Sun, Jun 10 2007 - TOC Urban Chase (View Original Event Details)
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We couldn't have had a better weather for the first ever TOC Urban Chase on Sunday. The sun was shining, bright blue sky, light cool breeze, and hardly any humidity. I arrived at 9:30 to Union Station to find most of the racers already there, ready and anxious to race. Even though I'm banned by Benster from his events (this sounds too good to be true, I'm trying to figure out what the catch is), this apparently does not preclude him from adding himself to my event.
This urban chase was designed after the TV show The Amazing Race, where teams of two race around the world for a million dollars. In this very low-tech and even much lower-budget version teams of two raced around Toronto for a couple of TOC t-shirts.
All teams receive a bag of colored clues and $4 worth of quarters to use when calling from a phone booth. Each clue contained enough information to direct teams to their destination. Once at the destination, they either had to find the answer to a question printed on the clue or complete a task. The other objective was once they found the answer, they had to find the correct telephone booth and phone in with the answer. If the answer was correct, then they would be given the next color clue to open, otherwise, I told them to go try again. When they have their next clue color, they raced off to their next checkpoint. There were eight checkpoints in total.
Thanks to this event, there are now quite a few people in the TOC who know all sorts of fascinating trivia about Toronto. They can tell you who Mario LeMieux is next to, what animals you would see on the Wyland Mural, who Bob is, where Jonathan lives, and even how many steps are exposed on the TTC's longest moving stairway .
I had spent an anxious night worrying about everything that could possibly go wrong, like forgetting my cell phone, not charging my cell phone, forgetting to bring the clues with me, what if I overslept, etc. I arrived with everything and once all 14 teams were off, I thought the hard part was over and I could relax.
WRONG.
Matt and I walked to the last checkpoint to set up the final task for the racers. As we relaxed under the sun and waited for the racers to phone in, I thought myself, "Funny, why is it taking so long for them to phone in?" I looked at my phone and discovered to my horror that it turned itself off and no amount of button-pushing would revive it.
Barely an hour into my first event, I already managed to lose 28 people. And we hadn't even left Toronto! I had no way of contacting anyone and I was ready to just lose it. I am ever so grateful that Matt was with me, because with his quick engineering mind,he solved the problem and revived my phone. The cell phone kept dying throughout the race, so I ended up staring at my phone the entire time, waiting for the black screen of death so I could quickly revive it. In between directing racers on what their next clue color was, Matt and I kept a vigilant eye on our last checkpoint. I painted letters on little pieces of plywood that Matt cut for me and we scattered them throughout the labyrinth. Little children thought the pieces of plywood were for them and either picked them up to take back home as a souvenir or kicked them around.
The racers went from Union Station to the Star Walk of Fame in the Entertainment District, to the Redpath Sugar Factory, to Kensington Market, to Riverdale Park East, to Greektown, to York Mills, to the National Film Board, and finally to Trinity Square. Everyone had a wonderful time with the race, discovered different parts of Toronto, and confused a few Torontonians. One of the racers told me how one of them would stay at the bottom of the stairs to count and the other went up and once at the top, yelled, "Okay!" A bystander was standing there puzzled and told them that they were the third person that he had seen that afternoon doing that. Jenn P was surprised by how efficient and quick the TTC is when she found out that she overestimated the amount of time needed to go to downtown Toronto from North Toronto. One of the teams had rarely used the TTC before and found how accessible so many parts of Toronto is by the TTC. Poor Mel and Tricia misread one of the clues and ran off to Old Mills instead of going to York Mills. One of the phone booths got mysteriously sabotaged. . .
At the last checkpoint, one of the teammates ran around the labyrinth yelling out the letters to the other teammate. Once completed, they had to rearrange the letters to solve the puzzle. The letters spelled out This is an a-maze-ing race.
Congratulations to Andrea and Chris, who on their FIRST TOC event, completely rocked and blasted the competition. Although they were the 11 team to depart, they were the first to leave the 3rd checkpoint and from then on out picket-fenced the rest of the checkpoints, came in first with a time of 3:40.
The other top finishers are:
2) Jo & Andrew 4:27
3) Darrel & Jenn 4:38
4) Rachel & David 4:45
5) Fiona & Carolyn 4:57
6) Faye, Michelle, & Benster 5:05
7) Jacqueline & Beilin 5:12
8) Wei-Lin & Marco 5:13
First of all, I really have to say thanks to Matt for helping me organize this and most importantly keeping me from completely losing it altogether during the cell phone malfunction. Also really big thanks and much gratitude to my two friends, Alice and Kim, who agreed with me that spending four hours in Kensington Market on a gorgeous Sunday was a worthwhile venture. And also thanks to everyone who participated in the urban chase. All the planning in the world would not make this a great event without having fantastic people who enthusiastically joined in. ~end of Oscar speech
Have some photos from this event that you'd like to share in our photo album? Please forward them to Erik Sonstenes at photos@torontooutdoorclub.com. Please note that we prefer to receive the photos in approximately 640x480 or 750x500 pixels - do NOT send original high-res photos. If you have a LOT of photos, please submit up to twenty of your favorites (only) for a day event, or up to forty of your favourites for a multi-day event. Thank you.