On Saturday, my friend and I, undertook the Great Urban Race Challenge. It is an amazing race style race set in different cities around the country. I am lucky enough to live within an hour of one of those cities. I have lived here for a few years, but not gotten to Denver as much as I thought I would. It was a good thing Bridget knew how to get around. All of the teams dressed up in costumes. We were the 80 chicks. That came about when we were discussing what our team name should be. I meant to say we should be the 80's chicks, but misspoke and it came out the 80 chicks. I started laughing, because these costumes immediately came to mind.
My son absolutely love Mario brothers, so when he saw these girls he had to have a picture. I was so excited for the race that we left the house way to early and ended up having to wait an hour before we could even check in and then had to wait another hour until the race started. Once we got there we had to fill out the standard "I won't sue" waiver and then got our numbers. We had to put our numbers on our legs because of our costumes. Once 12:00 rolled around we were able to open our clue packets. Usually at a race when someone says go you see a mass of people running, in this race your saw a lot of people immediately sitting. We all had 12 clues that needed to be solved and then you could go. Once we had our clues solved and plotted on a map, we were able to leave. (not a requirement, but a smart way to do it.) We were one of the last people to leave the start.
One of our clues was a tick tack toe board. You had to do challenges as you were out and about. One of the challenges was to sit on a strangers lap. This poor guys was the first guy to ask us what we were doing. (Our costumes got that question a lot.) After we told him we asked if we could do our challenge. He was very nice about it.
Our first store challenge was to go into a store called rocket fizz. They had a wall of soda and we had a word scramble. We had to find four different sodas on the wall and eliminate the letters in our word scramble to find the favorite store brand. (It was Jelopeno, I know that's spelled wrong.) At each location we had to take a picture and get some kind of business card, matches, postcard or something to show we were there.
Our next stop off was in a parking garage, quite a walk from where we were. Chevy was one of the sponsor, so there was a Chevy challenge. We had to solve an equation that had to do with the car behind us. That one was pretty quick, but the elevator ride down was a bit unsettling. Have you ever been on an elevator that starts way to quickly? Getting to the next challenge was quite a walk. I did have to ask Bridget if she knew what a straight line was. We ended up going down a street to far and having to go around the block, but we did get to talk to a very nice woman at the bus stop. She was very concerned about us and asked if we needed anything to eat and if we had water.
After we got to the next challenge we found that we had a choice of laying on a bed of nails, walking on stilts or snake charming. I found out after I had picked the "snake charming" consisted of holding up a boa. I could have done that. However, I chose the stilts. It was hard getting up on them, but once I was up it was pretty fun. Once you got down though it felt weird walking.
The next challenge was less of a walk. Once we got there we discovered Bridget had to tape a alkaseltzer tablet to her forehead. I had to spray her with a water gun until it dissolved. I wish we had a picture of that.
The next one was very close, but, um, yeah, I think we probably added a half mile. We ended up going a different direction and went around the block. This challenge was at a place called Adrenalin. It had a bunch of sports stuff from different teams. We had to figure out what different teams were represented by a small bit of the team logo. We also had to check in there on face book. If you look closely at the girls behind us in the picture, you can see the look on their faces. There was a guy on another team who was cussing out the employees because he had to check in and didn't want to.
The next one was right around the corner, thankfully. We had to find this small art gallery and find this artist. Simple enough (except the clue was really obscure and we had to ask other teams if they had figured it out to find the place).
Teams were very nice to each other. This was a great race. We still had not completed the tic tac toe. One of the things we were going to do was give flowers to a stranger, but we could not find a place to get flowers. I told Bridget that if I could find ten strangers we would do the high fiving ten strangers. Right after that I looked across the street and found eight people at a bus stop and three standing on a corner. We asked then if they could help us (because we were in a race) and everyone was very nice about it. (I know when you just counted 8+3 you came up with eleven and not ten, but we did need someone to video tape us).
The last thing on the checkerboard was to get a picture of us skipping across an intersection. Lucky for us as we were walking back up to another challenge we crossed over the closed intersection that was being prepared for a race that is going on today. We were able to skip back and forth until we got the picture right.
Our next challenge was to get an acupuncture needle. I let Bridget do that one.
This next challenge was quite a walk away. We had to buy a few item to donate to the Ronald Mcdonald house.
For this challenge we had to throw popcorn at each other until one of us caught one in our mouths. The popcorn was very good (as long as you don't choke on it as you're walking). After this challenge we were running out of time and had a long walk back. We decided to take a penalty on our last clue (we were allowed to skip one clue, for every clue missed after that there was a 30 minute penalty).
There was a costume contest also, but we didn't win. I think we got the most looks around town, but it was judged by just the people in the bar.
Look back into the right hand corner of the picture, you will see a bride in white and her bridesmaids in yellow. This was kind of her bachlorette party. She promised if she won she would throw her bouquet. She did win and sh did throw and guess who caught it......
My son.
The kids had been asking me all day if they could eat a peep. They finally got to at the end. It was a fun, fun day, but now I am sore and exhausted. So when can I sign up for next year?
This quilt is a colorful one my mom started and she gave it to me to finish. It seems like a pretty easy pattern. Lots of halfsquare triangles. It's just getting to it that is the problem. With my husband retiring we have been very busy getting everything ready for all of the company. We had a late winter here in Colorado. We had snow and cold nights well into May. We have finally gotten our garden planted. I am also working on two quilts from a mystery quilt I did a few years ago. Is it still a mystery if you know what it's going to look like?
So we finally got to work on our garden. I love the results of a garden. I love to can and I love all of the fresh food that comes from it. I hate weeding, but I know that will come and I am hoping I can keep up on it this year. My sweet husband Mike got out on the first morning we weren't having crazy strong wind and got the garden tilled for me. It was much easier to plant everything with him doing that. This year we planted corn, beans, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and herbs. We don't have a very big garden, so we try to squeeze in as much as we can. 
