Saturday 6 August 2016

Ready for the gym

I had read a lot about picking a team and how it is not possible to change teams after choosing. I had also heard that the yellow team was underrepresented, which seeing as I love the underdog almost swayed me. I also had friends on team Yellow asking me to join them, but the underlying philosophy of both yellow and red went against my own feelings, I decided I would go blue when the time came, and so it was. When I hit Level 5 and approached a gym, Blue is what I chose. Science, evolution, yay! Go Team Mystic!

I could see some gyms from home, in the distance. I was not sure where they were, but they seemed to change hands often, usually red to blue and blue to red, occasionally yellow, but not so often. I seemed to have a lot of gyms around, but every one I went to, had much stronger Pokémon defending it than the ones in my Pokédex, often by a hundred CP or more. I was a little wary of sitting to train against much stronger beasts.

The evening of Thursday, I decided to walk around the stadium of Panionios and its four Pokéstops and to head off up to the square where there were a great number of Pokéstops and a Gym. Getting there, I noticed a number of men, bearded, aged in the 35 to 45 bracket, sitting or standing around a specific corner of the square without any apparent reason, looking and occasionally swiping on their mobes… I did not speak to any of them, as I found a space and sat down ready for some sparring with my creatures. Again, all the competition was out of my league and keen to follow online advice not to spar with stronger foes, I caught as many Pokémon as possible under the Lures which had been set in the squares and left for home.

Driving around or walking around to Pokéstops gave me an opportunity to watch people. Once I knew that this park, or that mural housed a Pokéstop, it made for some interesting people watching. Groups of younger kids walking around and pausing to look at their mobes at specific places with no apparent reason for doing so, the delivery driver who stopped his motorcycle, got his mobe out, swiped and continued driving as he passed a Pokéstop, or the aforementioned older guys sitting and swiping in a crowded public square, oblivious to the real world around them.

Next up we head to the Peloponnese, in the hope that we catch some raries.