The Idiotarod was yesterday, and Scott and I got together a team consisting of Sara, Kevin, and a random message board find named Brian from Alaska. We got together Friday night to brainstorm and divide duties. Brian was given shopping cart duty, while Scott and I were in charge of a torso and sign. For any of you who've ever seen the movie "Dodgeball", that's what our team theme was based on. There's a scene where the coach for the underdog team, Patches O'Hoolahan famous for the line "if you can dodge a wrench you can dodge a ball" is purported to bring them the "luck of the Irish" which unfortunately ends in him being smashed to death by a casino sign saying "Luck of the Irish." So our cart had a torso with a large sign on it's head. While we sported the ever so sexy sweatbands and sports wear.
PrepWe rendezvoused at our friend Ricardo's apartment. He was extra accomodating since we were painting and decorating in his living room. From there it was two miles to the starting point. Our cart was held up due to a massive subway power outage, so by the time we were ready to go we had to pretty much run the 2 miles to Fort Greene Park.
Starting LineOnce we got there we realized that this was a fake starting poing and that everyone else was in Chinatown. I don't know how we didn't get the text message, but an "official" gave us our paperwork and sent us on to checkpoint #1.
Checkpoint #1There we caroused a bit with the other teams who showed up from the real starting point and got to see some of the creative genius other idiotaroders displayed. Team Danger Zone took the grand prize with a very authentic fighter jet that spewed steam and a flight crew who stripped down to play volleyball. You could always hear them coming as they played "Highway to the Danger Zone". My favorite cart this year were the Q-tips whose cart were some large ears.
The Cooks had an oven cart with some sort of launching contraption/canon for their spaghetti. There was an Indiana Jones Cart with a large boulder for a cart, and the Golden Shower Girls were some lovely cross-dressed old ladies. From the look of some of the people at checkpoint #1 we'd missed a lot of sabatoge in the form of ketchup, mustard and egg throwing. The Quaker cart handed us some corn and we managed to avoid the Skunk cart's stink bomb. You were supposed to complete some activities at Checkpoint #1 but we just bribed one of the judges with a wrist band and managed to get out of the gate with directions to the next checkpoint.
Mini Checkpoint AWe were racing along with some other groups but Scott's genius which allows him to memorize maps at a glance, took us on a shortcut to mini checkpoint A. They doled out some spankings there, but I missed them the first time around so Scott took some more so I could get a picture. Apparently they hit REALLY hard and made him yelp in pain. I am sorry Scott, but it did make a nice picture, way to take one for the team.
Checkpoint #2From there we were sent to Checkpoint #2 which was next to a river/canal here we were supposed to collect flags by winning competitions such as cart races, and tug o' war. We handily beat some cross dressing man-ladies and Kevin lunged for the finish in the crawling cart race. When I was handed one of our winning flags I nearly got tackled by some other teams trying to grab it away, but Scott came to my rescue. We also bribed the judge at this checkpoint with a tasty beverage and he let us continue on.
Finish Line!We took it a little easy on the way to the finish line since we were pretty far ahead of the crowd and starting on our 7th mile. We went up and down some stairs over the freeway and then reached the home stretch.
There were more cops at the finish line than there had been anywhere else. They mostly want to keep the peace. We started a dodgeball game in the street, but the cops didn't realize we had a block party permit so they tried to keep us on the sidewalk. Instead we took our A game down to a nearby park where we got our dodgeball on.
I think I forgot to mention that along the way we were followed by a flatbed truck decorated as a wrestling ring where "pro wrestlers" welcomed all comers. We avoided that, but Scott did get hit by a mustard bomb in the rear.
Aftermath
All in all I was very proud of our team for coming together and having a quality, creative theme. We came in pretty far up at the top around 20th, got some extra points for bribing the judges (which is highly encouraged.) We had a great time and good exercise and didn't break ourselves, though everyone but Scott had a hard time standing up once we sat down at Dunkin Donuts for an after-race treat.
The Google Pedometer tells me we went 7.0688 miles, well Kevin took 2 miles off because he met us at the start. It was pretty cold outside if you weren't moving, probably around 30 degrees. We walked to the subway, but it was still running funny, so we got out and caught a gypsy cab. In New York these are the cabs that aren't yellow, they're just car service cars who aren't technically supposed to pick you up randomly off the street, but it was really cold and we were tired, yellow cabs are scarce in brooklyn and the guy wanted to make a buck.
We tried to find the after party, but somehow got ourselves into a Hasidic Jewish neighborhood where everyone is dressed the same with the men wearing "Streimel" which seemed to be the winter version of their hat. Even everyone's coat was the same, so it was pretty funny when we walked by with our costumes on. They were fairly tolerant, but I noticed a few people crossing the street to get away from our strangeness. We quickly figured out that we weren't in the right place and decided to head into the city to get some food and drinks.
(photo courtesy the show's website)
