"The Tortoise and the Hare (Buddy System)"

#PokemonGO: When the buddy system was announced, I remember many players were critical of Niantic's intention of the system, which was to supplement candy gains of hard-to-find Pokémon to either power them up or evolve them. I specifically remember a commenter had doubts about the distance tiers, saying "Dratini may be rarer than Exeggcute, but at 625km to fully evolve Dratini versus 150km to fully evolve Dratini, is it worth it since Dragonite isn't 4 times rarer than Exeggcutor" (I'm assuming Exeggute was rare in his area).But I had a dream. Dragonite has always been my favorite Pokémon and has been a member of my party in practically every generation of the games. The math said it would take me quite some time, but I was determined to make a dratini my buddy until I evolved it into Dragonite. Before the buddy system went live, a miracle happened: Dragonair spawned at my office! It was big at the time (2500 dust to level), but I had a much more obtainable goal by removing 125km off the total.I had hoped to hatch a Dratini to help boost me toward completion. At one point I thought I had, only to realize it was my wife's phone I was looking at. Luckily, Niantic sent more help in the Halloween event. Sadly I was stuck at work for most of it, but at work I managed upon a Dratini so it worked out.I've heard it's possible to receive a double candy on rare occasion, but I never found one.The following is a breakdown of what it took to get to 100 candy:Total Distance Travelled: 286.3km Distance during Halloween: 6.3kmTotal "Dratini" species caught: 9 Caught during Halloween: 1 Total Transferred: 6 Transferred during Halloween: 3The journey completed has taken quite some time, but without the Buddy system this wouldn't be a reality. My buddy Dragonair below: http://ift.tt/2j1leP9 via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2jr5TEA