You may remember that one of the reasons we've been trying to build up our speed and stamina was because we were planning to walk a half marathon this fall. And you may have noticed that we haven't mentioned the half marathon in quite a while. Our friend Shannon was the one who talked us into it and then something came up, she couldn't make it and it wouldn't have been the same without her so we postponed it until next year. In the meantime, a deal came up on one of our discount websites offering this scavenger hunt type race through downtown Portland at half price. I immediately emailed Katje, saying that we'd probably suck at it but we should do it anyway because it sounded like fun and a little out of our comfort zone. And of course she agreed.
So Saturday morning the 21st we rode the Max downtown with very little idea of what to expect. From looking at the Urban Dare website we knew that we'd need to solve clues to find places where we would either take a picture to prove that we'd been there or face a challenge. We'd probably also have to ask strangers to pose for us. Fun. And WAY out of our comfort zone. So we met at Kell's Irish Pub at 11:00 as instructed, then waited until the 12:00 start time (note to selves: we don't have to be there quite so early next year).
Of course it started raining just as we were given our clue sheets, so we took shelter under a nearby awning and started attempting to solve clues. And holy cow these were hard! Things like, "Get your picture taken in front of a mural painted by Rone, an artist from Australia.", and "Donna Sheridan was played by Meryl Streep in this movie. Take your picture in front of a restaurant with this movie's name". We'd brought our internet-connected phones but found that searching on a phone is a LOT slower than on a computer, so going with our backup plan we called home and started our families looking up clues. After a few false starts (apparently 'wine pitcher' sounds a lot like 'line picture' to an 18 year old) the answers started coming in. The Yankee Champion statue is at Portland State University, the first chairman of the Portland Development Commission was Ira Keller...in retrospect we should have taken the time to figure out the clues first, planned our route and THEN started walking. It would have saved us quite a lot of zigging and zagging and a second trip out to Portland State to find a books mural.
Thank goodness we didn't have to ask six people to form a human pyramid (the example given at the Urban Dare website) - instead we got a trio of college students to do the 'see/hear/speak no evil' thing, and Katje got to pose as if she were proposing to someone. This was a highlight, as we found a wedding party doing their pictures at Keller fountain and got one of the groomsmen to participate. He was a great sport and this was a fantastic picture. The guy who checked us in at the end really should have appreciated it more.
With major amounts of help from our hubbies and my son we finally finished up in almost exactly three hours - not too shabby - and could probably have knocked a half hour off that time if we hadn't had to make that second trip to PSU. We met a lot of really nice people and learned a little about the city (it's a lot bigger on foot and when you're in a hurry!) and when we do it next year we're going into it with a PLAN. No, we're never going to get anywhere close to the winning time of 1 hour and 3 minutes, but I'm betting we had a lot more fun than the winners did anyway.
