Swords, hair removal and firemen – City Chase 2010 recap!
Another year down, another day of fun and mayhem on the streets of Vancouver, and now we have 365 days to recover for next year’s City Chase! My legs have that kinda sore “you had a good workout” buzz, my feet are tired, I have turf burns on my knees and am missing a patch of hair from my right arm, and it was totally worthit. It always is. For those of you who didn’t read my blog from last year, shame on you. Because of that I now have to explain again what the City Chase is (everyone always asks), so here’s the reader’s digest version: you and a teammate join 300-plus other teams, are given a clue sheet with a whole bunch of locations/tasks on it, and you have a maximum of 6 hours to get to and complete 10 of these challenges before racing back to the finish line. How you do this and what order you do these challenges in is totally up to you, the only rule really is that you can only travel by foot or public transportation. Now that’s out of the way, here’s the annual awesome blow-by-blow recap of how we, Team Llamaface! completed the 2010 Vancouver City Chase.
If you saw a whole bunch of people in red jerseys, some with capes and one guy in a banana costume running around on Saturday, particularly around the start/finish line at Granville Square, that was us. As one tourist commented, “I don’t think it’s the Gay Pride parade, but I’m not sure” which, of course, made us all cheer and high five her as we ran past. It started right at 10am, when they told us to run to the Olympic torch. We were off! Adrenaline was pumping, excitement was swelling, and we still had no idea what the hell we were going to have to do. At the torch we finally got our clue sheets and set about deciphering where we needed to go. From advanced hints sent out via Facebook and Twitter on Friday night we knew that there was going to be something at Portside Park, so we decided to hop a bus right there and figure everything else out on the way.
Chasepoint #1 – 8 Legs or None
One team member had to reach into a big bowl of mealworms and wood chips and find a marble. The colour of the marble determined what your teammate had to do. I’m better with creepy crawly things than my teammate Eric, so we figured he would draw the marble, because whatever I had to do was undoubtedly going to be worse. Yep, it was. We drew the “mystery box”, which meant that I had to draw a number from a bowl and whatever number I drew was the number of Madagasgar hissing cockroaches I had to dig out of a box and put into a bowl. I’ve actually held one of these things before (long story) and knew they were dry and harmless, so I just jumped in and was done before Eric had the chance to take my photo. Nine to go.
Chasepoint #2 – Chasepoint #1
This isn’t as confusing as it looks, the Chasepoint was actually titled “Chasepoint #1″ but it was the second one we did that day, so it was our Chasepoint #2. A clue we had received via Facebook a few days before the race (but we expected this, because this is the only Chasepoint they actually have every year) said that if we raised CAD$50.00 for Right to Play we would get a Chasepoint stamp that we could pick up at one of two places on the course. Portside park was one of those two places, so fifteen minutes after the race started we had two of ten checked off. Sweet. Eight to go.
Chasepoint #3 – BOWLERAMA
The course this year was probably the most logically laid out of all seven years they have had a Vancouver City Chase, as 90% of the points followed the Canada Line Skytrain line, which is exactly what I had hoped for. The plan was to hop on the train, go to the farthest away point and work our way back, since the finish line was right beside Waterfront Station. This also gave us more time in transit to plan the rest of our route, so we headed to Richmond. The idea was to find the Richmond Lawn Bowling Club, which we, thanks to our phone-a-friend online at home, had the exact address to. Well, we get there, are standing at that exact spot, and find… nothing. It was a housing development. After wandering around for twenty frustrating minutes, including asking a whole bunch of people, including other lost Chase teams, we decided to cut our losses and abort. So we hopped back onto the train, pissed that we had spent all that time on the train for nothing. Damn.
Chasepoint #3 (revised) Fling it Good
I work at Oakridge Mall, so when the clue said to get to the frisbee golf course at Queen Elizabeth Park, I was on my home turf. We got off at the Oakridge stop (it was hard, but I resisted the urge to run into my office and say hi to my co-workers) and were soon there. One team member had to try to get a frisbee into the goal in under four shots. If they succeeded it was all good, but if it was four shots that meant the non-throwing team member had to have a strip of their arm hair waxed off. Six or more shots they would loose an eyebrow. Eric is a much better frisbee-er than I am, not to mention he’s go the arm hair of a shetland, so it was very clear right from the start he was going to throw. The feeling of helplessly watching the fate of your body hair fly through the air was nerve, wracking let me tell you! But a good first shot got him close and he was nearly done in three, but a missed “put” meant I was getting my arm waxed. Poop. That hurt. How invented this process? Medieval torturers? Thankfully you still can’t really see the missing patch of hair, but the wax didn’t all come off my arm, and when I tried to peel it off all it did was make my hands sticky, so I had to complete the rest of the race with a two-inch square of orange wax on my arm. Seven to go.
Chasepoint #4 – The Wanderers
This one was conveniently located right beside the frisbee golf, so for once we didn’t have to worry about bus schedules or how far we had to walk. Using high-tech orienteering gear (little beeper tags) and a map we had to navigate a portion of the park and clock in at 12 hidden checkpoints in order. If we got the order wrong there was a penalty. This one we made up some good time on, even passing some teams who were already on the course ahead of us. I might not know my left from my right most days, but I can sure read a map 
Four down, six to go.
Chasepoint #5 – Barefoot
This one required about 20 minutes of walking to go from Queen Elizabeth Park to Douglas Park, and we didn’t succeed in finding a bus, so our only option was to hoof it all the way. By now we were tired, but our successes at Queen ElizabethPark had us invigorated. We were in good shape. This challenge was to be tied to your partner, three-legged-race style, and dribble a ball with your foot in a slalom pattern between wine bottles. At each bottle you had to stop and pick up a glass of water and carry on a waiter’s tray, eventually making a pyramid 6 glasses high. This was frustrating, damp, and my waxy arm kept sticking to Eric, but we did it, no worries. As we were putting our shoes back on afterwards the announcement went out on the crew’s walkie-talkies that the first place team had crossed the finish line already. Damn. We were only half way there. I don’t know how they did it… they must have run the whole thing or something. Damn those uber athletic people! But we were still in pretty good shape compared to most of the other teams we encountered along the way. Five to go.
Chasepoint #6 – Blind Grams
Once again, this point was only a block away from the last, so we were there before we knew it and ready to rock. One of us had to be blindfolded and go out into a field and retrieve seven puzzle pieces, directed by their partner’s voice, and then once all pieces were gathered we could remove the blindfold and both put it together in the shape of a swan. We learned last year that Eric gives good directions (he actually does know his left from right, go figure), so I was blindfolded. Besides, nobody would believe us if we said he was the better listener ;P !!! Retrieving the pieces was cake, and putting it together only took a bit longer. Six down, four to go.
Chasepoint #7 Thumb-athalon
A quick five block walk brought us to the Rogers store at the corner of Oak adn 15th, where we both picked up blackberry smartphones. We sere seperated, and Eric got a clue sheet with 6 questions on it, which he texted to me. I had to run around the neighbourhood and find the answers, like what the cost of a shwarma plate was at the nearby flafal joint, or how much the transaction fee was at the ATM inside Esquires Coffee. The questions were the easy part, but for a tech newbie like me, figuring out how to text/send pics back to Eric took 90% of the time! All told, though, we powered through this and were soon on our way again. Three to go.
Chasepoint #8 Local Heroes
Another short five minute walk got us to the plaza behind City Square mall, and a whole bunch of firemen. Insert happy dance here. When I wasn’t staring at the firemen we had to don firemen’s hats and jackets, drag a weighted dummy around a course, knock over a cone by spraying a firehose, unroll a full-length firehose and then roll it back up and carry it over a marked line. This is actually the identaical chasepoint they had in East Vancouver last year, so Eric and I powered through this, already knowing exactly what to do. Which was good, because it gave me more time to stare at the firemen. Mmmm, firemen…. Two to go!
Chasepoint #9 – National Defense
This is where reading what the challenges are, not just if their location is convenient, is a good thing. We didn’t do this. I have a tendancy to never do this. Hence the fact that last year Eric had to eat canned smoked oysters adn make this awesome gag/puke sound. Still apologizing for that one. A few blocks’ walk got us to Jonathan Rogers Park, just off Broadway, and it was only when we rounded the corner that we realized this was a military obsticle course. Crap. This is the type of chasepoint that the really athletic people do. Like the Olympic Triatheletethat won in Montreal. He would have been all over this. We, on the other hand, actually went so far as to pull out the clue sheet, determine there really was nothing else remotely close to us and this fit so perfectly in our master plan, and resign ourselves to the fact that we had to do the freaking thing. At this point in the day anything more than a strong walk took effort, so, like prisoners walking the green mile, we reluctantly reported for duty, Sir. They smeared war paint on our faces and fitted us with 20-lb tactical vests and helmets, then our (incredibly nice – we lucked out) drill seargenthad us run up and down the embankment four times, then do 15 push ups and 15 sit ups. Then came the belly crawl, which tore up the insides of my knees and got a really big wad of dead grass stuck to the wax blob on my arm. Eric, exhausted and the last in line, cried “but I make video games!” as he put what effort he had left into the crawl. Hilarious. But we weren’t done. That would have been too easy. Run ten feet, drop to your belly, jump up and repeat the pattern 5 times. Then, holding hands withanother team, run the lengthof the football field and back, ending with a scramble over a picnic table. Suddenly I felt like a Survivor contestant, the slow one who gets dragged along by their teammates when they’re all tied together for a challenge. Not good, but we were done. One to go!
Chasepoint #10 – En Garde
After a few minutes to recover, it was back onto the Canada Line to Waterfront station and our last challenge of the day. We had specifically worked it so that this point was our last: it was close to the finish line, we knew where it was without assistance, and I was not going home until I’d done the swordfighting chasepoint. This is the third year they have had fencing/swordplay, and the first two I had missed because it just wasn’t logical to go all the way there on the route I was running. This year, however, they had given us the clue the night before (in the form of a facebook-posted crossword I was frantically filling in at 11:30 pm) of Academie Duello, the fencing academy right downtown. Perfect. We could make our route specifically so this one was included. So we crawled in, were fitted withfencing helmets, and I got on a wooden horse (can’t help but insert the Old Spice parody here: we now smell like the team you want your team to smell like, and I’m on a horse) holding a shield and six foot wooden spear. Eric pushed the horse along a course and I had to spear 3 rings as we went. Then off the horse, he had to do 15 diamond push ups while I fought off an attacker with a longsword. SWEEEEEEEEEEEEET! This wasn’t a play sword, either, it was ten pounds of ting!ting!ting! metal and a crazy guy swinging at my head. Let me tell you, if it wasn’t for that helmet, I wouldn’t have a head, because his sword was bouncing off me like nobody’s business. After that, to prove that torture is always fair, I had to do 15 burpies(I HATE BURPIES) while Eric defended himself with two metal shields against an equally crazy guy wielding two swords at his head. Yay helmets. We made it out barely alive, but we were done!
The finish line was only three blocks away, so we sprinted (read: walked until we knew the people holding the ribbon could see us then ran to make it look like we had energy left) across it. Done! Chased and conquered. We were exhausted, happy, hadn’t fought all day, and thought we had done pretty good. The official results were just posted today (if you’re not first you’re in the dark for a few days following the Chase, as it takes a few days for the judges to make sure everything is accurate ), and we finished in 98th place! Out of 351 teams! In seven years this is the first time I’ve ever broken the 100 mark, and we beat our record from last year by over a hundred teams. High five!
All told it was awesome, fun, exhausting and I’m totally doing it again next year!