Great Urban Racers, Are We

BFF Kevin and I successfully completed the Great Urban Race yesterday. I think I'm hooked. I might have to refocus my travel obsession on going places to compete in treasure hunts, although had we not been familiar with the city, we would have been at a big disadvantage.

So we went to the registration/starting point yesterday, having no idea what to expect. I wondered how many other people would actually have heard about this thing. I also worried that it would be a bunch of drunk college students and we'd be the ancient 30-something team trying to keep up with the kids. 

Turns out there were somewhere around 75 teams spanning in age from early-20's through 50's. Good crowd. You could tell by the serious game faces on a few of the teams that they were there to win  -- the top 3 winners got free entry into the national competition, where the grand prize is $10,000, so I suppose that's serious business...if you think you've got a shot at it. We chose to be more realistic and simply focus on finishing the race. 

At noon, the Race staff handed out envelopes to every team and told us we could open them on "Go!" What we got was a list of 12 clues and we had to solve 11 of them (you got to choose one to skip) in any order that we wanted. 

A flash of panic washed over me as I first scanned the list: the first clue was in hieroglyphic code that had to be deciphered. The second one listed a specific location - unfortunately, we had never heard of it. Another clue made reference to "the Weezer song that hit as high as #2 on the 1995 US Modern Rock tracks." There was word scramble, a riddle, a physical challenge, and, of course, a couple scavenger clues that required us to bring certain items back to the finish line with us. 

We knew we needed to make a plan, but standing amid 150 people running in all directions, our first instinct was to run, too. Right away we knew we had to get downtown for at least three of the clues, so we tried to take the bus (only public transportation is allowed) while also calling our phone-a-friend to have her start googling. After maybe 4 minutes of sitting at the bus stop and seeing no bus, we started walking. 

This brought us to the always-welcoming Grumpy's Bar, where we made the decision to use the wi-fi (I brought my laptop) and compile our list of every location we needed to visit. (And btw, Kevin gets full credit for cracking the hieroglyphics and solving the riddle.) I maintain that this was a smart move, even though we would later learn that by the time we were leaving Grumpy's with our itinerary, the first place team was 15 minutes away from crossing the finish line. They are either superhuman or had a GPS and a lot of people standing by to Google for them while they ran.

Right away, we had our "skip" clue chosen for us by failing to notice that we only had a 1-hour window to get to one of the clues - oops. I guess that saved us the trouble of having to choose. 

So off we went. First we jumped on a bus, thinking we'd head to our farthest point first. That was a fabulous plan, only we got on the wrong bus...so we found ourselves in the middle of downtown. No problem. We expertly navigated the city, banging out 5 of our clues...including this one, which required us to get a picture of 4 or more people cartwheeling in front of Candyland:

They weren't kidding about pushing you out of your comfort zone. 

After the impressive accomplishment of solving nearly half of the clues, we felt we deserved a celebratory drink. Since we chose to have this drink in the middle of Gameworks -- one of our clue locations -- we had the pleasure of pointing many teams in the right direction, while they looked at us quizzically as we sipped our cold beverages. One team actually came up and asked us why we were just sitting there. We told them we knew we weren't going to win, so we were just having fun. 

The looks on their faces was both confused and possibly angry that we weren't taking it more seriously. Perhaps as way of apology, Kevin felt compelled to start giving them answers. I was okay with one, but by the second I thought we had been congenial enough and should perhaps let them solve their own clues. I mean, it's not that fun if someone just gives you all the answers, right? (really, I was protecting their fun...)

After our downtown leg, we headed to Loring Park, where we had to complete a physical challenge involving "Buddy Walkers." It's sort of like a pair of wooden skis with ropes that you hold onto, and you have to walk in tandem so no one falls off. Falling off means starting over. I should point out here that there is a 17 inch height difference between Kevin and me. But thanks to our strategic use of "right, left, right, left," we didn't fall off!! Woohoo!

Next it was across the bridge to the sculpture garden (Clue #3: "Take a photo of both teammates in front of the real sculpture that's pictured somewhere on www.greaturbanrace.com."), then onto another bus to get to Uptown. Naturally, we got on the wrong bus AGAIN (my fault), so more walking, walking and then we were able to knock off our last 3 clues within minutes of each other. 

This is a where a more competitive team might have rushed back to cross the finish line. We, however, chose to have another celebratory drink at Liquor Lyle's. Somehow I'd never been there and Kevin felt it necessary to right this wrong immediately.

After more bus mishaps, we did finally make it back to the finish line. I believe our time was 4 hours and 15 minutes -- well clear of the 5-hour limit. Did we place? Um, no. Pretty much the top 25 teams finished in about half our time. But hey, we weren't last and we did manage to solve all of our clues correctly, so I consider it a success.  

Is it too late to become a professional treasure hunt competitor?