In this Pokemon interview, we're joined by RT110Triathlete, DirtDiverG, and Sveltl0, who went above and beyond to help a quadriplegic child in the Pokémon GO community by creating a Pokestop they could spin from their personal home. They share their heartwarming story of how they met the child, their experience visiting the child, and their decision to create a home Pokéstop using Wayfarer. Join us as we dive into their experiences with Pokémon GO, their history with the Pokémon franchise, and their ideas on improving the Wayfarer system.
Trainer's Eye is a series where the stories are real and people still play this game. From PVP to Shiny Hunting, each person's Pokemon GO journey is unique and we dive into each journey here on As The Pokeball Turns!
Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay
Connect with David Hernandez: Linktree
E-mail Me: asthepokeballturnspodcast@gmail.com
In this Pokemon interview, we're joined by RT110Triathlete, DirtDiverG, and Sveltl0, who went above and beyond to help a quadriplegic child in the Pokémon GO community by creating a Pokestop they could spin from their personal home. They share their heartwarming story of how they met the child, their experience visiting the child, and their decision to create a home Pokéstop using Wayfarer. Join us as we dive into their experiences with Pokémon GO, their history with the Pokémon franchise, and their ideas on improving the Wayfarer system.
Trainer's Eye is a series where the stories are real and people still play this game. From PVP to Shiny Hunting, each person's Pokemon GO journey is unique and we dive into each journey here on As The Pokeball Turns!
Sources
Opening Song: "Forget You" by Alex_MakeMusic from Pixabay
Connect with David Hernandez: Linktree
E-mail Me: asthepokeballturnspodcast@gmail.com
Welcome to As the Pokeball Turns, where the stories are real and people still play this game. There's a saying that goes, rules are made to be broken. It is often used as an idea that rules can be disregarded or disobeyed. However, it's important to remember that rules exist for a reason. They establish order and give us the ability to live and function as a society in an otherwise chaotic world. When it comes to Wayfarer, there are a lot of rules for what is and isn't ineligible. In spite of what the Wayfarer guidelines say, that didn't stop my guest today from helping a paraplegic child obtain a Pokestop that they could spin from their house. Personally, I felt these guys deserve some Spotlight because on one hand they helped someone who has a disability be able to play Pokemon Go. Accessibility has been a criticism many have made about Niantic's games, particularly Pokemon Go. Many speak out about it and these guys used what they knew about Wayfarer and did something about it to help another person. On the other hand, they were able to create a house stop, which within the Wayfarer world is usually frowned upon. My podcast has always been about the stories, and this is one story I couldn't pass up when I heard about it. Here is their origin story into the world of Pokemon Go. This is Rt100Triathlete, DirtDiverG, and Syletl0. Welcome to As The Pokeball Turns, where the stories are real and people still play this game. I'm your host, David Hernandez. Before we dive into today's guest or guests in this case, if you have any Pokemon GO stories, send'em to my email at asthePokeBallTurns podcast@gmail.com. Again, it's asthepokeballturnspodcast@gmail.com. Your story might be recreated into a skit or you may be invited onto the show like these three gentlemen were today. Now let's get into it. I'm excited to get into this. So if you listen to the intro of the podcast, you know who these guys are. They went out of the way to nominate a stop for a paraplegic trainer, and here they are just tell the story of how it all happened, but let me introduce them all. Guys, why don't you introduce yourself real quick.
Rt110Triathlete:Thanks for having us, David. My name is Matthew Tovar. I've been playing Pokemon Go since, it started, and then found a group of guys to play with in our church and been having fun ever since. My name's Jeff, uh, dirt Diver. G I've been playing like Matt since the very beginning, having a lot of fun and, kind of the same story, but I, I started on my own. My name's Rob. I actually started because dirt diver needed a friend, and so I jumped in and been playing pretty heavy since.
David Hernandez:That's awesome guys. So we're gonna dive into Pokemon Go stuff in a minute, but I'm gonna break my tradition for interviews for my audience, who knows. I wanna know how this all happened. So tell us the rundown about, you guys going to this person's house, nominating a stop and everything like just start from the beginning.
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah, sure, David. All three of us and a few others, we help with that nomination approval through Wayfarer. I came across one day a nomination from an individual, it was rather sad. It was from this kid, his nomination was just of his bedroom and his explanation was, I'm a quadriplegic. I have a hard time getting around, I use a stylist in my mouth to play Pokemon Go because of my condition. even when I can get outta the house, I can only be out in a wheelchair for a few hours before needing to come back home. As the rules states in, Wayfarer, I immediately declined the nomination because you can't have something on private property like that. I took a screenshot of the details, specifically of his location and I shared it with the group of friends here that we have through our church group, that we play Pokemon Go with. We got together and said, oh man, we should, try to make a stop for this, guy. Jeff had the idea to go introduce himself and get the rundown on his story.
DirtDiverG:Yeah, so I went down, talked to him, we knocked on the door and I think I met his sister and, and she's like, what are you trying to do? You know, everyone was kinda like, what, what's going on? And... we're just like, you know, we just wanna help him out, you know, be nice and he showed up and we talked about it a little bit and he was excited. You know, a private property wouldn't make it, but if we built a little library and this was Matt's idea, built a little library out in the right of way, we could actually call that a stop that would get approved. I like to build things and Rob likes to build things too and so we, kind of got together and said, we'll build you a little library, put it out in front of your house and nominate it for a stop.
Sveltl0:We ended up recruiting the youth at church to build the little library.
DirtDiverG:Yeah. We got, we got some of the teenagers here at our church to help us out to build it and install it too.
David Hernandez:Wow, that's awesome. So it was like a church project basically.
DirtDiverG:Yeah.
Rt110Triathlete:Turn it into one for sure. it's been pretty fun and I think once we got it installed, all of us who were, of the level high enough nominated it. Several times.
DirtDiverG:Many times. And appealed it too.
Rt110Triathlete:And appealed it. Yeah. Cuz some of those are hard to get through, especially those little libraries. At least in my submissions, I always put the details of what's going on here. We weren't just trying to get a, a couch stop, as what they call it on the, uh, on the forum we were trying to help out this individual. You know, we got the good news about a month ago. Jeff's submission went through and, got approved.
DirtDiverG:Yeah. After, after 11 months.
Rt110Triathlete:After 11 months. Yeah.
David Hernandez:Oh my gosh. Did y'all just let it go naturally or was it upgraded or appealed?
DirtDiverG:It was upgraded. Submitted. We submitted. Yeah. We, so my appeal finally went through. Yeah.
David Hernandez:Oh, so Niantic approved it?
DirtDiverG:Yeah, they did. So it.
David Hernandez:that's awesome.
DirtDiverG:It was a big deal to get that done and it happened right after they changed all the rules. So I'm wondering if that was a.
David Hernandez:So there's. Well, first off, I wanna say thank you Niantic, for approving this appeal, cuz That's just amazing just to hear that. But I wanna break it down a little bit so Matthew, you got the nomination, right? You're the one who saw the nomination of the kid was trying to, do,
Rt110Triathlete:That's right. Yes. Saw it first and captured it.
David Hernandez:so my question is this. So when y'all read it, like, did y'all have any skepticism? Like maybe this person was just making it up, or did y'all just kind of knew that this was something that this is legit, this person needs our help, like, did y'all have a conversation like that?
Rt110Triathlete:I was actually just telling Jeff this, right before we started this podcast, when he was saying, no, have you, do you know who this guy is? I'm like, no, but I just assumed the best in everybody. That's sort of what I did for this submission, it looked really honest and, and sincere and so, like I mentioned, talked with the guys and Jeff was free that day and went and met him. So it would end up being good.
David Hernandez:Now Jeff, you went by yourself?
DirtDiverG:I actually had, uh, who was in the car with me, my family was in the car with me. I told them to wait out here while I go talk to this guy.
David Hernandez:Okay. That's good. At least you, at least you didn't go by yourself.
Rt110Triathlete:Yes.
DirtDiverG:Yeah. So I, no, I just went and it was good to meet him, I got his whole story and everything. He'd been in a car accident and it was something that changed his life quite a bit and we kind of talked about it. I got his friend code right there mm-hmm. And we joined up and, um,
David Hernandez:That's awesome.
DirtDiverG:And it was really good to be able to help because a lot of the people in our group, our trainers are also like, pretty high level, so I was like, everyone go down there and nominate this stop as soon as you can. Mm-hmm. So we can all just, you know, kind of bombard it and get this one approved for'em.
David Hernandez:Wow. So y'all, I guess it sounds like it was multiple nominations from different people who nominated the stop to get it approved.
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah. Yeah.
Sveltl0:Day one, I think we dropped three or four.
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah, I did it and you did and a few other short.
David Hernandez:that's crazy. So Jeff, I wanna ask you this. So when you went to meet the guy, what was going through your mind when you met the kid, you know,
Rt110Triathlete:He was just a good guy. It was, it was nice to meet him. He was super nice. His family was talking about doing the installation like we were out there digging and, you know, digging the hole and everything. And, his parents come up. They're like, what are you doing, you know, in our front yard? He hadn't told him, but.
David Hernandez:Oh my God.
Rt110Triathlete:But no, everyone, his whole family was super nice, they were super excited and they couldn't believe that we would just show up and do something like we weren't asked to do it. You know? It was all Matt's idea, like we just did it to help someone out.
David Hernandez:Yeah. And I think that's the best part because the other thing that I left out was y'all actually go and lure it up whenever you drive by the area now. Right?
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah. You dropped a few lawyers.
DirtDiverG:I did. The other, I did last week actually.
Rt110Triathlete:Yep. Uh, whenever we get a chance, we'll go over there and drop some more lures.
David Hernandez:What do the parents think of all the work that you're doing to try to just get this kid to stop just to be able to play this game?
DirtDiverG:They were just really excited because it just didn't make sense, I guess, you know, you don't always see that in this world right now, that people will just go out of their way to, to go help somebody. but that makes life a lot better for all of us for doing that. So that's kind of why we did it.
David Hernandez:For sure. And so when you talked to him, like was he like a huge Pokemon fan? Like what did he say about that?
DirtDiverG:He'd been playing for a long time. He was level 30 something when I, when we met him, so
Rt110Triathlete:it's like 41 now. So he,
DirtDiverG:yeah, he caught up, so, yeah.
Sveltl0:Well, and it's kind of interesting cuz the way that the game's actually set up, you can't, like once you have the trainer code, You really don't know who you're talking to, right? And there's no in-game chat or anything sitting. So like, if we're being honest with each other, you know, you get some in-game codes from Facebook groups or other means where you're run into somebody at the park, it's like, Hey, let's jump in together. But you know, you may or may not ever see him again. So to have kind of that sense of community wrap around somebody like that, his family was a little bit, baffled by the entire exchange.
DirtDiverG:They were very grateful though.
David Hernandez:Oh yeah. There's a lot of people who talk about, you know, think about the people who are disabled, think about the people who can't play this game. You guys literally went outta your way. I don't know how much of a drive was it to get from point A to point B, but the fact that y'all even spent time building something, nominating going through eight months and let finally Niantic, thank you Niantic, approving a stop. Like, who does that? That's just crazy.
Rt110Triathlete:But yeah, luckily it worked out, he just one town over, and not terribly far from where we live. You know, we didn't think it was too much of a burden To drive over there and then Rob's mechanical engineer and, and Jeff's uh, landscape architect and I'm an electrical engineer, which there's no electrical, but you know, just to help.
Sveltl0:Kept us, kept us from hitting any ground wire. There you go.
David Hernandez:There you go. There you go. That he could install some into it.
Rt110Triathlete:Yep. Yep. That's a, I don't know, we just had that tinkering building like Jeff said, mindset, and then just wanted to help out a fellow Pokemon Go player.
David Hernandez:Is that what drove you to kind of do what you did just to help somebody out?
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah, I'd say so. Saw his nomination, felt, just impressed to reach out to him and, light up his day and, It just felt like it was the kind thing to do, to reach out to'em and, and spread that joy, I guess.
Sveltl0:Well, and, for us, we've, got a pretty good community wrapped around us where we've got a group me that, every now and again you'll see a message come out about this raid or that raid. Mm-hmm. So we've, the big thing for, at least for I'll, I guess I'll speak for myself, is there's a sense of community wrapped around it, but when you see an individual where It's more challenging
Rt110Triathlete:mm-hmm.
Sveltl0:to kind of establish that community, any opportunity that you can have to give them a little more opportunity to be involved, it's always a good thing.
David Hernandez:Without a doubt. And I think the fact that Niantic approved it on appeal, it begs the question, do you feel, cause I saw the Matthew's initial post, cause you asked about this back in June of 2022 initially, right? Matthew?
Rt110Triathlete:Yes. That's great.
David Hernandez:You made a post on the Facebook asking like, Hey, you're trying to help this person out. You know, you were asking the basic question like, What's the chance of getting a library passed? You know, and some of the, I read the sponsors and most of'em were just like, well, it's technically property part Niantic, but then Niantic approves it. my question is this, from y'all's experience, just with doing what y'all just did just now, do you feel like maybe there's some leeway to maybe for trainers, like the person you helped that maybe the community as a whole we're not considering?
Rt110Triathlete:I imagine, sometimes we submit those stops and we think it's just some faceless, machine in the background of Niantic, trying to, approve or disapprove, but there must be some human element to it where they consider those stops, that might actually benefit the community or benefit a person. That could be, very well the case here. I, I could see that.
Sveltl0:Well, and it's, pretty apparent that their goal, at least as of recently, is to get people out, right? Yeah, yeah. To, to, to promote that social element. Mm-hmm. But I, think there's, needs to be, Certainly exceptions made. in this case, we kind of had to go to him. And so the fact that at least somebody on the other side acknowledged that and realized, now mind you, there may have been some history there that after the hundredth time of us submitting it, I exaggerate a little bit, but again, it took, it took 11 months that after, after so long with the history, I think we at least built a story that it said, okay, either somebody is way dedicated to this storyline or there may be a legitimate need here.
David Hernandez:And it's easy to blow'em off and say like, oh, this person's just making up like, I think, Matthew said earlier, like, it's easy to just think like, oh, they're just trying to do a hostile stop. They just don't wanna go outside. lazy. You know? You've heard it all right? But
Sveltl0:Oh, we all want a couch. Let's not kid ourselves.
David Hernandez:Fair enough. Guilty.
Sveltl0:Mine's around the corner. Oh, I gotta go outside.
David Hernandez:Darn. I gotta go walk a couple steps in this heat or cold, depending on where you live.
Rt110Triathlete:That's right. Yeah.
David Hernandez:But no, like there's a gray area to where trainers who, like the kid we're talking about, there's a gray area to where maybe, hey, we can maybe get something done. Maybe it allows us as reviewers to really consider, they try to think outside the box like you guys did cause all y'all did was just literally build a little free library, put it in front of the guy's house and unfortunately you had to wait eight or nine months, but it eventually did happen.
Rt110Triathlete:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That's true. Filled it with some books and hoped for the best. And the library's still used by the neighborhood, so it was a win-win. Yeah. He said kids use it, right? Yeah.
David Hernandez:Well guys, Let's move on to Pokemon Go. Let's talk about your experience with the game real quick. So when did y'all first start playing Pokemon Go?
Rt110Triathlete:I think my thing says I started the day after it came out, so it's like July 6th, 2016, I think. My trainer is Route1 10 Triathlete. cuz I like to do triathlons and in Pokemon Ruby Sapphire and Emerald was the first generation where you encountered a triathlete on Route 110, so that's what I named myself is Route 110 Triathlete. I also played ingress though before that. Yeah. Uh, so I had some experience with the stops and everything and the experience of Niantic, setup. I had played Ingres and I think I'm level eight in ingress, but once I got Pokemon Go, all my attention went to that.
David Hernandez:Fair enough. Fair enough. What team are you real quick?
Rt110Triathlete:Oh. Uh, I'm mystic
David Hernandez:Mystic. All right. One for the homies.
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah. Yeah. You guys are all here. Stick to, yeah, we're all here. So,
David Hernandez:y'all already. We're all mystics here. All right. That is my favorite episode now.
Rt110Triathlete:In our group, it is nice to have a few valor and instinct as well just to, so we can knock each other off the gym. Kick me out. Been in there four. Exactly.
David Hernandez:Fair enough, fair enough.
DirtDiverG:This is Jeff, I'm DirtDiverG I started playing ingress also many years ago. I really loved the part where you could go and submit stops, that was really fun just to be able to do that, so I've got quite a few stops that I created back then. I started in July of 16 as well, out in California. I got a lot of Pokemon that I don't get here in Texas, which was nice back then. I actually put it down for about a good year and a half or so, and then Covid came along and our neighborhood actually didn't have many stops. Mm-hmm. And, uh, Matt and I have been working very hard. We've made it so there's like five gyms in our neighborhood now, so, um, but yeah, we've just been playing a lot, so it's been pretty fun. The other reason I play a lot is we've got a group within our church that's got 22 members on our group chat that all do raids and things like that together. So
Rt110Triathlete:a lot of youth son.
Sveltl0:Yeah. Yeah, a lot of youth.
David Hernandez:Is it all like people who are local in the area or just people who like go to the same church or a combination of both?
DirtDiverG:They were started out local in the area. Mm-hmm. But now we've got people all over the country once they start moving around and things like that, but everyone stays on, so,
David Hernandez:Oh that's awesome.
DirtDiverG:yeah.
Sveltl0:So I'm not near as dedicated as these two. This is Rob, my, tag is Sveltl0, but, I started probably about the same covid time when I started. Played aggressively to get caught up I'm sitting right at like 41 now and, that doubling of XP has slowed the gears. I was walking in the morning and I'll play a fair bit then. There was a buddy that I was walking with and we'd go to a local park and walk in the morning and throw Pokeballs at things. That's kinda how I got into it and really what's, what's, I've got my kids involved now and it been fun chance to get out with them and relate a little bit.
David Hernandez:Is it like a family outing whenever you take your kids basically?
Sveltl0:Oh yeah, It's hard on the battery though, that mobile hotspot is brutal.
David Hernandez:Oh my gosh. You ain't lying
Sveltl0:When you're running like four phones off, it's like it's running slow. I'm like, yeah, I know.
David Hernandez:got four phones on one hotspot. That's a lot.
Sveltl0:Yeah, it's, it's a little rough. Now an older daughter's got one, so we're able to double up on the hotspot and that eases the pain a little bit.
David Hernandez:Well, I was gonna ask like, are you at the point to consider giving your kids phones or is that still too young?
Sveltl0:So my oldest, we've given a phone, and then usually my wife's pretty good to let her phone come with us. So now we've got three phones with quote unquote service. And then we've reached out to my in-laws and some others that when they get done with their phones anymore, the turn in rate is is low enough that they're willing to send them to us and we just install the game on it and the hotspot cross.
David Hernandez:Now you didn't play Ingress before though, right?
Sveltl0:No, I didn't.
David Hernandez:it's just uh, the other two who played Ingress.
Rt110Triathlete:Yep. Yes. Yep.
David Hernandez:That's so awesome cuz a lot of the stereotypes for Ingress is they're little, I don't wanna say hard butts, but you know what I'm talking about. They're very stubborn. They adapt. It's kind of cool that now y'all are breaking all the molds for what people consider people who do Wayfarer, it's awesome.
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah, I've noticed that on the forum or the Facebook group that we're in that seems a little polarized between those who play ingress, those who play Pokemon Go. Just a little friction in the group sometimes with nominations, so I always try to give positive feedback on that group as much as I can.
David Hernandez:So what is it about Pokemon Go that keeps y'all engaged? Like what do you like about the game?
Rt110Triathlete:So like I mentioned, I do a lot of races, like running races or cycling or swimming and stuff. I have a Pokemon Go Plus ball that I use to, uh, I guess play the game as I train and run like this morning when a four mile run and caught a little over a hundred Pokemon just by clicking away on the button and spinning stops as I go. And that's really fun, it's sort of like when I finished the run, having a lottery scratch off ticket. Like, Ooh, what did I get in my run? I have no idea. And so look at it like, oh, I got a shiny just randomly. And I, I sent it to the group like on my run this morning, I caught a shiny. So that's just kind of fun to motivate me to continue running and training, but also keeping engaged in Pokemon Go, catching a, you know, a hundred or so, sometimes 200 on longer runs. And then I have kids too, and they play. They're younger than Rob's, but not by much and they enjoy playing with me when we go out and I'm like, oh kids, let's take over this, gym real quick. And
Sveltl0:Oh, the kids love the gyms.
Rt110Triathlete:Yes. Yeah, for sure.
Sveltl0:Love the gyms!
Rt110Triathlete:For sure!
David Hernandez:Oh, that's too cute.
Rt110Triathlete:So that's why I keep playing. It's just, a fun, easy game for the family and for me. And I try to teach others how to play too when they are new to the game.
DirtDiverG:I like the community, so just being able to play with everybody that we do in our group. and it's always funny, I, I remember the early days of go when you would drive around and you could just look at people parked at the spot and I'm like, they're doing a raid. Yeah, I know. I don't care.
David Hernandez:Keeping it real.
DirtDiverG:Yeah, I know. No, uh, but it, it's fun that, that of community and, and my son, he's little, but he's started to play too, he always wants to catch guys, so. Mm-hmm. We do that. And then, the other thing I like is submitting stops. I like to just see him build up and you know, we kind of strategize, oh, we're gonna do one here now, we're gonna do one here now. Mm-hmm. And we kind of work together to, coordinate that.
Sveltl0:for me, hone. So the community's a big one, right? So, really involved with the youth at church. So, we're on GroupMe, and it's been fun because a lot of those raids, they're, they're getting up there that, you know, you need half a dozen people really to be able to lean on it and finish. So I'm able to go to a park, take my kids And kick out a, a GroupMe and say, all right guys, here's the deal. I need like four or five heavy headers so that my kids, can get through this and without fail getting that, it's, takes about five minutes for people to peel away from what they're doing. Mm-hmm. And so it's, it's been fun to see the, the sense community. Honestly, my kids keep me pretty involved and it is what, keeps me driven to keep playing.
David Hernandez:Now all y'all go to the same church, right?
Rt110Triathlete:Yep.
David Hernandez:So do y'all do like a Pokemon Go night for churches for all the people who play?
DirtDiverG:No, we don't do it as adults, but I know the kids do that like they'll get in with some other families, they'll all go for one of the community days or I was talking to one of the kids, he said he walked nine miles. One community day. Yeah. And so they'll all pile into a van and go to a downtown area where there's heavy amount of stops and they'll all go together. So I'm walking. Yeah, yeah. Or go start knocking out my gyms though. Yeah,
Sveltl0:Well, I was gonna say, a lot of the events are Sunday noon-ish, afternoon. And so it's not uncommon to see, okay, after church we're gonna meet at this park. And so you, you know, there's the exodus to that location, we all jump out and run through what's going on...
David Hernandez:get some Jesus in the morning and then go catch PIKA two in the afternoon. I
Sveltl0:There you go.
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah, and we were actually joking I think on Easter. We went to church on Easter of course and then after that some of us were like, well, should we really go play Pokemon Go? And is it, you know, is it sort of keeping, it sounds like. We're literally going to hatch some eggs and take over other gyms that are, you know, currently have eggs. So it's like,
David Hernandez:It was like a very conflicting, cuz you felt like Easter should be all about Jesus the entire day. Right. And
Rt110Triathlete:Right.
David Hernandez:all of a sudden, like, uh, I kind of wanna play Pokemon Go at the same time.
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah, that's true. We just take the family with you. Yeah, that's a family fun thing.
David Hernandez:There you go. There you go. Before Pokemon Go, did y'all have any experience with Pokemon?
Sveltl0:I played on the Switch. Well, I played Game Boy back in the day.
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah, same.
Sveltl0:And then I, went on a, pretty good, gap and then started playing again on the switch.
DirtDiverG:I played on the Game Boy on a flight to Hawaii, I remember that specifically. I played the, what was the original one? It was like...
Rt110Triathlete:red and blue.
DirtDiverG:Red and blue. I played blue and then all of my knowledge between that and Pokemon Go was in Smash Brothers. Smash. Yeah.
Sveltl0:Good old at you.
Rt110Triathlete:That's funny.
David Hernandez:Pika! Pika!. Yeah.
Sveltl0:yeah. Dropping lightning bolts. Uhhuh, I'm fan.
Rt110Triathlete:I think for me, I'm probably a little more, astute with Pokemon. I've, kept up with all the games from the original Game Boy ones started on Game Boy Color, that was the Pokemon Yellow, and then Game Boy Advanced with Emerald and, you know, Ruby Sapphire and then I had a Ds that had diamond and pearl. Then I think I got X and Y after that and black and white. I had the cards growing up when I was in middle school. I had a bunch of cards. I have no idea where they are now, but every time I see someone post like, oh, this card's worth a hundred bucks, like, I had that card. And then with my kids, the TV shows are very kid friendly, so those are some of their favorite TV shows, so I've kept up and watched all the new ones that come on Netflix now. And so whenever there's a new Pokemon released in Pokemon Go and someone like Mispronounces it, like, no, it's pronounced this, this is the way they said it in the show.
David Hernandez:So what's y'alls favorite? Pokemon.
Sveltl0:Tyranitar all the way.
DirtDiverG:I'm a junkie for the fire. Every time I played it was like didn't need any of that water grass type stuff. Gimme something that can throw a fireball and I'm good.
David Hernandez:So you'd be the fire gym leader, basically?
DirtDiverG:Oh man! Me and Cyndaquil, we were great friends.
David Hernandez:Oh, okay. Okay.
Rt110Triathlete:You say that when growing up, remember the first Pokemon I ever chose in Pokemon red and blue, I chose Bulbasaur. And so it always just said Bulbasaur is my favorite up to Venusaur. So that was probably my go-to in, in picking anything that's probably my favorite quote Pokemon.
David Hernandez:So what got y'all into Wayfarer? Like why do y'all decide to do Wayfarer?
Rt110Triathlete:I think for me, when I got to the point where I can start submitting stops and I was like, oh, this seems like a good way you know, once you review so many stops, you can upgrade your nomination. So I thought this was a good way to get my nominations to pass quicker. And then I sort of noticed that, when Jeff would submit a stop every now and then I would see his come up like I thought, okay, cool, let me just five star Jeffs of course, even, yeah. Even if it's a picture out of the car or, you know, with his finger in a way or something. Our stops in our neighborhood. So, thought it was just a good way to continue creating our stops around our neighborhood essentially.
DirtDiverG:I loved it in ingress, being able to submit stops, and I've got a ton that got approved and I loved just seeing it keep building, you know, every time you get that approval you're just like, yeah, all right. You know, there's a new, place to go. So I was actually chomping at the bit, what was it, level 38? You have to be?
Rt110Triathlete:I think when we got it, It had to be 40 at the time, but I think now it's 30. Is it?
DirtDiverG:Well, for me it was 38. Okay. Okay. So yeah, I couldn't wait to get to level 38 so I could start doing it again and that's the reason I got on. And then Wayfarer, I got on because I could start upgrading stops. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. That was kind of the motivation there to, and yeah, again, I saw, you know, stops nearby that it was fun to go approve those and just keep seeing it build up and up. And just for an example, our neighborhood had what, two gyms and two stops?
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah.
DirtDiverG:Like at the start of Covid and now we've got seven or eight gyms and 10 or 12 stops. and probably six more on the way.
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah, for sure.
David Hernandez:wow. Dang. you've been putting in work for this, basically?
DirtDiverG:Yeah.
Rt110Triathlete:Yep. Been a lot of fun.
Sveltl0:Oh, it's nice to drive through their neighborhood. You can fill your bag really easy.
Rt110Triathlete:We all live really close to each other in general, but Jeff and I live within walking distance and Rob just on the other side of the major road from us, so he's not too far.
Sveltl0:You know, when it alters your drive route home, then they've done a good job.
Rt110Triathlete:I have seen more and more folks whose names I don't know, attack our gyms or Brad to our gyms. Like, who is this guy? I don't know him taking over my gym. Thank you. But who is this?
David Hernandez:Well, very cool guys. So, my last question is this. So if y'all could change something about Wayfarer, if y'all could improve it, what would that be like? What would y'all tell Niantic to try to change?
Rt110Triathlete:I guess the ability to have upgrades quicker. I feel like it often takes a whole lot of approvals to get it up there
DirtDiverG:like, it feels very lopsided. I've submitted some and they just sit there for months. Yeah. And then another, like, sometimes I'll submit a stop and I understand it's because there's really heavy cell phone traffic in the area and there's no stops and all of a sudden it'll get approved in six days. It's kind of strange that way, so maybe explaining that why some get approved so fast and some just sit there for a long time.
Rt110Triathlete:Yeah. A little more transparency cause even on the forums and the Facebook group, there's some direction and guidelines and some hard rules for sure, but still it's a little bit of guesswork
David Hernandez:Well, guys, thank you for the work y'all done for helping bless this trainer with a Pokestop. And maybe for us as Wayfarers, maybe we need to cause and pause a little bit and think about the humanity behind the screen. Right? There's people who don't have as much, and as you said with the kid, he got into a car accident, he can't move around. I think there's some wiggle room. I think hopefully this episode shows that we need to maybe look behind the screen, look beyond just coal, look beyond just rejection, and look at the possibility that maybe there's a trainer just like this little kid just now that we're maybe missing. Thank you for listening to an episode of As The Pokeball Turns. You can subscribe to this podcast on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Feel free to follow me on all my socials by clicking the link in the description of this episode, and I'll see you next time! Here's the sneak peek for the next episode of As The Pokeball Turns.