Coming in Last is still a Victory, right?

Alright so today has been a long day. I didn't have to work either of my jobs, so what do I do? I do the Pittsburgh Challenge, that's what.

The "race" is part of a Challenge Nation series that sets up all sorts of "Amazing Race"-esque challenges in cities all over the country. It's really a neat little system. Teams of anywhere from 2 to whatever run around the city trying to find different "clues" and take pictures with landmarks or people on the street. Can't use cars or taxis or bikes...just feet and public transport (a.k.a. buses). A couple weeks ago my cousin suggest we (me, my cousin, her husband, and my sister) form a team and compete. I agreed, since it sounded like a good time since we'd all be together (they all live out of town).

Well race day came and my cousin, her husband, and their kids were ALLLL sick. So our team quickly forged itself of me, my sister Sadie, and her friend Sarah. I had not learned any of the rules or anything, since I figured my cousin would know, so I learned as much as I could in the 12 hours before the race.

Our team assembled and signed in. Sade and Sarah were in a very ridiculous mood. "slaphappy" is too light a word. "Idiotic" sounds harsh. But think along those lines. We ate lunch near the starting line (Jerome Bettis Grille 36) and after laughing ourselves to tears over nothing funny at all, I made a Facebook posting: "We are screwed".

And then the race began. We were a tad late leaving from lunch, but honestly it didn't matter. People were running full speed as soon as we started. The first five teams get cash prizes and a chance to enter in some bigger race. We didn't think for a second we would be near the first five teams; really we just challenging ourselves to not go home and nap.

So, let's do a photo walk-through of the race, shall we?

1. One of the clues was to take a picture of either a liscence plate from out of town with a W,X,Y, or Z in it or a dog or a live horse or a segway. This was seemed kind of easy, since THE PARKING LOT BY THE RACE WAS FULL OF THE RACERS' CARS, SOME OF WHOM HAD COME FROM OUT OF TOWN. I would like to add that, despite what this picture may look like, I was not high.

2. Another clue was to take a picture of yourself in/near a theater. Well, I happen to work at the Pittsburgh Public Theater so we walked across the bridge into Downtown and...I went to work on my day off. F*ck. I also went to get help with some of the clues from my Pittsburgh-native friends. We got a few results and then pressed on.

3. This one was weird. You had to find a person who lived in a state with an ocean shoreline and then make that shape with your body with them....idk. This was our first usage of my strategy: ride another teams' coattails. This man was from Virginia...so we made Virginia? Trust me, in the end no one cared.

4. Next was to find the Fish Market and try some Cantaloupe Gazpacho. Gazpacho, by the way, is cold soup. Cold soup isn't bad: cantaloupe is disgusting. Those are forced smiles on our faces; we really want to spit out the soup. 

5. This is the train place thing...I really forget the clue. FUN FACT: The police were there to arrest racers for trespassing so everyone had to take a picture like this with the building in the background. I thought it would be funnier to get pics of the police handcuffing/beating/macing us. I was overruled.

6. We next had to find two Furries (there was a Furry convention in town all week) and take a picture with them. Sarah was a bit apprehensive about talking to Furries (it's an unfortunate social stigma) but these two were very nice. I do hate asking people to pose for pictures with us, some people seem annoyed by it. But really, Furries, let's not pretend like you don't want a little extra attention.

At this point we took a totally unnecessary detour through the alley where the Cell Phone Disco is. Then we strolled around the alley for no other reason except for the fact it was shady and cool (it was a hot day). We left when Sarah said the alley "smelled like rape".

7. So...we had to take a picture with someone wearing a college sports team article of clothing, and act out said sport. This nice gentleman happened to see us running strolling leisurely around and offered his services. He asked what they should pretend to do, to which Sarah deliriously said "We could pretend like we're wrestling", followed by about 10 seconds of awkward laughter from our team. We decided that the girls are "tackling" him and he's the quarterback...he was a good sport, to say the least (Get it?!?!?!? SPORT! HA!)

8. We headed to the T (Pittsburgh's answer to the Subway) to return to North Shore. There was a clue where we could make our own picture as long as it pertained to Father's Day. This man had a child. They both look thrilled, don't they?

We got on the T and had a nice little ride where we ran into another team. They were two girls who worked at the Cheesecake factory and this was their first day off in months. The one girl was SHITFACED out of her mind and, holy crap, was it hilarious. I mean really, I died. She talked about one clue where we had to walk into a cascading fountain. She said "I'm going face first into that fountain, I'm gonna tear my freakin' nose off and sue Pittsburgh" and then playfully chewed on her clue sheet. I wanted to be her friend but forgot to exchange numbers. Damn.

9. Ok so there's a cascading fountain near the river, and it's near a landmark where the first World Series was played and we were supposed to walk to the middle and get the skyline in the back...well...the skyline is kinda in the back...and you can see the fountain water...and you can see how many f*cks we give that it's not a great picture. (We don't give any f*cks).

10. We had to find the statue of Mr. Rogers, which was near the start/finish line. His face got cut out of the picture, but let me just say his face is creepy as hell. I mean the statue's face, not Mr. Rogers. Also our faces are getting better and better. You can see I'm holding onto his finger: I took it when we left. I played fetch with a dog in the park with it later. I think Mr. Rogers would have liked that.

11. We employed our favorite rule: follow behind another team by about fifty feet and see what they do. It led us to the statue of The Chief himself, that was part of a clue we were really about to give up on. Yeah.

So we headed back to the "finish" line where there were so many people already done it was pathetic. I signed us in: we placed 280th!!! With a run time of 2 hours, 22 minutes, and 52 seconds! I showed my pictures to the girl to "verify" them to say we got the right pictures. I cannot emphasize this enough: this girl did not give two shits, because we were team 280 and who cares what pictures we have, at least we made it back to the car. I could have shown her pictures of my cats and last week's dinner and she would of been like "ok great, thanks".

Prize for 280th place was a bottle of water and a white t-shirt. I still have my sister's t-shirt. And everybody gets a bottle of water. There were probably (I've been told) a little over 300 teams so...yeah. We get a D- in racing. But oh well, we had a fun time. Perhaps we'll shoot for better next year? We shall see.

Oh, and we got to record our time/team name on the "big red poster" for the world to see. Taking a suggestion from the girls from the lunch we had two and a half hours before, I signed our team name:

The family with kids nearby did not seem amused by this name. Guess how many f*cks we gave?