My husband and I are fans of TV's "The Amazing Race," although we'd never test 18 years of wedded semi-bliss with weeks of stress racing around the world. When I saw an ad for our local Urban Challenge race, I knew we had to do it. We are strictly walkers, but we are champions at Trivial Pursuit. We would have to see if brains would carry us through.
Race morning we arrived at the headquarters at the Patagonia store. First up was a 30-question trivia quiz to seed the teams. In Portland, there were 48 teams. The other teams looked uniformly younger and fitter than Rich and I - real runners. We were crushed to get only 20 of the 30 trivia questions correct. However, that put us in 8th position to start, in the second wave, so we scored well above the pack.
Each team is issued a digital camera. You must take a photo of the two of you at the correct checkpoint, in order. Different teams start at different checkpoints, we happened to draw checkpoint 1 as our starting point. At the send-off, you receive your sheet of clues and you are off.
Help, We Need a Lifeline!
We were in immediate trouble. Truly clever teams have lifelines set up - friends at home with a phone and internet connection, or even patrolling the streets for them. Rich and I had brought along the Thomas Guide map book and the thinner set of Yellow Pages. I hadn't intended to carry the Yellow Pages, either. We hadn't lined up anybody to be our support.But the first question was to find a shop whose name was a Hendrix tune covered by Sting and Sheryl Crow. We were stumped. Rich called our friend Mike, noted music fan with an internet connection, who luckily was awake and at home. At first he suggested Purple Haze, but the only store with that name wasn't within the 1 mile distance the clue stated. After several minutes he called back with "Little Wing." Voila, my Yellow Pages produced an address just a few blocks away.
The second and third clue were easier puzzles. DCCL 1050 I translated in nanoseconds from Latin to English and back and produced the 750 ML restaurant, also nearby. The third checkpoint was a word scramble - I love word scrambles. But I need to sit down to mull them over, so we did. The clue asked "Do they sell dolls, too?" and I could pull out the word "voodoo." Great. But the Yellow Pages in my backpack and at a nearby phone booth listed only the Voodoo Lounge, which didn't fit the remaining letters. I toyed with the remaining six letters when "donuts" finally popped out. I remembered the article I read about the Voodoo Donuts shop somewhere in Old Town. Mike couldn't locate Voodoo Donuts on the internet. We zipped over to to Old Town and stopped at the venerable Benson Hotel and asked the doorperson. She immediately pointed us to 3rd and Ankeny. Hey, now we were being Oswald and Danny, our favorite schmoozing team from "The Amazing Race," getting good info from people on the street.
