City Chase!!
Let me clear my throat...ahem. Yesterday, my friend Rosa and I went downtown for the first ever Seattle City Chase. If you haven't heard about City Chase, you must be living in a rock, or in one of the many thousands of places around the world that DON'T host City Chase. Check it out here. Basically, it's like the Amazing Race (from what I hear anyway), but it's based all in one particular city. You have to do a bunch of challenges, collect challenge points, and then race back to the finish line when you have completed all your challenges. There are only two forms of transportation: Public Transport, and your fricken Feet, baby!
Never having done one of these events before, I was pretty excited to get down there and start tearing shit up. We arrived downtown at a rain soaked Westlake Center early, got our swag, which included a couple t-shirts (which we had to wear for the competition), two energy-saving light bulbs, and various coupons for places such as REI, etc. The whole thing was put on by Palm (of Palm Pilot fame), so we of course got propaganda from them. After eyeballing the competition for awhile, we were warmed up by some quick calisthenic exercises performed by what looked like Mork and Mindy, in their 70s era track suits.
At precisely 10:00, we were issued a list of items to find for a scavenger hunt. We had to complete the scavenger hunt in order to get our clue sheet for the real race. Rosa and I made quick work of the scavenger hunt, collecting among other things, a wriggling worm, a 16 year old boy, a lipstick kiss on the cheek (ooh la la!) and the answers to many rediculous and inconsequential questions. We were then off like a shot to quickly sit down on the corner, and read over all the various places we needed to go. In essence, there were 14 challenge points offered, and in order to finish, each team had to collect 10 points. It didn't matter so much which points were collected.
first, we went down Pike to a coffee stand where we had to taste some coffee and tell the barrista which was which. It was like the Pepsi Challenge, but with three kinds of coffee. We were successful, because both of us drink coffee like there's no tomorrow. That one was kind of boring. "What kind of hokey, two-bit operation is this?" I said to myself. But next we ran to a restaurant to apparently be persuaded by the Palm company to use their crappy phones. Our challenge was to do a bunch of shit, while either filming or taking pictures with one of their "smart" phones. It was pretty dumb, but we made it.
As we were doing this challenge, we spotted one of the next challenges on our list: Challenge point 8 - City Fish Market. I rolled up on this challenge like a man possessed. "What's the deal here?" I asked. The people said that I had to cast one die, and it would decide my fate. I rolled the die, got a five, and noticed that I had to eat two fish. No problem, says I. I was hungry. I looked hungrily into the basket of whole, raw fish that they had. They actually had a choice of the raw fish, or pickled herring. The herring smelled horrible. I should tell you that I knew there would be some form of eating something you don't want to eat in this competition. I was expecting bugs. This was just raw fish. I enjoy raw fish about as much as anybody can. I've eaten plenty of whole raw fish while living in Japan and teaching elementary school - it was part of their lunch.
I asked the man to place the two fish in my hand, and I eagerly crunched into the first one, taking the whole head off in my first bite. The gasps from the crowd were priceless, and I made it my mission to gross everyone out. My second bite got through about the first half of that fish, and I made a gagging motion toward the workers. Just as they thought I would throw up on them, I pulled a string of backbone from my mouth and asked the guy if I had to eat that as well. He said no. Long story short, I killed with the fish. I watched somebody else blow chunks. heh.
After that, we were off to REI for a challenge - more crap with cell phones. Rosa had to text me questions from one phone, and I had to find the answers inside the store, and text them back. We were naturals at this, as I go to REI about every week. We kicked ass at this one. But on the way to REI was the real adventure. An old woman grabbed me as we were running down the street, and demanded to know where the fucking visitors' center was. I looked back, and immediately saw a sign for the visitors' center. I thought that was weird, but oh well. I pointed it out to her, and was about to run off, when she says, "Well, that way is all uphill, and I shrank two inches last year. I'm not sure if..." and as she started to tell me her life story, I got a small insight into just how competitive Rosa really is, when she grabbed me by the arm, taking a bit of flesh off, and giving me an indian burn I won't soon forget, and yells "THAT'S TOO BAD!" while nearly carrying me up the street to REI. About 50 feet up the road, I got the "Don't ever make eye contact with old ladies" speech. I concurred.
From REI it was off to the UW (by bus) for 1. a (very abbreviated) SAT, 2. a kayaking adventure on Lake Union, and 3. a jog to the soccer pitch at the IMA, where we found the people tearing down the obstacle course we were about to run, due to the whether. They punched our ticket anyway, as we still had to answer some questions when we got there, but we got out of that one pretty easily. Our SAT took about 25 minutes, and it made me want to kill them. Stupid fricken questions! The kayaking was the best part of the day, as we kicked the shit out of all the people around us. Rosa faced her deathly fear of water, and we both got pretty damn wet.
After that, we were onto what we thought was the home stretch. We had succesfully completed 8 tasks, and we just had to do two more. They were both going to be easy. The first: take somebody's old energy wasting lightbulb, and replace it with one of the bulbs in our swag bag. The second: go to Seattle Works (the charity we had partnered with) to turn in our pledge sheets. We figured we'd kill two birds with one stone. At this point, it was getting on towards 3:00 and we were racing against time to get everything done by the 4:00 deadline. We had googled the address of Seattle Works on Rosa's phone earlier in the day, so we knew it was just a short ride on the 48 bus from the UW to the east Capitol Hill/west Madison area. We sprinted to catch the 48 that was going by us. The driver saw us, wouldn't stop, but pointed about two blocks up and drove slowly beside us for most of the way until Rosa told me she was about to puke. We then walked very fast, and somehow caught the bus. We were thanking our lucky stars, and our lord and savior, Jemus. We quickly got off the bus at the corner of 5th and 23rd ave. We just had to walk four blocks to the office, and somewhere along the way, change a bulb.
We walked up to the first house with an open screen door. I knocked, and the twenty-something girl that was STANDING DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ME IN THE DOORWAY, yelled "Momma! Somebody's at the door!" Momma apparently wasn't listening. So she yelled again. Meanwhile, I'm thinking to myself that I'm about to just open the door and start talking. Finally, Momma comes to the door. I'm not kidding when I say that I waited for about two whole minutes. So we tell Momma that we're in a race, we show her our mission sheet, and ask her if she wouldn't mind changing out one of her old shitty light bulbs for a shiny new one. She then looks around her, looks up, looks down, and says "We're in the middle of a dinner here. I don't have time for all this nonsense," at which time Rosa grabs me by the arm, and yells "Okay, thanks!"
We were off like a shot down the street. Now there were no more houses with anybody around, and we were getting closer and closer to the Seattle Works office. We round the corner, and we see the address where we need to be. We walk right up to that address, look at the door, and low and behold, we find that we are at the Seattle WIC office. The fucking Seattle WIC office!!! We quickly run next door to a floral shop, ask the lady at the front A: to give us an old shitty bulb and we'll switch her out with a new one, (which she does) and B: to google the Seattle Works place. She does, and doesn't find anything. Then we get her to go onto the City Chase website to find it. She does, and finds the address to be in fucking Queen Anne of all places! We thank her and begin running out the door, but she starts talking, and wants to discuss the whole concept of the City Chase with us. For fuck's sake! Rosa just grabs my arm, yells "Thank You!" and runs out with me streaming behind her like the tired balloon that was also in my arms (we had to pick up two balloons earlier in the competition, and they were to be filled with helium, and floating over our heads when we ran across the finish line).
We quickly hopped on the #12 bus to downtown, and then tried to catch one of the many, many buses that went to Queen Anne. None of them came. We watched the time tick slowly away, and along with it, our chances at becoming the Seattle City Chase champions. Eventually, it was 3:55, and realizing that the finish line closed at 4:00, we just hopped on the 70 bus, and rode it to Jillians Billiards, where the finish line was. We limped sadly across the finish line, and walked in with our balloons trailing behind us instead of proudly bouncing over our heads. The judges told us we didn't have all 10 of our challenges ticked off. We told the judges that we googled the address of Seattle Works, and showed them what came up on the phone. They were shocked (but didn't really seem to care all that much), and of course, it didn't matter anyway. The winning team had finished in 3 hours 29 minutes. Here we were coming in at just over 6 hours. Though our dreams of becoming this year's champions were dashed, we now know that next year we will be back to kick the shit out of everybody in Seattle!
It still kicked ass. Someday I'll tell you about all the stuff we didn't do, but should have, because we actually went way too far out of our way for some of the challenges, and could've gotten done much quicker had we gone to the art school and painted the nude model (dammit!!) Oh well. Next year!
Never having done one of these events before, I was pretty excited to get down there and start tearing shit up. We arrived downtown at a rain soaked Westlake Center early, got our swag, which included a couple t-shirts (which we had to wear for the competition), two energy-saving light bulbs, and various coupons for places such as REI, etc. The whole thing was put on by Palm (of Palm Pilot fame), so we of course got propaganda from them. After eyeballing the competition for awhile, we were warmed up by some quick calisthenic exercises performed by what looked like Mork and Mindy, in their 70s era track suits.
At precisely 10:00, we were issued a list of items to find for a scavenger hunt. We had to complete the scavenger hunt in order to get our clue sheet for the real race. Rosa and I made quick work of the scavenger hunt, collecting among other things, a wriggling worm, a 16 year old boy, a lipstick kiss on the cheek (ooh la la!) and the answers to many rediculous and inconsequential questions. We were then off like a shot to quickly sit down on the corner, and read over all the various places we needed to go. In essence, there were 14 challenge points offered, and in order to finish, each team had to collect 10 points. It didn't matter so much which points were collected.
first, we went down Pike to a coffee stand where we had to taste some coffee and tell the barrista which was which. It was like the Pepsi Challenge, but with three kinds of coffee. We were successful, because both of us drink coffee like there's no tomorrow. That one was kind of boring. "What kind of hokey, two-bit operation is this?" I said to myself. But next we ran to a restaurant to apparently be persuaded by the Palm company to use their crappy phones. Our challenge was to do a bunch of shit, while either filming or taking pictures with one of their "smart" phones. It was pretty dumb, but we made it.
As we were doing this challenge, we spotted one of the next challenges on our list: Challenge point 8 - City Fish Market. I rolled up on this challenge like a man possessed. "What's the deal here?" I asked. The people said that I had to cast one die, and it would decide my fate. I rolled the die, got a five, and noticed that I had to eat two fish. No problem, says I. I was hungry. I looked hungrily into the basket of whole, raw fish that they had. They actually had a choice of the raw fish, or pickled herring. The herring smelled horrible. I should tell you that I knew there would be some form of eating something you don't want to eat in this competition. I was expecting bugs. This was just raw fish. I enjoy raw fish about as much as anybody can. I've eaten plenty of whole raw fish while living in Japan and teaching elementary school - it was part of their lunch.
I asked the man to place the two fish in my hand, and I eagerly crunched into the first one, taking the whole head off in my first bite. The gasps from the crowd were priceless, and I made it my mission to gross everyone out. My second bite got through about the first half of that fish, and I made a gagging motion toward the workers. Just as they thought I would throw up on them, I pulled a string of backbone from my mouth and asked the guy if I had to eat that as well. He said no. Long story short, I killed with the fish. I watched somebody else blow chunks. heh.
After that, we were off to REI for a challenge - more crap with cell phones. Rosa had to text me questions from one phone, and I had to find the answers inside the store, and text them back. We were naturals at this, as I go to REI about every week. We kicked ass at this one. But on the way to REI was the real adventure. An old woman grabbed me as we were running down the street, and demanded to know where the fucking visitors' center was. I looked back, and immediately saw a sign for the visitors' center. I thought that was weird, but oh well. I pointed it out to her, and was about to run off, when she says, "Well, that way is all uphill, and I shrank two inches last year. I'm not sure if..." and as she started to tell me her life story, I got a small insight into just how competitive Rosa really is, when she grabbed me by the arm, taking a bit of flesh off, and giving me an indian burn I won't soon forget, and yells "THAT'S TOO BAD!" while nearly carrying me up the street to REI. About 50 feet up the road, I got the "Don't ever make eye contact with old ladies" speech. I concurred.
From REI it was off to the UW (by bus) for 1. a (very abbreviated) SAT, 2. a kayaking adventure on Lake Union, and 3. a jog to the soccer pitch at the IMA, where we found the people tearing down the obstacle course we were about to run, due to the whether. They punched our ticket anyway, as we still had to answer some questions when we got there, but we got out of that one pretty easily. Our SAT took about 25 minutes, and it made me want to kill them. Stupid fricken questions! The kayaking was the best part of the day, as we kicked the shit out of all the people around us. Rosa faced her deathly fear of water, and we both got pretty damn wet.
After that, we were onto what we thought was the home stretch. We had succesfully completed 8 tasks, and we just had to do two more. They were both going to be easy. The first: take somebody's old energy wasting lightbulb, and replace it with one of the bulbs in our swag bag. The second: go to Seattle Works (the charity we had partnered with) to turn in our pledge sheets. We figured we'd kill two birds with one stone. At this point, it was getting on towards 3:00 and we were racing against time to get everything done by the 4:00 deadline. We had googled the address of Seattle Works on Rosa's phone earlier in the day, so we knew it was just a short ride on the 48 bus from the UW to the east Capitol Hill/west Madison area. We sprinted to catch the 48 that was going by us. The driver saw us, wouldn't stop, but pointed about two blocks up and drove slowly beside us for most of the way until Rosa told me she was about to puke. We then walked very fast, and somehow caught the bus. We were thanking our lucky stars, and our lord and savior, Jemus. We quickly got off the bus at the corner of 5th and 23rd ave. We just had to walk four blocks to the office, and somewhere along the way, change a bulb.
We walked up to the first house with an open screen door. I knocked, and the twenty-something girl that was STANDING DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF ME IN THE DOORWAY, yelled "Momma! Somebody's at the door!" Momma apparently wasn't listening. So she yelled again. Meanwhile, I'm thinking to myself that I'm about to just open the door and start talking. Finally, Momma comes to the door. I'm not kidding when I say that I waited for about two whole minutes. So we tell Momma that we're in a race, we show her our mission sheet, and ask her if she wouldn't mind changing out one of her old shitty light bulbs for a shiny new one. She then looks around her, looks up, looks down, and says "We're in the middle of a dinner here. I don't have time for all this nonsense," at which time Rosa grabs me by the arm, and yells "Okay, thanks!"
We were off like a shot down the street. Now there were no more houses with anybody around, and we were getting closer and closer to the Seattle Works office. We round the corner, and we see the address where we need to be. We walk right up to that address, look at the door, and low and behold, we find that we are at the Seattle WIC office. The fucking Seattle WIC office!!! We quickly run next door to a floral shop, ask the lady at the front A: to give us an old shitty bulb and we'll switch her out with a new one, (which she does) and B: to google the Seattle Works place. She does, and doesn't find anything. Then we get her to go onto the City Chase website to find it. She does, and finds the address to be in fucking Queen Anne of all places! We thank her and begin running out the door, but she starts talking, and wants to discuss the whole concept of the City Chase with us. For fuck's sake! Rosa just grabs my arm, yells "Thank You!" and runs out with me streaming behind her like the tired balloon that was also in my arms (we had to pick up two balloons earlier in the competition, and they were to be filled with helium, and floating over our heads when we ran across the finish line).
We quickly hopped on the #12 bus to downtown, and then tried to catch one of the many, many buses that went to Queen Anne. None of them came. We watched the time tick slowly away, and along with it, our chances at becoming the Seattle City Chase champions. Eventually, it was 3:55, and realizing that the finish line closed at 4:00, we just hopped on the 70 bus, and rode it to Jillians Billiards, where the finish line was. We limped sadly across the finish line, and walked in with our balloons trailing behind us instead of proudly bouncing over our heads. The judges told us we didn't have all 10 of our challenges ticked off. We told the judges that we googled the address of Seattle Works, and showed them what came up on the phone. They were shocked (but didn't really seem to care all that much), and of course, it didn't matter anyway. The winning team had finished in 3 hours 29 minutes. Here we were coming in at just over 6 hours. Though our dreams of becoming this year's champions were dashed, we now know that next year we will be back to kick the shit out of everybody in Seattle!
It still kicked ass. Someday I'll tell you about all the stuff we didn't do, but should have, because we actually went way too far out of our way for some of the challenges, and could've gotten done much quicker had we gone to the art school and painted the nude model (dammit!!) Oh well. Next year!
posted by spookydonkey at 1:20 AM
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