgency now and as if I had lost my child, I grabbed the nearest science museum person “quickest way to the Listening Post? |
| We had our directions and after an agonising wait for the lift (we would have taken the stairs – but couldn’t find them!) we were finally on the 1st floor… Enigma – where is it? Whilst every other sane person was gently strolling through the exhibit, 2 random strangers were looking under all the exhibits like they had escaped the asylum for the day. This really felt like were part of the Da Vinci Code now…it was so exciting.We found the Enigma – I looked underneath the cabinet…nothing?
Alex now got onto his belly and crawled underneath…If people didn’t think we were nuts before, they did now. He appeared with a yellow envelope…OH MY GOD! We were right and we had found the clue. We opened the envelope, which included a well done Easter Card, a map to the next location and instructions of what to say. This was seriously cool stuff. Our next instructions were to get across town to Brick Lane – East London. |
| All the way back to the car we were tweeting our progress, whilst googling the next location – Thank god for the iphone!
So, hurrah, the car hadn’t been clamped and we were able to drive through central London to get across town.
If you haven’t been to brick lane, it’s like a medley of cultures, famous for curry houses, pearly kings and queens (this is proper east-end now) and cool little retro clothes shops....oh and Easter Sunday, it’s packed of course.
We parked what seemed like a mile away, but thanks to the cool maps app we were able to track our way to the next location from where we were.
Bearing in mind we hadn’t eaten since the night before, there were food distractions in abundance and it was nearing 1pm….a lesser mortal would have weakened and not headed straight for the prize. |
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We were looking for ‘Oh Baby’ a small babywear store. When I say small – like the size of our galley kitchen – small!…so small we nearly missed it….twice.
The poor bloke behind the counter must have thought we were a bit nuts as we headed for the counter, faces beaming and said “The Suggmeister sent us” – god I hoped he didn’t just call the police to take us away like a couple of lunes. |
| Bingo – the box appeared – we had done it! We were the UK London THTH winners! We cracked open the box and checked out the cool prizes – A Signed Tony Hawk board, Quicksilver cap and t-shirt, tech decks, a belt, a Birdhouse rucksack, sweet Nixon headphones, some kicker headphones and Cadburys cream eggs. After celebrating with a cream egg, we headed back to regale our story to our very patient friends and tweet our victory. |
| This had been the most fun we had been privileged to be part of in a long time – a real adventure. Yes, the prizes are cool, but the whole experience made it for us – the thrill of the clue, chase to the location etc. |
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So what do 30 somethings do at Easter? I don’t know what you’ll do – but I know which Easter Bunny we’ll be following this time next year…
Big Love to the amazing people who made this happen! If you aren't following on Twitter - you should be!
Http://twitter.com/tonyhawk
Http://twitter.com/ohbabylondon
Http://twitter.com/thesuggmeister |
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