It was a little weird being in Australia, on the other side of the country from Perth, and doing this whole City Chase thing again. I kind of just wanted to win, and maybe that’s why I didn’t. There were 117 teams registered for the inaugural race and Nick Jelinek flew in from Canada to kick start the race. It started outside the Arts Centre on Melbourne’s south bank with the usual warm-up routine. It lacked a little of the excitement that normally reverberates around the crowd, but mostly because no one had any idea what they were about to do.  Except me. And Nick got me up on stage the tell everyone about how this was my 12th race and I came 2nd place in the worlds and it was my birthday, and then wrote, Happy Birthday all over my face with thick black marker. If it was meant to intimidate everyone, it worked.

It started with a mini scavenger hunt which TOTALLY threw me. I haven’t seen that in ages. I had nothing. And we were nowhere near any public. Thank goodness, we got the stuff off another team who had extras (a bottle top, a foreign coin, and a business card) and we got our clue sheets.  Then it started to rain, and then it turned into a downpour and then a monsoon and it didn’t really stop until we crossed the finish line. By the time we ran to the tram stop to plan, my map was already turned to soup and my clue sheet in about 12 soggy peices. There were 14 CPs and they were all VERY cryptic. Things like, CP2 # “Such is life”. What????? It took us about 25 minutes of planning and phoning and work out where all 14 locations were (the longest I’ve ever taken), and even then we were a little unsure. Not knowing Melbourne was going to be much more challenging than I thought.

First we took the 96 tram to St Kilda (south on the beach). The one mandatory CP was, “Add the Brunswick tram # with the Carlton tram # and subtract the number of stops on the circle tram route and add the East Kew bus # with the last three digits of the transit help line and take your answer to the end of the 96 route.” So we did that first.  It seemed that this was the most southerly CP and so we decided to head there and work our way back to the city on foot … in the rain. But the 96 tram didn’t come for ages, and it turns out there was another tram right from the start line that also went in the general vicinity of the terminus of the 96.  Everyone took that one.  That’s where we lost our race … right there.

After that it was flawless … we dropped off our answer (which was wrong so took a couple of re-dos) and ran to do the Volvo challenge (find a stranger to sit in the car and sing Abba with you), then ran to the bootcamp challenge (whimpy). We made a slight route error and had to scale a high railway fence with barbwire on top which resulted in puncture wounds for both Tim and I. Then off to the Nat Geo challenge at a beer house, which was also a bit silly. Unfortunately, we decided to skip the nude painting challenge because it was a bit out of the way. Dang it!!  I was so looking forward to that!! Tim is really cute! 

We then took a tram and did some more running to the south Melbourne markets where they had a roulette game set up and you had to play for eating something gross. Except I got lucky and got the one square with the candy on it. Then we took another tram into the downtown and did another long run out to the marina to get a snake wrapped around our necks. Cool. The rest was in the downtown core — a Nokia CP, the old Melbourne jail, a funky nightclub and then a martial arts gym for some pillow fighting. And we were done. As I said, the actual challenges were exceptionally whimpy but I loved the puzzle of the city and the cluesheet and the whole rogaine aspect to it.  We came 5th, 25 minutes behind 1st place.

Then Nick and Ross and Dave (the aussie directors) took Tim and I out to a very sweet tapas and beer bar for my birthday and we celebrated for a few hours. It was definitely a highlight … I love those guys.

So, that’s it. Tim is hooked.  He was already planning on being in north america for the 2nd half of this year and wants me to do Vancouver City Chase with him. Oh man … will I ever quit??

Nicki

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 8:15 am and is filed under City Chase. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.