Back in August, Aaron and I won the Great Urban Race - Salt Lake City and qualified to go to New Orleans for the Championship race. After some deliberation, we decided to go and participate. We booked out condo, secured our airfare, and got our phone-a-friend all lined up for the big day.
The race began at 9:00 am, Saturday, Nov. 12 outside of Oceana Grill in the French Quarter. We were handed our clue envelopes and the countdown began... 3,2,1. Aaron and I ran around the corner to find a spot to open our envelope and see what was in store for us. Here is the clue sheet:
The rules were the same: complete 11 out of the 12 clues, you can run, walk, jog, or use public transportation, and a phone-a-friend. As we browsed the clue sheet, we quickly realized this was going to be a lot harder than Salt Lake City. We didn't recognize any of the clues or places. So, we took off in the direction of the only one with an address. We quickly hopped a bus that took us down Canal Street to a Walgreens to purchase items for the local women's shelter. While on the bus, Aaron called our phone support to get help and I started working on the word puzzles and used Google to try to figure out some of the others.
We arrived at the Walgreen's and many teams converged from the streetcar in a sprint towards Walgreen's. I am sure we were quite a sight. Aaron stood in line while ran through the store picking up the needed items. We dropped them off out front and ran towards our second destination: Clue #3 Voodoo Tattoo. Thank goodness for my 2 years of junior high French classes. They really came in handy as I deciphered the phone number for Voodoo Tattoo.
At Voodoo Tattoo, we had to take a picture with "Bruce Willis" and get "inked." I'm not sure if the alligator is Bruce Willis or the skeleton head. Aaron ran in the back to get his "tattoo" and I grabbed the needed fliers to prove we were there.
On our way out of the tattoo parlor, we saw several teams taking a picture in front of this monument. We ran over to it and quickly realized it passed off a requirement needed for our tic-tac-toe: "Take a photo of one teammate standing by a tomb showing a birth date prior to 1800." Thank you Father Abram J. Ryan.
Our third stop was the Bayou Beer Garden, where we were greeted with this sign and the instructions of: "Use each letter only once and figure out the 8 locally brewed Abita Springs beers."
Wow! If there was a clue to skip it would have been this one. We sat down and I quickly googled Abita Springs Beer. We came up with several of them, but there were 3 or 4 that we couldn't figure out. We called our phone-a-friend to see what they knew and they were stumped as well. We tried several times to no avail. We started working with other teams, as everyone was struggling and we finally got it about 40 min later. We also had to take a picture of both of us the 610 Stompers poster.
At this point we were about an hour and a half into the race and had completed only 3 clues. Crap! We ran down back down Canal Street to get to our fourth destination. We were headed towards a Homeless shelter which we thought was clue # 7. We ran about 10 minutes down the street, found the shelter, only to realize it was not the place we were looking for. So, we turned around and ran back to Canal Street. The entire time we kept thinking, this isn't right. I guess we should have listened to our first instinct.
Back on Canal Street, we made our way to Chicki Chicki Wawa!, a local dance/night club. Here we had to learn a quick 3 minute dance and get our picture taken in front of the "This is not that kind of place" sign. We had fun learning the moves and quickly passed it off.
From here, we made our way to the Garden District where we stopped off at New Orleans Party and Costume. We had to quickly make a party mask following very specific instructions. I knocked it out and the employees took our picture. They also gave us a balloon that we needed to take back with us.
Destination #6 was the Magnolia Mansion in the Garden District. We had to take a picture of both of us holding wedding umbrellas and pick up 2 strands of beads.
On our way to our 7th destination, we passed a balcony that Aaron easily climbed to pass off the 2nd tile on our tic-tac-toe board: Take a picture of one teammate standing on the balcony of a building.
Next stop was Juan's Flying Burrito. We ran to the back where we were greeted by an employee who quickly whipped us up one their chicken and cranberry tacos. We had to take a picture of both of us taking a bite of the taco and had to grab a sticker which we wouldn't get until we finished the taco. It was really good, but running after eating that taco was interesting. You could feel it sloshing around in your stomach with all the water I was drinking.
On our way to our 8th destination, we stopped and took a picture of us in front of this street sign to pass off our last tile of our tic-tac toe board: Take a photo of both teammates in front of a street sign that contains at least 13 letters. Tchoupitoulas. Don't ask me to say it, I don't know how. I love Aaron's face in this one. We had been running for almost 4 hours and we were exhausted. At one point I looked down at my watch and realized we had burned 1500 calories!! It would be 2,000 by the time we finished!
At our 8th stop, we found Lucy's Retired Surfers Club. Here we had to take a toy surf board along with a plastic monkey and a mermaid and using the surf board we had to flip the toys into a glass cup. Trust me, it was a lot harder than it sounds. I finally made one in and Aaron and I started working on getting the mermaid in. Aaron finally made the second one in and we were off. We had about 30 minutes before they shut the race down and at this point we just wanted to finish.
On to M's Ceauxffee and Cafe Teaux, we had to quickly answer these trivia questions:
Aaron had our phone-a-friend on the line helping us out and I grabbed the iPad to help too. We finally got them right and at 15 minutes to 1:00 we made our way to our last stop: The House of Blues in the French Quarter.
Here we were given this clue sheet and asked to put them in the right order. We started doing what we could but at 1:00 the employees stated they were shutting us down.
We made our way quickly down a few streets back towards Oceana Grill and crossed the finish line at 4 hours 4 minutes. We had finished!
We were so tired! We passed off our clues with the volunteers and because we didn't finish the last clue, we were hit with a 30 minute penalty. So, with that said, we came in 43rd place out of 118 teams. Not too bad considering some of the teams had "ground support" (cheating in my opinion), and knew New Orleans better than we did. The first place team finished the race in 2 hours 24 minutes. The first 8 teams to finish in this race, then went on to compete for the grand prize of $10,000 in the second race.
Aaron and I had so much fun in New Orleans! Not only did we compete in a fun race, we also got to spend time together exploring New Orleans, eating beignets at Cafe du Monde, and window shopping through the French Quarter. We also ate yummy meals and listened to some great Jazz music. I love spending time with Aaron on our vacations. We really enjoy being with each other!
A few street scenes. I absolutely love the architecture! It is so quaint!
Here is what a traditional New Orleans cemetery looks like. They are all above ground tombs.
Aaron and I found a nice park to explore.
And, of course, I love all the awesome architecture and doors. You just don't find stuff like this in Utah.
Check out this "sweet" ride
And here we are at Cafe du Monde
