The race started in Lincoln Park, near Diversy and the Inner Drive. We ended up parked in the Lincoln Park Zoo lot. For whatever reason-—probably many reasons, it being a late summer weekend in Chicago—-the area was a madhouse. We made it to the start area and got checked in about 10 minutes before official start time. We checked out the people who had come in costume, which was sort of entertaining. I gave my prize for best costume to the women who had come as Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh, even bringing their gold medals and bouquets, with the black tape on the Kerri's shoulder. Erica’s prize went to the Sarah Palin and Bristol Palin, which was also quite a thorough get-up, even if the Bristol was actually a man.
The start was not so well-organized as it was at last year's CityChase, where they had us do a scavenger hunt at the beginning, and upon completing the little hunt you got the clues for the big race. The GUR people just positioned five people or so with a bunch of envelopes around the edges of the crowd and said to go to them to get our envelopes and not open them until they said it was okay. Anyway, we got our clues and we given the go-ahead, so we walked toward a tree to sit down and figure out our plan of attack.
There were a couple of tasks in the area—-one, a boot camp that was only running from 12-3 (I think; I left the clue sheet at home like a dope), and the other getting a picture with a sea lion. Then there were a couple of tasks up north, a couple of tasks downtown, and a couple that we needed to puzzle out. So while heading toward the boot camp, we called Paul with his first (and most difficult) Google challenge: we needed to know where Ferris Bueller had done the Twist so that we could get a picture in front of the street sign. The part that made this difficult is that I misread the clue and thought we had to get a picture of "both street signs" and not "both teammates in front of the street sign," and so Paul figured out almost immediately that it was Dearborn that we needed, but I kept insisting we needed more info. I decided I'd call him back.
We found the boot camp and were given a sheet of things to do. One, do ten pushups (knee pushups okay, and they didn’t need to be good pushups), high-fiving your partner between each one. Two, do a "chariot race," which meant putting a rubbery strap around your partner’s torso and having them run, pulling you along with them (you were supposed to pull back on them somewhat, to make it tougher, but we didn't really). Three, while clasping hands, do fifteen squats, jumping up out of each one. The squats ended up being surprisingly tough, and I think I must add them to my workouts. I was sore until Monday. After finishing the tasks—-we were monitored by race personnel-—we got a stamp on our clue sheet.
Down to the zoo, where we ran into other racers trying to get a picture with a live (the clue was specific) sea lion. I had a minor biological freak-out, though—-there were no sea lions I could see in the enclosure, only a harbor seal. (This is not a difficult distinction, for those not up on their pinnipeds: harbor seals are spotted, sea lions are solid brown. There's other stuff, too, but that’s the easy way.) Teams were getting pictures with the seal, but it just seemed off to me. Thankfully, this task was a "detour," meaning there was another option to get the point. So we walked away from the zoo (and while doing so ran into our first, "What kind of race are you guys doing?" people of the day, a part I always like) and ran out to grab a bus.
For some reason, all the busses going south were crazy-full (this will become important later). So we grabbed a Clark bus going north to knock off a couple of things: one of us needed to tell a joke on stage at Comedy Sportz, and one of us needed to feed the other pizza while someone got a picture of us in front of a Cub at Philly's Best. We ended up taking the Clark bus a little past where we needed to be, but it gave us time to work out a couple of the puzzle-based clues. The first one had two sets of two dice. You could see three faces of one of the dice in each set, and two of the other. They wanted us to figure out what the faces facing each other added up to and get a picture in front of a building including that number. The number was 8, and while walking ourselves back to Comedy Sportz and Philly's Best, we had someone take this picture of us.
Philly's Best was swarming with racers, so there was a lot of, "We’ll take your picture, you take our picture, ready go" stuff, and we got this ever-so-attractive picture of both of us.
Comedy Sportz was just a couple of doors down. We had talked on the bus about whether we knew any good jokes. I am a terrible joke teller, so Erica was in charge of it. We were third or fourth in line, and so we listened to a few other racers try and be funny. It was, I think, at this point that we started to dislike the male half of team Triple Trouble (t-shirts: "Know Fear?" on the front, "Have Triplets" on the back) because he told a joke that took long enough that the judges, who you had to get to laugh, said, "I thought these were supposed to be short jokes." But eventually, after his saga, Erica made it up there and told a couple of classics, including, "What’s brown and sticky?" We got our stamp and high-tailed it to the train.
We called Paul again around this time, and he kept saying, "All I can find is Dearborn." So I re-read the clue, apologized for being an idiot, and then got his confirmation on a couple of other clues involved in a crossword puzzle on the sheet.
Here’s what we needed to do downtown:
1. Take a picture in front of a steel "flamingo" (this was to replace the sea lion clue).
2. Get a picture of us twisting in front of a Dearborn street sign.
3. The crossword had led us to the clue "Chase" and told us we needed to get a picture clearly showing the building name, and so we needed to go to Chase Tower.
4. Get a picture of at least ten people, with a Chicago flag flying in the shot. This didn't need to be downtown, but there are a lot more Chicago flags down there than other places.
5. Find the Blues Brothers and get a picture with them. They would be somewhere in the area bound by Lake, Randolph, State, and Michigan.
We decided to take the red line to State and Lake and start at the northern end of the loop and work our way south. But then we realized: we needed to go to Dave & Buster's, win at least six tickets, and get a picture in front of the Deep Freeze machine.
So we hopped off the red line at Clark and Division, and zipped down to D&B's. When we walked upstairs, another team handed off their card with D&B credits to us and and pointed vaguely saying, "The Deep Freeze is over in that corner." Well, thanks! It turned out the Deep Freeze wasn’t where he was pointing (though we didn’t think it was malicious intent, just vagueness), but we found it and got a picture. Then we went to one of those "hit the button when the light is between the bars to win tickets!" machines, and Erica got eight tickets on two tries. On our way out, we handed off the card with credits to another team.
Now we had to get downtown. We decided rather than walk back to the train to wait for the bus we could see coming. Hopped on the bus (where we met team "Buff Chics," one from Buffalo and one from Chicago), and then got off near the "flamingo". We had to ask random passerby for this picture. And the flamingo is on Dearborn, so here we are, Twisting.
Chase Tower? Chase Tower. We got to the building, and there was a team having its picture taken in front of an ATM vestibule. "Chase" was clearly visible, but there was nothing about what building it was. Could have been a vestibule anywhere. So we and the Buff Chics (who we found again while Twisting) walked around the building and had our pictures in front of the building sign.
Now came what might have been our most fun of the day, though we were kind of dreading it. We needed to get ten people in front of a flying Chicago flag. I figured Daley Plaza would have people AND a flag. I was wrong on both counts. There was a flag across the street, so we tried having me stand on one side and to get ten people as they walked past (so we wouldn’t have to talk to them-—anti-social tendencies, hell yeah!), but it didn’t quite work. So we thought, "hmm, where else to find a Chicago flag?" On a sort of wander, we saw one at the Thompson Center. And groups of people! So Erica was totally awesome. She asked a family of about six to step into the frame. The family that was there with their kids crawling on the public art caught wind and joined up. And then a couple of guys running past decided they’d be in on it, too. And so, thank you, citizens of Chicago and wherever else, for this photo.
Now, the Blues Brothers. We shot down Lake toward Michigan. They weren't on Lake. They weren't on Michigan. They weren't on Randolph. But there, on State! Hark! The Blues Brothers. Nice guys, too. Also, the skinny tie really works on certain people.
The bus stop to get us back to the finish line was right at the end of the block. We had completed our tasks! It was about 2:40 PM, and we were pleased. We didn't think we were top 25 finishers (the level required to make it to national championships), but we felt good. The bus came. Still feeling good as we made our way up the inner drive.
And then we got to about 1400 north, and the bus was STOPPED. Hmm. Cars were doing u-turns, that's how bad traffic was. What the hell? we thought. And said. After about 15 minutes, I saw police cruisers had the North Avenue exit of the outer drive blocked off. "Big accident, maybe?" And so we decided to get off the bus, and head west to grab a Clark bus, hoping things would clear a little.
We walked out of the bus into Douchebag Central. Why all the douchery? Like, a guy was wearing a "Mark Spitz Phelps Swallows" shirt. That's not just douchery, that's nonsensical douchery. There were straw fedoras. There were manpris and mandals. There were tube tops and spray tans.
Ohhhhh. Red Bull Flugtag.
We fought our way through the Douche Gauntlet, but when we got to Clark, things were still bad. We thought, "Maybe if we get a little north of here, things will clear up." They did, a little, just enough for us to get the last crammed-in-standing-room spots on a bus. Which then stopped. And went a little ways, then stopped. Finally, we made it as far as Fullerton, and decided that things weren't going to get better any time soon, and so we got off the bus and hoofed it.
At the finish line, you were required to cross using a pair of Buddy Walkers. Erica and I had no problem with these, though the team that was finishing as we were walking up had "fallen off" a couple of times. But being the models of grace that we are, we did it the first try, and crossed the finish line at 3:51 PM.
That's right. The 3.5 miles from downtown to the finish took over an hour, meaning we could have run it faster, even running really slowly. Kind of a downer to end on, but we still were pretty okay with it.We had a great time, and next year, we’ll be doing this race—-less challenging than the CityChase, and therefore less dangerous to marriages-—with our husbands.
