BirtherWatch: Hawaii to Make "STFU Birthers" Official?
Wee Epic Masterpiece Theatre: Travis Lampe Exhibit At Rotofugi
Downtown Sound Roster Revealed, Music Lovers Squeal
Detailed: The Bookbinder, Amanda Love of LoveLeaf Press
Quigley Sets Out To Honor "Go Cubs Go" Songwriter
We might not have won, but we declared victory anyway.
The spirit of the Chase was obvious from the beginning - a very nice lady handed me an extra package of donuts she found (“something expired”), and I was happy to let another team snap a photo of my tattoo. (I know what you’re thinking, but it’s on my neck. Sorry to disappoint.) Anyway, we had our list together in no time.
We were a little surprised to find several of the “chasepoints” repeated from last year - this was our first year participating, but we’d seen this video from 2008 and heard some helpful hints from past Chasers. The prior knowledge proved useful - we headed straight for Navy Pier to rappel down a big-ass building, and, call me a prude, I declared that I would be skipping strip bowling at Lucky Strike.
These guys were prepared for anything.
When I said "big-ass building," I meant it.
More than six hours after we started, we finally walked across the finish line and right up to the bar for our “free” beers. Most people we talked to agreed that the strategy required to win - heading to the most convenient/least crowded checkpoints - probably meant skipping the most fun events. Out of almost 900 teams, only 360 finished in less than six hours. City Chase has just posted their pictures from the day here.
We’d be curious to know what route was taken by the winning team, whose time was two hours, 56 minutes and 48 seconds. Those guys will go on to the North American Championship in Quebec City next week, and hopefully to the World Championship in Argentina.
Were you a City Chaser? Which events did you do?
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
I saw a whole bunch of teams in the city!!! Looked fun!
i'd also recommend the Great Urban Race
I was passing some time, reading in Grant Park when I saw a bunch of color guards flipping flags and kicked myself in the ass for missing this AGAIN!
I, too, always seems to miss this, though I desperately want to give it a shot.
My boyfriend and i signed up two days before the event at the encouragement of a friend. We had so much fun, but it totally kicked our asses!
We got the pre-list done pretty quickly. I also let someone take a picture of my tattoos (they then proceeded to turn around and walk right into oncoming traffic. oops.). I had an expired Dairy Queen punch card and a raffle ticket stub in my wallet and handed in some toilet paper from my bag as the item used during sex (clean-up's a breeze!).
Once we got our clue sheet, we headed over to the NBC news plaza and sang some karaoke and took some weird pictures of weird stuff. THEN we went strip bowling. The weirdest thing about that wasn't being naked in front of other naked strangers, but the fact that the bowling alley decided to put the only other customers in the whole building right next to the big bunch of naked scavenger hunters. They were a party of 8 or 9 year olds, completely oblivious to what was going on behind the black curtain mere feet from them. I got a good chuckle out of that for sure.
We opted out of the repelling (I don't do heights) and had the Marines put us through our paces. We actually ran into a buddy of ours who had just enlisted and who was having a hard time following orders and yelling at folks because he as too busy laughing.
We took a stroll over to he Newberry library to write a haiku about Chicago ("Buerhle owns pitching/Oprah owns everything else./Bet she can't throw, though")
then headed into Wicker Park to attempt to trapeeze. the line was too long, so we went to Cooking Fools to do math (Boo!), Akira to walk a catwak and Walsh Park to pitch a tent. We also stopped for drinks a few times while we were en route.
At the end, we got turned away at the canoes and decided to get our beers at Joe's. We didn't finish all ten either.
It was a great time and I'm glad we got to register for half price. I hope I get to do it again next year!
Thanks for sharing - one of my favorite parts of the day was talking to strangers about what they'd been doing and where they were going. How did you register at half price?!
There was a story on Fox32 news about it and they gave out a coupon code (foxchicago) that you could enter when you registered online. That may be the first and only time Fox News has ever helped me out.
I don't think we would've done it if we'd had to pay full price, but I figured that we could easily spend $98 on any given Saturday no matter what we did, so we may as well do something different and get out and about in the city for a change. I really liked talking to different people about what they did, too. I'm gonna focus more on the fun of it and not the end goal next year. Not that we didn't have a blast, but I think we could've had a better time if we'd just said "Fuck it. Let's get stupid" from the get go.