Amazing Date 2012

Recently Matt and I competed in an "Amazing Race" type challenge put on by my old roomie, Tiffany Stock who lives in the East Bay. She started this three years ago and it has grown from only a few couples to 44 couples participating (with even more as volunteers to help Tiffany put this event on).

Two couples form to make a team and so we decided to invite Matt's aunt and uncle, Ridge & Linda McGhee, who live just north of us in Redwood City, to join us. We knew they would be great competitors and we would enjoy the time with them. Each team chose a name and all had to wear the same color shirts. We were "The Mighty McGhees" and wore navy blue.

After a nice dinner together, The Mighty McGhees headed up to the East Bay to Club Sport in San Ramon where the event kicked off. Knowing it was supposed to rain all night and not knowing what to expect, we loaded up on anything we thought might help us in the challenge: hats, flashlights, swiss army knives, tape measures, headlamps, notepads, pens, gps, waterbottles, etc...

Side Note: Matt parked the car in two different locations as he and Ridge analyzed which spot would let us make a faster get away.



Club Sport - the beginning of the craziness

After an inspirational speech by Tiffany, each team was handed a passport to get all of our activities stamped in and we were given our first clue. The clue was for one teammate to dive in the club's pool and get a prize off of the bottom.  Matt, already having his swimsuit on underneath his clothes, led out our adventure and found a locker room key at the bottom which he handed to Linda and I. They key was supposed to open a random locker in the womens locker room. The trick here was that the key was not labeled so we spent a good five minutes trying the key in every lock.

While we did this, Matt & Ridge were instructed to fill up water balloons for a later challenge.

After getting our next clue out of the locker, we ran to the dance room where Linda and I had to learn, and then perform, a Zumba dance routine wearing belly-dancing skirts. After passing this off, we all four ran to take a group photo then headed upstairs for a little dodgeball. Matt & Ridge took on this challenge and had to get 2 people out before we could move on. Linda and I were given pom-poms to cheer them on.



The Mighty McGhee (Matt, me, Ridge & Linda)



Being the pro-athletes they are, Matt and Ridge got two people out on their first throws so we were able to finally leave the sports club for our next adventure.

We were instructed to a shopping center to get our next clue which was given in the form of a temporary tatoo on my arm. It was a picture of a snake guiding us to a local park nicknamed "Snake Park". We had to have a little help with this as we were not familiar with the San Ramon/Danville area.

At Snake Park, we were handed a water balloon launcher and a bucket. We had to fill up our bucket with the water from the water balloons to a certain point to complete the challenge. Ridge took on the task of bucket holder while Linda and I held down to side of the launcher for Matt to aim and shoot the water balloons at Ridge. We passed this off quickly and then ran over to the other task at the park, which was to run a giant, inflatable, human hamster ball around the whole park. The trick here was that only one person could be inside at one time and the rest of us had to run along and yell out guiding directions for the person inside but we could not push them along. (P.S. The whole event was done at night)

Human hamster ball  (except this pic is
 misleading  as we were in the dark)

Matt and Ridge took turns running inside the hamster ball, which I only wish we had had time to take photos of. They looked so funny and though I thought the ball would be so fun to run in, Matt said it was an exhausting task.

After passing another team, we were elated to move onto our next task which challenged our minds this time. We were led to someone's home where played "The NewlyWed Game" and had to get five questions right before we could leave. I felt bad for the owners of the home who had to deal with our muddy feet and hyped up personalities. Matt and I flew through the questions easily with Ridge and Linda not far behind.

Next we came to a fire station where we had to leave a love note and inspirational quote for the firemen. The fire chief handed us our next clue to someone's garage where we had to choose a teammate to participate in a "Fear Factor" type food challenge. Since Matt was parking the car, Linda already looked like she wanted to puke, and Ridge could not eat sardines (which was rumored to be one of the food choices), I grabbed the plate of nastiness. I ate something that tasted like plastic and would not go down my throat, a huge nasty piece of fish and two Sahara-desert dry chili peppers. Ridge was nice enough to run to the car and grab me water bottles. I drank two of them to help move the nastiness down my throat. I ate, I puked, I ate more, I puked more and finally Linda slyly slid the remaining food into the garbage can amid one of my puking bouts. What a saint she was!

If you know me, then you probably know I have the world's smallest mouth so I really had no business even trying to compete in this arena. But I just saw a hole and I filled it - better me throw up than have to deal with a sick husband for a week.

We passed it off and drove ahead while I picked food bits out of my teeth and threw every kind of mint, gum, and candy into my mouth to help get rid of the fish taste.



The crowded statue at the mall
where you had to elbow your way
 in just to get a peek

Our next stop was at a shopping mall, where we had to decipher a message on a statue using a code sheet given to us. This proved our most difficult task as all of the other teams were crowded around the same statue not allowing us much opportunity to get started. So Matt and I had the genius idea to bust in and take photos on our camera phones so we could decipher the message ourselves away from others.

This challenge proved to be the hardest yet. After leaving with what we thought was the correct message we drove about 10 minutes to an address that was hard to find and possibly ended up at a bowling alley. Not seeing any other teams around and debating amongst ourselves if we had it right or not, we headed back the other direction for 10 minutes to a McDonalds; only to find that we had been eliminated for going to the wrong location. Determined to keep playing, our team decided to return to the bowling alley and see if we had been right the first time we were there.

After another 10 minute drive back to the bowling alley, we figured out that we were, in fact, really supposed to be there. At the bowling alley, 3 of our team members had to bowl (using the same shoes) and get 3 strikes or spares (one each) with only 8 rolls.

Being a horrible bowler myself, I backed out and let the others take this challenge while I headed to the bathroom to wash the fish smell off my hands. Ridge got a spare and Matt got a strike, leaving Linda five rolls to accomplish her task. Though she didn't get it, we only got a three minute penalty to hang out at the alley and then we were off yet again, back to Snake Park. 

While looking for a "hidden message" at the park benches, we got caught up since none of us realized that we had been given a pen early on in the competition which had a black light on the back end of it.Here again we got stuck and finally called Tiffany for help only to be eliminated... again. 

We conceded this time and headed back to Tiffany's - drenched, exhausted and defeated. We got there only to discover our error and that the winning team had finished almost 45 minutes earlier. I was, however,  relieved to find ice cream which helped to remove the still lingering fish taste in my mouth.



Here is Tiffany (in white) with the winning team.
Tif is holding the traveling trophy that she and her kids
created for the competition.

Overall we had a blast working together and found that the four of us really did make a great team. Ridge and Linda were killer at the challenges. Tif was fabulous in her planning and we appreciated all of her work, even if she did double-eliminate us :). The best part was, she hadn't even realized that we had been eliminated twice so we really could have kept going. 



As we drove home, we couldn't stop analyzing all the different ways we could have been better or where we went wrong. Matt is ready to go again! I'm on board for that too as long as I don't have to eat any more gross things.