Great Urban Race -- Cincinnati

Today Dianne and I participated in the Great Urban Race in Cincinnati. It's a race/scavenger hunt with teams of two getting around the city to various checkpoints found with clues. Along the way there are tasks to do, puzzles to solve, and trivia questions to answer. You can only use public transportation which, in Cincinnati, means the bus. Otherwise, everything is on foot. It was a lot of fun!

At the start of the race we (along with everyone else) received our clue packet. There were about a dozen things to do. A few were mandatory. Of the others on the list, you were allowed to skip one. You could do the items in any order you liked, so people are scattered a bit but you do see other teams along the way. For many of the tasks you had to take a photo, or get someone to take a photo of the team, at a certain place. At the finish line, the staff checked your photos to verify you were there and at the correct spot. We took a few minutes to plan our route and get some help from Michelle who was our main home base Google helper. Having a person to search the Internet for answers to clues is really key to finding your way around. She did a great job.

One of our tasks required us to find a saying on a brick and get our picture there. The sayings were baseball related and Dianne remembered all the sponsored bricks in front of the Great American Ballpark that are engraved with various things. The photo here is us in front of a break that reads, "roses are red, the Dodgers are blue, the Reds are a winner, and so are you." We were fortunate to have spotted another team at the brick when we were approaching, so we had a rough idea where to look instead of searching through hundreds and hundreds of bricks.

The funny thing is that we were there just before the start of a Reds game. There were thousands of people (~32,000) going in and a photographer was taking fan photos. He saw us doing something unusual and so he came over to get our picture for his Reds fan photo exercise. I like the Reds, and while I'm not a rabid fan I follow what they are doing. He asked if we were fans and I said yeah. Here is the result. Too funny!

We hit several spots in the downtown area and also ended up going across the Ohio river into Northern Kentucky to visit a couple spots there. We then came back across the river, caught the bus, and went to a couple spots in Eden park. Below is a photo of us in front of the floral clock across from the Krohn Conservatory. I have a few more photos from the day in my Flickr set here. It was a lot of fun and we went participated just for the fun of it. However, I think we ended up 26th and the top 25 teams got medals and are eligible to compete in the national event in Las Vegas in November. Sooooooo close! Maybe next year.