Have you ever seen the TV show The Amazing Race? Neither Brian or I have seen it. We have heard about it and seen little commercial segments but we have never watched an episode. We heard about a month ago that a group here in Portage was going to sponsor an Amazing Race event. It seemed like it could be something fun for Brian and I to do as a date and since we were just starting our ABC dating an Amazing Race was a perfect 'A' date.
We started out our day this past Saturday with it being very cold, cloudy and grey. We had on blue jeans, t-shirts, jackets and hats. While standing around waiting for things to begin we wondered if we should have had gloves and more layers. There were three waves that would take place and we were starting in the first wave that began at 9:00 AM. There were ten teams in our wave, ten in the second wave at 9:45 and eight in the third wave at 10:30. They let the teams go in minute intervals so at 9:06 AM Brian and I were the seventh team to run from the starting line - I grabbed our first clue while he grabbed a shopping cart and we started running the two blocks to where the first of ten challenges awaited us. Poor Brian ended up running the shopping cart into a pot hole as we were trying to cross the street and ended up slamming his knee into it while trying to keep it from flipping over. Fortunately he was not hurt too bad and that was our only mishap for the morning. Once we got to the start of the first challenge I had to put on a bike helmet and get into the shopping cart. Brian got to push me through a course set with stacks of tires. You were not allowed to knock any of the tires down or you would have to restack them and start again. We made it through that fine and then ran to the chamber of commerce office. There we had to put together a puzzle of the main sponsor's logo and then had to fill out a little quiz based upon facts of the main sponsor's business. Then we ran to a local karate school where we learned some karate moves (kicks, punches & blocks) then we had to perform them correctly for the instructors. Later in the day, once the race was over, we saw the karate instructor and he said we were the only ones who actually paid attention while others were doing the challenge and therefore we didn't need extra help and we flew threw the challenge faster than anyone. From there we ran to a park near Angela and Connor's school. Brian had to carry me, piggy back style, through an obstacle course. Neither of us were allowed to touch any piece of the course and I had to carry an egg on a spoon, fortunately we did not drop it and we moved on from there. Next was a run to Collip Worden Park which is a little ways away. The clouds had finally left and due to being in blue jeans, running and adrenaline we were really starting to get hot. I was able to tuck my coat into the little backpack they provided us, but Brian's coat was too big. Fortunately the run to the next park took us right by church and Brian left his jacket there. The first of the two challenges at the park was to make three goals, from three different lines, in Frisbee golf. Brian was super good at that one and I think we past two or three teams there. Next, I got to wear a sun hat with a large upturned brim and Brian got to bounce ping pong balls towards me and we had to catch three of them in the hat. That was another quick one as it took us four bounces to get the three balls into the hat. From there we ran up the hill to a local chiropractor's office and we were given two skewers that had five hex nuts on each skewer. Alternately we had to work together to stack those ten nuts end on end without using our hands only the skewers. We got to about six or seven the first time and then we made it all the way to ten on the second try. Next we headed off to the parks and rec office where we were given a hammer, some nails and a stack of wood. Without any help from the challenge supervisors we were to build a bat house. It is very fortunate that Brian and I work really well together with things like this. He did the hammering and I did the directions and measuring. We were able to overtake another team there because they ended up having to make a second bat house. The fun thing about this challenge is that all the houses build will be donated to the City of Portage. I keep telling Brian that we need to build one for our house so that we can have bats living here. I understand that a bat will eat its weight in mosquitoes every day and since I think the mosquito is the state bird of Wisconsin.....well a resident bat or two might be nice. We then took a small bus across town to a park shelter where we got to put together a large sudoku puzzle. It was with pictures of many of the sponsor's logos instead of numbers. Brian said this is where I got to shine as I did most of the puzzle. Then we ran to a park a couple blocks away where we got to bowl/throw four balls down a hill. At the bottom of the hill were different sized soccer type goals. Each goal was a different point value and we had to get a certain number of points to move on. Then it was an all or nothing run to the finish line. We jogged until we were a block and a half away and then we sprinted hand in hand to the end. We figured that we ran about four miles total to get from each challenge. We came in first from our group of ten teams. Finishing everything in one hour fifty-nine minutes and thirty-nine seconds. We were third overall from the total of twenty-eight teams. We were ten minutes behind the first place team, five minutes behind the second place team and only six seconds ahead of the fourth place team. It was a really really good time and we would most definitely do it again. We had so much fun participating ~ Our Amazing Race was (pardon the pun) - AMAZING!
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