Urban assault

My friend kaitlin found this really cool bike ride/race about a month ago. I didn't have my schedule until the week before, so as soon as I knew i could do it, we signed up. There were 4 of us, two teams of 2. It was a like a road rally/bike race. So we kinda' had to know a little bit about Seattle, ok, a lot about it. BUT... no one on our teams was actually from here. In fact no one on our teams had been here for more than a year. Needless to say we had a bit of a disadvantage, which was fine because we were just in it for the fun and the fact that it was sponsored by new belgium brewery. few weeks ago

So the race started at 10 am, but we had to be there at 9 to sign some papers. At the beginning of the week we decided that our teams would be the Pirate Nurses, since, well duh, we were all nurses. Kaitlin had some really cool shirts made up and put our names on them and my teammate Nora bought these fun jolly rogers flags to attach to our bikes. The goal of the assault was to get to 5 check points around the city and either answer puzzles or do some kind of obstacle course.

The first stop was REI where we had to roam the grounds of the mountain bike trail and find letters and then unscramble them to earn proof that we really did finish. We called Tony at work and had him help us out. Once we got outta there, it was a serious uphill climb to the next stop. Anyone who has been here has an idea about the hill situation, anyone who hasn't visited, just know that the ER that i work for it on the 6th floor and it is "ground" level and it is only one street from the 1st floor ( so the hill ascends nearly 60 feet between one block and it sucks to bike up!!!)

We got to the next checkpoint and had no idea about the answer to the question. It was a bunny missing an ear and some seemingly random quote. I called a friend of mine that has lived here his whole life and he had no idea. Somehow we decided it was a coffee or tea shop, so he gave me the phone number to Remedy Teas where the girl that answered the phone couldn't have been nicer. I very charmingly, as my friends said, explained the situation and she asked everyone at the place if they knew what the hell i was talking about. As it turns out the bunny is a mascot for a biking club in the city. So we had to do a little uphill ( don't ask me, but the laws of uphill/downhill don't work here, even though we went uphill to get to the last checkpoint, we still had a lot of uphill on the way back!!!!)

From there we had to get to a lot of other check points, but once we got to them they were not brain busters, but physical activities that were sooooo much fun. In one we had to use mini kegs as stilts and race across this park. In another we had to ride on tiny bikes with our partner on the pegs and she had to joust some rings that were on traffic cones. The last obstacle was "human wheelbarrel". In this one, one of the teammates had to hold onto a wheel while the other held her legs and pushed her around the course. It was really fun! We had two checkpoints left, but after 4 hours of riding, my friends wanted to get to the beer booth before they closed. So we skipped the last two checkpoints and took a break.

Afterwards there was food and beer and live music, no to mention a raffle and the prizes.,

I won a Timbuk2 messenger bag ( i was going to buy one recently but they are like 200 bucks) for knowing a Santogold song!

Afterwards, we biked back to my place and everyone went there separate ways...after all we needed showers and naps!

There is one in Chicago when i get home, sometime in september, i hope that i can convinve tony and some other that we should all do it!!!