Hosa - Hub of Social Activity Post 1

HOSA Post 1 - May, 29th 2016

Now that I have explained what the HOSA is I can start my first Hosa post. (Here is link if you missed: HOSA). I have been wanting to share this for almost a month, but I could not work out how to do so on a travel blog. I didn't travel anywhere, unless you count to my parents, which I don't count. If you do visit Phoenix ever, then you might want to partake, so there is trip related value to people outside of the area.

Anyway, for this first Hosa post, I want to explain what happened on my birthday this year. As I said I went over to my parents house first, in the morning. Let's skip ahead a little, because that part wasn't too interesting. I mean for me it was interesting because my parents gave me gifts. Also, my mom and I went to get pedicures. So it was fun for me, but not very interesting to read about.

The week before that was my brother's birthday and I suggested that we should try an escape room, but by that time it was a little hard to coordinate. So we decided to go for my birthday instead. If you don't know what an escape room is I'll explain. What happens is that your and your group are locked into a room. Inside the room there are puzzles and clues that you need to solve in order to find the key and escape. You have one hour to escape. Now, if you are curious the door to the room is not actually locked, but if you leave the room then you cannot go back into the room. Also, these are all puzzles and there aren't any physical obstacles. That would have been fun too, but I think I understand why they limit to just the mental games and puzzles. The escape room we did was called the Puzzle Room.

Let me back up, because part of the fun during the day, though maybe not fun for the driver, my Dad, was that on the way to the Puzzle Room, we had to pick up my sister, Caitlin, and my brother, Tyler. Separately! It was quite hilarious, though don't tell my Dad. He seemed a bit stressed. We picked up Caitlin alright, except that she was a little slow at getting in the car, apparently there was an emergency session of her putting a gift in a bag! Also, Caitlin had just spent the day-before and the morning-of driving in a Razor thru the desert. She had barely arrived back.

Then, we went to pick up Tyler. He suggested that we meet off the freeway at Southern, but I said, there is not an exit at Southern. But he was saying there was, and my Mom believed him, which is fine, but she has google maps on her phone, so she could have looked. Then, for whatever reason, my Mom said that we needed to get off the freeway early, drive through the speed trap that is Guadeloupe. Then he ended up meeting us at a different location! All the while we were all trying to give Dad direction. He did the right thing by listening to Mom, but that wasn't the fastest thing!

Either way it doesn't matter, because we arrived at the Puzzle Room in plenty of time. The door is unlabeled maybe to be mysterious, but there was a sandwich board out front so it wasn't too hard to find. My brother had purchased a groupon for the room and he did it for six people. There are only five of us, so I invited my friend, Kelsi, to come. She was the only one who had done an escape room, before. However, she had never been to the Puzzle Room before. She wisely made the decision to meet us at the Puzzle Room instead of getting a ride.

Since we had never been before, the moderator took an ample amount of time explaining the game, and fielding questions, but I think we were all still confused. Once we were ready to start the Moderator did this funny script about us being there to look at a place to open a coffee shop. He explained who the previous tenant was and why the room looked the way it did, then he left the room because he "forgot" something. Then on screen there was a silly video about being trapped by the previous tenant and if we didn't get out we'd be cursed! For Life!

Anyway, after that the time starts on the clock. I wouldn't explain all the tasks, because maybe you want to experience them for yourself. I don't want to ruin it. I will say that I learned a lot about my family that day. Like, we cannot count to seven. However, we can multiply large numbers easily. We also turned off the lights so many times, that I think it fits the definition of insanity. As in doing the same thing and expecting different results! I also learned that you can't just decide which letter goes to which symbol on a cipher, you have to have a clue! Finally, if you open locked boxes, make sure you take everything out of the box!

The Puzzle room ended up being very fun. I love it! It was hard at first, since we had never done an escape room before, we had to learn as we went along. We were pretty good at the puzzles, but we weren't as good at finding the puzzles. So in the end, we lost. We were so close too, the key was in our mitts, but we didn't have enough time to escape! So, now we are cursed! For Life!

The Puzzle Room is downtown, which is near where I work. So I know the restaurants in the area. After we were cursed, we decided to find a place to eat. I wanted to pick a place with delicious food, that is too far to walk to at lunch, and some place that my family had not been. So we went to Cibo. It is the best! The pizza is so good. It is in an old house, there are a lot of restaurants in old houses in Phoenix. As I said the pizza is very good, but the pizza is not served at lunch, during the week.

The only complaint about dinner was that the table next to us were a bit loud and the acoustics of that room made it a louder still. They didn't really bother me too much, but my parents are starting to get sensitive to loud restaurants. The outdoor seating may have been better, but my birthday is in May, and we weren't sure if it would be too hot so we sat inside. The pizza was just as good as I remembered it. They are 12" pizza, and you can share with another person, but I did not! We also had a birthday crepe, with Nutella and banana! Yum!

So, I think that's it for the first Hosa Post. The Puzzle room was fun, I can't wait to do a different escape room, hopefully this one will be more successful. Dinner at Cibo was delicious.