They should have named it Sweatfest 2009. But it was worth it.
My college roommate (known here on out as “Bingy”) is getting married in August, so her family friends threw her and her fiancee a “Stock the Bar” party on Saturday in Richmond. Since I’d be in town for that, MWM signed me up for “The Great Richmond Region Adventure,” an “Amazing Race”-style competition around downtown Richmond Saturday afternoon.
Good thing I had trained for and participated in the Ukrop’s Monument Avenue 10k last month — my first 10k ever, thank you very much — because this was no leisurely scavenger hunt. Team Macaley (me, MWM, The Artist and The Artist’s boss) pretty much booked it from stop to stop, solved the clues in what we considered to be record time and finished the race in an hour and a half. The winning team finished in 58 minutes; the time limit was three hours. So I’d say we did a fine job since this was our first time competing.
Our journey started at the Edgar Allen Poe museum, where we got our map and clues, printed on aged scroll paper. There were five stops, with five corresponding clues in poem form. The objective was to solve the clues at each stop and get a postcard. Once we had all five postcards, another riddle would direct us to the finish line. We didn’t have to go in any particular order, but we had to stay together as a team the whole time.
Hearts pumping, we headed to our first stop at the Holocaust Museum. With a little help from one of the race volunteers, we solved the riddle, which involved finding an artifact in the museum and deciphering a code from a set of numbers. Postcard in hand, we celebrated solving our first riddle and made our way to the next stop: Libby Hill Park.
Spectacular view from Libby Hill Park
It always amazes me how much of Richmond I’ve never seen, even after living there for four years in college. Well, that really shouldn’t amaze me all that much since anyone who goes to UR pretty much never sees anything except campus, the Fan and a handful of downtown bars. It’s unfortunate that we keep to our bubble, because the rest of Richmond is nothing short of fabulous.
After scaling a mountain to get to Libby Hill — ok maybe not a mountain but it was a huge hill — we retrieved our second postcard by counting the bales of hay in a painting on a sign and applying that number to yet another letters/numbers code. I don’t have many criticisms of the adventure, but one was that the answers to the riddles had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with anything. I was thinking the answers would have a theme, something related to the location of the clue. Basically, I wanted to pretend I was Nick Cage in “National Treasure.” Instead, the answers were simply a random word generated from solving a code, i.e. the answer to the Libby Hill Park puzzle was “SHAZAMBABY.”
Yeah, I have no idea. I guess they wanted to make it unrelated so that you couldn’t just guess the answer after seeing the first few letters. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt. I also thought I’d be dead weight since I really know nothing specific about Richmond history, but thankfully that wasn’t an issue. It really was all about solving some crazy code while at a Richmond landmark.
On our way to solving the second clue
From there we headed to Church Hill, the Reconciliation statue and the Canal Walk. Our team worked effortlessly together, each of us providing a different way of looking at the riddles. Two water bottles each and buckets of sweat later, we happened upon the finish line at the farmer’s market. We’d gotten all five postcards, but could not figure out the last puzzle, which directed us to the end point. Ready to give in and ask for help, we walked past the farmer’s market and saw our contact. Hot damn! We asked him what the solution to the final clue was, and he gave us a funny look. “How did you find me if you couldn’t solve it?” he asked. “We just walked by and saw you here…” Whoops.
Turns out the solution wasn’t as hard as we were making it out to be, and I’m fairly certain we could have figured it out if we’d just tried out another theory or two. Oh well. It was blazing, and we were sweaty, tired and on the verge of getting a little cranky.
Celebratory drinks and documenting our adventures
So we didn’t win $1,500, but we had an awesome time tooling around downtown Richmond in 90+ degrees and pretending to be treasure hunters. The four stellar members Team Macaley will definitely compete again next year. Afterward, we lunched at Cafe Gutenberg, where we devoured burgers and downed cool, crisp celebratory beers. Except The Artist, who left her ID in the car.
The Artist and I spent the rest of the afternoon cooling off in her apartment. Although, we weren’t that cool because her AC wasn’t working. But we prepped for Bingy’s party — my gift was the ingredients for my fav drink, the G&T! — and spent the evening catching up with college pals. It was great seeing my sorority sisters, especially my little, who confessed to obsessively stalking this very blog. That’s my girl!
The weekend was perfect, except for MWM’s adorable new pup who suffered from some seizures after apparently getting into some shrooms in the yard. But he’s better now, thank goodness. Welcome back, Maury!
And to anyone interested in competing in next year’s Great Richmond Region Adventure: watch out. You’ve got some stiff competition. Wear running shoes if you want to keep up.
Team Macaley. And the only photographic proof that I even competed in this race.
