Saturday September 23 2006
Sometimes you need a little luck in one of these treasure-hunt, scramble type races. I think the winning team had luck as they blazed the course in 1 hour 36 minutes. I’m not sure the route they took as we doubled their time so they had probably downed a couple brews, ate a burger and left the finish before we ever arrived. They not only had their share of luck, I believe they had our share too.
To illustrate lets look at the first few questions.
1. Ted Turner once won a cup that is named after a boat. Get your picture in front of the replica of this magnificent boat.
2. Masako is one. So is Xena. Go to this pub for your next dare.
3. Get your picture with the Fisherman. Urban Dare meets urban trees.
Here is your situation. You have started a race at 11 AM. The race starts with some San Diego Trivia questions. You got the first one correct, but so did everyone else except one team (they had to stand aside for a few minutes). The second trivia question was about a Padres baseball player who hit 3000 runs in 1990 something. All but 3 teams went with Mr. Baseball – Tony Gwinn. We were wrong it was Dave Winfield, those 3 teams took off. The folks who missed question one were back in the answer box with the rest of us. Next question we got wrong and another 3 or 4 teams took off. Next question we were in the group that got it right and we were off. Quickly pick up the clue sheet and read it. Of the questions above we knew that Ted Turner raced in the America’s Cup, we also knew a replica was moored behind Seaport Village (about 500 meters away). We had no idea what Masako and Xena were. We knew there was an art exhibit of trees along the waterfront and one of the trees was named “Fisherman”. So where do we start?
There were 12 questions and they were in no particular sequence. We could quickly answer 6 of the 12 and they were located at Seaport Village, The Embarcadero, Little Italy, Balboa Park and in the Gaslamp area of downtown. The other 6 questions would take some figuring out using the internet. Figuring which way to go would be difficult until we had all the answers, but you cannot stand around for 60 minutes while solving the clues, especially when you knew where some of the answers were. So we took off. Sloan and I (the runners) went to the “America” to get our picture. While we did that we gave the clue sheet to Robyn and Annie (our car crew) to go to Office Depot and fax to our HQ where Jo, Roger, Steve, Chet and Dave would figure it all out.
“Right here”, “watch out for the pedi-cab”, “kids on pavement ahead”, “lets cut through the parking lot”, “cut across the road”, “car coming”, “through that gap”, “aim for the end of the hedge”.
All these short sayings Sloan and I traded as we raced for the shortest route to the marina. “Around the next corner”, grab camera from side pocket, turn camera on, what the ???? The boat is not there! Okay, its gone cruising, lets find a sign and get our picture in front of the sign. No sign. Lets ask the dock hands where it might be, maybe we can get a picture of it at some other point. Nope, it left a couple of hours ago for a charity sail. Lady Luck was not with us.
This is us with the missing boat.
We raced back toward the Office Depot, called HQ and the car and told them we were out of luck and heading for the urban trees. HQ had already figured Masako and Xena were princesses and we had to go to the Princess Pub in Little Italy to get that clue. They also had figured 2 others and were working on the last 3. Our plan now was to loop from The Embarcadero to Little Italy, then on to Balboa Park and it looked like downtown before finishing at the KC BBQ where “Tom played a wild fly-boy at this bar. Go there for your last and most puzzling dare.”
The tree was a breeze and we knew where the pub was. But when we got there we had to throw a bull’s-eye on the dart board. Not either circle, but the center one!
Now darts may be a skill to some but it is luck to us. On my first throw I hit the outer circle, didn’t count. We were sharing the throws with 3 other teams, then 4 teams then 6 teams. None of us were having much luck. Two teams had hit the board thus far and that was it. Sloan hit the outer circle 4 times, didn’t count. Time was a ticken! After about 40 minutes and 8 teams taking turns trying to hit the bull they slackened the rules and allowed the outer ring. Argggh!! It was bad enough that the dare was too tough in the first place, but to change the rules part way through was not right either. And we were not given an option if we refused the dare.
While doing the dart throwing we had slipped away two blocks to get a photo at Basilone Piazza as we knew that clue. So when we took off from the pub it was up to Balboa Park and a Kate Sessions statue.
Luck was again not with us. We zigzagged up Grape to 4 th Ave and turned north. Unbeknownst to us one of the checkpoints was ½ a block away on 4 th between Grape and Fir. HQ had solved the clue “What do Whirlpool and Andromeda have in common? Go to this coffee shop for your next dare.” They are both Galaxy’s and we should have gone to the Galaxy Café. But a call to the coffee shop said they knew nothing about a contest so HQ concentrated on the Galileo Café in the Space Museum of Balboa Park.
At the park we had to throw balls with string over a ladder thing to get 11 points. Sloan tossed the first one clear across 163 (it seemed), then calmed down to strike 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 +3 and we were on our way in less than 60 seconds. The worker at that checkpoint asked if we had gone to the Galaxy. So we turned back to the café and asked the car to check it out for us. Being it was a dare there should be some activity. While we ran back to 4 th and Grape the car called HQ and were told it forget it, they had called the café and nothing was happening. Head over to Galileo’s. We runners were then told of the change in plans and turned around again. Duh? Why would the worker say something incorrect.
When we got over to the Space Museum there was nothing there so we were at a standstill of clues in the Balboa Park area. HQ had solved all other clues so we headed downtown still trying to figure this out. Did you know there are 9 letters in both Whirlpool and Andromeda? Did you know there are 3 vowels in each word? We were looking for hidden meaning in the clue and it simply was not working. They are both black holes maybe the dare is at Café Noir downtown!
Suffice to say we ran downtown, it was downhill after all. There we found the oldest bar in the Gaslamp, took a picture with the first emperor of the most populous nation on Earth at the Chinese Museum, Found an establishment that bears another nickname of the Yankee Clipper, that would be Joe DiMaggio and Joltin Joes bar. And came to a crushing defeat when the Grant Grill in the Ulysses S Grant Hotel was closed for restoration.
The clue was “This president was a graduate of the US Naval Academy. Get your picture in front of a restaurant that bears his name”. Someone came up with the Grant Grill and we never questioned it. But Grant never went to the Naval Academy, it was Jimmy Carter and there are two restaurants with his name. Both in the Hillcrest area, one a Mexican restaurant, the other a breakfast, lunch and dinner café. Dang, we would have to return UP THE HILL.
So we looked for a bus. The express was coming by in 10 minutes. We kept going back and forth about whether to wait for the bus or run, jog, walk, crawl up the hill. 12 minutes went by, no bus. We were in panic mode, two clues to locate; the Galaxy still, and now Jimmy Carters too. Both in the same general direction. 14 minutes passed and the bus came into view.
We boarded the express bus and the driver made us pull out our passes to ensure they were stamped correctly. He read everyone’s pass, what part of EXPRESS did he not understand!!!
A lady came aboard with a wheel chair, she proceeded to lock it in the bus appropriately, she had a pass and obviously did this all the time. The driver came back and checked every single 4-point attachment. He was about to take off and another wheelchair rolled up. We stopped, the bus dipped and the lift was let out again. The gentleman got on and asked about the stops, no, this is the express it does not stop where he wanted, he had to disembark. Maybe 10-12 minutes after we boarded we were rolling up 5 th Ave to Upas. It was a block or two past Jimmy Carters but we ran back, got the photo and headed for the Galaxy.
Now Hillcrest to downtown is not that far, but when you are cussing for having no luck and making really silly mistakes it takes a long time. At the Galaxy we had to solve modern trivia (the board game). We only had to answer 1 question in each category. Wow are we out of the modern era! What rap singer ??? Who cares, we don’t know any rap singers, Pass. Sloan and I don’t watch a lot of TV, we don’t read modern novels and we sure don’t know rap. We passed more questions than we even attempted to answer. Thankfully Sloan has a child, because it seemed to me the questions she got right were all something to do with children. I was useless, the only question I could answer was that Nigeria warned people about internet scams and sending money to the scammers in Nigeria.
Maybe lady luck came to us on this last checkpoint because there were no other teams so the volunteer was nice enough to zip through the questions quickly until we got one in each category.
Then it was another run down toward Seaport Village and the KC BBQ. Out last dare was to do a jigsaw puzzle. Wordlessly we put that sucker together in next to no time. Our claim to fame was that we were the fastest puzzle putter-together-ers. Because we sure were not the fastest Urban Dare-ers. We did place 11 th out of 25, but our expectations were higher than that. The optimum course was a mere 5.8 miles and we ran 13.5, add in the bus and we did more than 16 miles.
But did we have fun? Whatever! That was our team name, so we had to get over the mistakes we made and admit that we did enjoy the 3-4 hours it took us to stumble around town figuring all the clues and the locations we had to go to. Next year we hope to be back with a little luck and better skills. Bring it on!
