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Yup, it's time to fall back. I'm so tired, there's no way I'll be able to update now. I'm leaving tomorrow too. Ugh. Sleep. Good. Bed.
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I got up this morning feeling a little groggy. I was in no mood to be running around the city doing whatever I was supposed to be doing today. Then again, I never am in the mood to do anything in the morning except sleep, so that's not really a new feeling for me. So I gut up, had a bit of food and got ready to go out to do the chase. I brought along an extra set of clothes on the off chance I might need to change, but I was hoping that I wouldn't have to.
We made it downtown basically on time and I was a little surprised to see a number of camera crews there. They were all apparently affiliated with the chase and probably were chronicling the event to see how it all turns out. There were a bunch of groups that were approached and asked if they could be followed but we weren't one of them. I think that might've been a good thing since I definitely don't work well under pressure.
We met up with a bunch of girl's friends (the ones who told her about the Chase) and then went to get registered. The waiver we needed to sign looked awfully comprehensive, but it wasn't like they were out to get us or anything. Were they? girl's greatest fear was to arrive and then be told that it was all a big hoax. I mean, I hadn't actually heard of anything like this anywhere else so this could've been one great big scam. Apparently, during the introduction, the organization had planned on a small test event with family and friends and they were hoping that maybe fifty teams would sign up. They had over two hundred and fifty groups register (the first one hundred and twenty-five that paid got in). Wow, I guess they weren't expecting this sort of turnout huh?
The plan was to go to Nathan Phillips square to start the race. The first thing we needed to do was to go through a pie plate full of crap and fish out our instructions. Fortunately for me, girl volunteered for that. It was quite interesting to watch her flip the plate with her teeth rather than trying to pick out the instructions through the stuff (some cream cheese, egg yolks, maggots, and whatnot).
The instructions told us to gather five of a set of ten things we could collect: Ten cigarrete stubs, a feather, a bananna peel, the population of toronto, the name of the guy who greeted us, a Tim Horton's cup, a condom from the Edge, lipstick marks on both cheeks, a taxi receipt, and a horse shoe. In one of the preparation messages that they sent out before the race began, they suggested bringing a horse shoe, but I thought it was for luck. I guess we should follow the instrictions more carefully huh? (Okay, girl did ask if we had a horse shoe, but I told her it was probably a joke. *hangs head*) It's amazing how many cigarette butts there were just in Nathan Phillips square. There are so many smokers in the city! We were one of the slower groups to complete that initial trial because after we had completed that, we were given a clue sheet for the fifteen check points where we could get our passport stamps. (We need ten to finish.)
While we were wandering down to the subway to figure out where to go first, girl got bumped by this guy for no apparent reason. I checked to make sure that her wallet wasn't taken, but the guy had deliberately put his shoulder in front of her. I found that very odd. We bumped into a couple of girl's friends who were also taking part in this event while we were waiting for the subway. They were going to the Ice Lounge to try out the
"hockey challange" so we decided to tag along (since we didn't know where it was and they did). We got there and found out that the task we needed to do was for one of the teammates to have a pair of skates tied on by the other team member. The only catch was that theis had to be done in a tub of ice water! Since girl did the pie thing, I ended up putting my feet in the water. It was freezing cold! (Well duh!) The pain was excrutiating, and because she had trouble with the laces as her fingers went numb, I was stuck in the ice for many minutes. No wonder why I've heard how bad it was to fall into a like during winter. The extreme pain will make it nigh-impossible for the person to even think of trying to swim to safety. Ouch. Remind me to rethink any ideas of kayaking out in the St. Lawrence when it's not during a heat wave.
We got that done, and our next stop was to go to Yonge and Bloor to do some sort of public display. The other group went first and had to slow dance for twenty seconds. Not a bad one if it wasn't the fact that they were both guys! girl and I ended up picking the card to yodle from across the street for thirty seconds. Yodlling is defintely not my forte. (girl was much better at it.)
After that, we had lost the other group and I wanted to go north to check out the thing at the Yonge and Eglington centre. It had something to do with shopping (so I thought) and I thought it might be easy. Well, we got there and found out that there was a dunking tank there. Crap. The task there was to find a bystander totrow balls at the tarket while one of the team members sat in the dunking tank. I volunteered to go in the tank and took of my shirt and shoes. I left my jeans on because I didn't want to be sitting out in public in only my underwear. (In hindsight, I should've brought a pair of swimming trunks, but that's something to remember for next time.) girl found some kid to throw the balls, but after four tries, the kid wasn't even close to hitting the target,so I started heckling him. (Hey, I figure I was going to get wet anyway, might as well have fun w.. *splash* Well, that was a little bit of a shock. I got out of the tank and started to put my clothes back on. I had a change of clothes, but I didn't want to be changing out in public, so we were getting our stamp when I realiezd that I didn't have my glasses.I asked around to see if anyone had time, and someone mentioned
"Maybe it's in the tank?"
So I wandered down to the tank and looked in. Lo and behold, there they were. Nice. I asked the next person who was going to get into the tank if he could pick them up when he went in, but he said that he might end up stepping on them. There weren't any poles or anything else to fish out the spectacles, so I decided to take my shirt off again and dove back into the tank to retrive my glasses. Well, I was wet already, so it's not like I could get any more wet right?
We found out later that the task actually called for groups to chose a person off the street and that person only had four balls with wich they could throw against the target. If they couldn't dunk the person in four balls, you got off scott free. Argh! The kid we had threw at least six! (I lost count when I started heckling the boy.)
So, in my wet jeans, we went to the next area on our list: The Rosedale Reservour. Fortunately, my map showed locations of reservoirs, although it didn't attach any names to them. Lucky for us, we hose the right one and found our way to the check point. When we arrived, one of the guys came up to us and gave us a question:
"Pick or Pass?"
Uhh.. I was thinking of passing, but girl said that passing was for wussies, so she chose "pick". At that point in time he led us to the plants that were arranged in a circle. We were given a card, with three plant names and had to choose the three plants that corresponded to the ones on the card. Oh goody. We got a rubber plant, a pepper plant, and a Dracina (?). Amazingly enough, we got the first two plants correct on our first guess! It was a matter of trial and error at that point to figure out the last plant. I guess picking "pass" would've gotten us to do the male task, but this one was amazingly easy so I wasn't complaining.
Next, we headed down to the Tattoo parlor for a makeover. It was either nice and slow, or quick and painful. Well, when we got there, they were both quick. Either green hair, or a "tattoo". girl opted for the tattoo, which was basically getting the Chase symbol markered on to your cheek. Easy stuff. At that point in time, I decided to get changed out of my wet clothes (finally!) before heading to club 502 to check out the radio task. We got there and found out that all of the radios were in use and there was already a lineup to do this task. We were sixth in line, and girl figured that this would be a long task anyway, so we headed out to the next task instead.
We went back to the subway and headed down to the St. Lawrence Market where we picked up some bread and tried out some very smelly cheese. Luckly for the team, so long as one member eats all of the cheese, we still get our stamp. Unluckly for me, girl doesn't eat cheese. Luckly for me, I had a cold so I couldn't smell anything anyway, and the texture was fine! Stamp acquired! Off to the Harbourfront!
At the Harbrourfront, we went to the Canoe and Kayak centre. Basically we needed to get into a canoe and paddle around four bouys twice. That's it. I probably shouldn't have sat in the back since I was one of the worst steerers you could ever imagine. The group after us caught up and got past us so I definitely felt bad at how poorly we fared. That's alright though, it wasn't like we were pressed for time or anything.
Went by the island airport ferry, and the golf course. But went to the asian market to find out how much dried fungi cost. Fortunately, we knew Chinese (well, girl did) so we were able to get one of the workers to help us. Unfortunately, he pointed us to the wrong packaging and we ended up with a price of 1.99 or 3.50 for two. Finding the guru wasn't that hard, but when we got up to him, he told us that we had the wrong price. Apparently lots of teams were coming up with the wrong price, so he gave us a very good hint.
Instead of going back to the store, we headed off to La Placa for some grub. Yeah, grub. The task was to spin a wheel and then eat the object that you ended up choosing. The selection was a grasshopper, two grasshoppers, some fish thing, dog food, crackers with peanut butter, chocolate cake made without flour, and water. The trick was to eat everything and swallow it all without drinking any water. (Except for the water of course.) I ended up spinning the fish thing, which was actually okay. girl spun the dog food, but since she was vegetarian, she was allowed to spin again and ended up with the crakers and peanut butter. That was actually one of the more difficult choices since without water, the crackers and peanut butter were really hard to swallow.
One of the groups with a camera crew attached had caught up to us by that point and they were doing their thing while we were munching on our meal. One spun dog food, while the other got water. But for the camera, he grabbed one of the grasshoppers and popped it in, downing it with some water. Mmm mmm good! *rubs tummy*
We ended up on the same street car with them as we headed down to the golf thing to try out that challange. They were telling us how they were doing and what crazy antics they got involved in. They even all got matching fake teeth! (Camera crew et. al.) The extra one they gave to some girl who was looking on. None of this was on camera though.
At the golf course, we were given a choice of quick and painful or slow and relaxing. Since it was girl's turn to take the pain, she chose the slow and relaxing. We missed out on the paintball gun shot to the butt, but ended up spending some time finishing off two baskets at the driving range. Let's just say this: I suck. At least I got some driving practice.
The guys with the camera crew were nice enough to give us the price for the dried fungi as well: 99 cents. So we headed down to the guy under the cat with the chair and told him the price and got our last stamp. Then, we headed down to Nathan Phillip's Square to finish off the Chase.
Along the way, we saw a woman who was deliberately hit by some guy for no apparent reason! What the heck? Is Toronto full of heavy hitters? As we walked along Dundas and tried to flag down a streetcar (we failed miserably) we bumped into one of girl's friends. We didn't hang around long since we were already late, but I found it interesting to find people that we (well, she) knew since we were downtown, there were lots of people, and we had these green aprons on. (We were stopped by a number of curious people who was asking what we were doing throughout the day.)
As we were approaching the final leg, we were being cheered on by one of the volunteers, who told us that our last task was to find a flag with our number out of the flags that were out in the field. There were sixty or so flags stuck on twenty-some pylons and it took us a little while to find our number. (I found it actually. *beams*) We then had to stick the flag somewhere on the mountain (there was this giant green mountain with a whole bunch of other flags) and we were done! Yay! It's all over! We were 97th! Ooh
We went looking for food and eventually ended up down in Little Italy where we grabbed some cheap pasta. Well, it wasn't THAT cheap, but cheaper than the other places we could've gone. As we entered into the restaurant, I noticed a few people studying at a table nearby staring at girl. One of them (the girl) I overheard talking to her friendds, confirming girl's name, so she shouted it out as girl passed by. Apparently I actually knew these people, but since I place where I would've recognized them was from roller hockey (the other roller hockey group), I wasn't surprised that I didn't recognize them.
Anyway she invited me out to play roller hockey on Sundays since they play year round now. I told her to give me a shout.
After eating dinner, we headed out to a nearby cheese shop to pick up a present for the housewarming party hosts. Then we headed to the apartment and mingled in with the crowd. KH and DeeL were both playing Gauntlet and I jumped into KH's place. They were on level 40, so we wanted to finish the game. (We thought there were a hundred levels.) So we continued to play. and play, and play, and we finally reached level 100, then 101, then 102..
At that point we decided to quit and do something a bit more productive.
I got a phone call on my cell, and nearly immediately it began to complain of having a low charge. I eventually got cut off so I asked DeeL if I could borrow his phone. He looked at me and said,
"Important phone call?"
Uhh.. yeah. *grins sheepishly*
We didn't stay much longer after that. We eventually found our way home for some much needed rest.
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