Last week, I was innocently checking in to various listings on Yelp as I always do, keeping unofficial tabs on where I’ve been.  When it came to the 405 freeway, I found to my dismay that someone had ousted me from the Duchess spot (you become the Duke or Duchess if you have the most check-ins)!  This got me all riled up.  I refused to have someone beat me out like that, so I started a check-in war.

To better understand the context of this, let me lay down some of the rules we have to follow:

1. You can check in to any given listing no more than once every 4 hours.
2. You can only check in when you are within 1 mile of the listed address of the listing (with some exceptions).
3. You can check in no more than 25 times in a given day.

So, immediately I started checking in every 4 hours or so.  Of course, life would get in the way and it wouldn’t happen that much, but I did log multiple check-ins a day.  I reasoned that I’ve driven up and down the 405 hundreds of times (if not over a thousand by now), so all these excess check-ins are making up for previous visits.  Thankfully, I live and work in an area within a mile of the freeway, so I can check in throughout the day without having to move.  I also don’t check in to places arbitrarily – I like for my check-ins to actually reflect my visitation to whichever listing, so I rarely ever get up to 25 check-ins in a day.  That’s a lot of places to visit!

Well, unfortunately it appeared that little Ms. Piggy saw that I was catching up to her, so she started checking in full force as well.  I call her that because she doesn’t have a real profile picture, but just a cartoon pigging saying something about pigging out.  Every time I’d check in after a few hours, I’d find that she was also checking in to keep her lead.  This went on for about three days and I was getting just one or two check-ins behind, but then came the weekend and my trip to NorCal.  While I was away, I wasn’t able to keep the pressure on her, but it appears that she eased up as well.  Maybe she thought I had backed down and let her guard down.

As soon as I came back from my weekend trip, I was checking in again at maximum capacity and today I’ve managed to tie her at times and be one check-in behind at others.  By tomorrow, I think I can take her down and reclaim my title as Duchess of the 405 freeway.  Once that happens, I plan on continuing until I have a healthy lead that reflects the hundreds of times that I have driven the 405.  It’s a silly little thing, really, but this really brought out some of the competitive edge in me.  I am not going to give up on this mission!  Why it means so much may be beyond most people, but it’s a fun challenge for me.