Rush Vancouver

Last Saturday, I participated in Rush Vancouver – an urban scavenger hunt around Vancouver.  Essentially, its like the Amazing Race.  Teams of two go to check points and complete a task before moving on.  We had 20 checkpoints to select from and were required to do 10, 4 of which were mandatory.  We were only allowed to travel from location to location by transit or by foot. 

I was sick and really didn’t want to exert all that much effort, so we pretty much walked everywhere, and only ran when I needed to.  It was still fun though and we barely managed to finish.  I wish we had a smart phone – it would have made Googling things a lot easier and trying to figure out the fastest way to get from point A to point B would be no problem.  Instead we had to rely on texting people to look things up for us. 

Some of the clues were easy to figure out:

“Team Jacob hates the name of this royal station.  Here you must find a stranger and put your rock, paper, scissors skills to the test.  Luck & an undiscerning palate is what your team needs for success.”

Others not so much and needed some googling:

“The BBBs Best Green Business 09 is renowned for Fresh Local Organic Family Friendly Dining.  In homage to its green leanings your team kneads to first collect 10 recyclable pop cans. Bring them here to toss yourselves into this challenge & roll past your competition”

Some of the activities we had to do:

• Granville Island – use a GPS to find out answers to trivia questions
• Nat Bailey Stadium – get dressed up to play baseball and hit a baseball
• Bootcamp – crawl through netting, jump through hoops and jumping jacks
• Vancouver International Film Fest – movie trivia (SO HARD >.<)
• Building a bridge using bubble gum and popsicle sticks to hold a golf ball for 10 second that was 2 popsicle sticks long and 1/2 a popsicle stick high
• Next Top Model - Walk a “runway” in wet clothing and pose for photos
• Put together a 15 sec blurb about the Lung Association to be filmed
• Play rock, paper, scissors with a stranger outside King Ed station
• Put together a tangram outside VGH
• Random skill testing activities on Commercial drive

My favourite activity was probably bootcamp.  I rocked at the 15 sec blurb about the Lung Association – even the person filming me said so.  That was a premium checkpoint so maybe I’ll win a prize later for my awesome film appearance!  We stood in line for over an hour at Nat Bailey because it was a mandatory checkpoint. 

The line outside VGH was pretty long too.  The hardest was probably the Vancouver International Film Fest.  We had to sound out phrases to discover a famous movie quote and then had to identify the movie.  This was really hard and it was a mandatory stop.  I’m glad we came here last otherwise we would have been stuck here for ages.  By this time we were so exhausted and completely brain dead.  We only managed to figure out one, but those at the checkpoint took pity on us and gave us our stamp and we headed on out.

The only one we figured out:

“Mime king over we’re old” becomes “I’m king of the world” which is from Titanic. 

Let’s see if you guys can figure some of them out:

“Shh! Hey kitten know it stern did”

“Ill um enter eye mile Dee ear what sun”

It was definitely an amazing experience and tons of fun.  I can’t wait for City Chase!  We’ll be even more prepared for that one!  The worst part though?  This day made me even sicker and I spent the next couple of days coughing out my lungs.  I’m finally feeling better today.  It was worth it thought!  So much fun!

As we were headed home, these guys dressed up from The Wizard of Oz came up to us and asked for a photo.  Strange… they asked us, not the other way around.  The perfectly weird ending to a very interesting and weird day.