Mitsubishi CityChase Toronto - Aug 16, 2008I am totally exhausted, reek of chlorinated water, and my groin muscles are badly pulled. It all started two years ago. I was sitting in the living room at Mare's place, stuffing my face with ice cream out of the tub while watching the latest episode on Amazing Race where teams travelled to India, riding elephants, learning to drive and making tapestries, among other cultural and rural activities. Marianne: We could totally do that. We should totally be contestants for this show!
Me: Mmgffff... *continues stuffing face with ice cream*.
Marianne: No! I'm serious. I think we'd be great at this!
Me: *Nods head in agreement to avoid an argument* Fast forward to the beginning of summer when Steph tells me about CityChase 2008 -- an Amazing Race-style scavenger hunt around Toronto. For a small fee of $150, I could see if Mare could put her money where her mouth is, as well as getting her off my back about planning things to do (she's been complaining that we haven't had enough dates). That brings us to today. 7 o'clock wake up time. Meeting Erica and Zion (our fellow competitiors) at the subway station, waking up Brian and Sarah (our google-mapping teammates sitting at home), and meeting downtown at Metro Hall Square at 9am. At precisely 10am, we were set loose to retrieve a clue sheet which would give us clues to "chasepoints" around Toronto in which we needed to collect 10 in order to finish the race. It was total madness. Imagine 1000 people in red dry-fit shirts, rampaging towards Union station. This was our route:  Total time: 6 hours, 15 minutes. 11 Chasepoints 10:00am Start: A quick Intro, got a lot of free drinks (Vitamin water, Fuzz) and had a quick washroom break (No peeing during competition!) Ran to Union station (almost got hit by a taxi by disobeying pedestrian signals), grabbed our clue sheet and subwayed to Queen station taking street car 501 to Trinity Bellwood, while making frantic phone calls to Brian and Sarah to get them started solving our clues. (1) - A soccer test in which yours truly had to keep a soccer ball in the air for four hits, navigate an obstacle course, and kick a ball through two pylons (or else you had to repeat the challenge). I got it on the first try, while Mare worked the phone to solve more clues. Chasepoint 1 completed! (2) - Street car'd back to the fitness club where Mare made me cringe with her horrible pole dancing skills. I won't be asking her to dance for me any time soon. Chasepoint 2 completed! 10:30 am (3) Subwayed to Museum station and ran to Queen's park. We took turns pulling each other in a rickshaw in a circular path around the horse statue in the park. No sweat. Chasepoint 3 completed! (4) Ran to Varsity Gym and discovered that we had no swim gear for this swimming challenge. Mare wanted to leave, but despite my piss-poor swimming skills, I stripped down into my sexy boxers and dived to the bottom of the deep end to retrieve the hockey puck that we needed to advance. Chasepoint 4 completed! (5) Upstairs in the same building, there was a huge lineup for a sport designed for blind people. Despite the lineup, we worked the phones, checked in with Zion and Erica to see their progress and exchanged tips. Also got some more answers from Sarah and Brian. The sport was quite fun actually. We were faced up against two 6' caucasian males. I casually joked that they're lucky to be playing against two diminutive asians, of which one was a girl. We had to put on blind folds, and roll a heavy medicine ball which made a ringing noise at it moved to the other end to try to score a goal, while the defending team tries to stop it. Team with the higher score at the end of two minutes won. Mare made two key saves, and I whipped the ball as hard as I possibly could. Final score: 2-0. Yay for the genetically disadvantaged! Chasepoint 5 completed! 12:00 noon Next stop, was actually marked number (10), in which we had to pick up a sheet of questions about the olympics in which we had to submit later. We got Brian Ma on the phone-- the master at trivia and he got to work on that. (6) Next up, went to a simple challenge designed to get one of us wet. The water was green and murky. Mare chickened out, and made me sit on those dunking tank chairs in which when your partner hits a target with a ball, your chair falls out from under you and you get wet. Despite hititng the target twice, her noodle arm wasn't strong enough to make me fall. I was safe. Or so I thought. The ref felt sorry for her and let her walk right up and push the target and I got a mouthful of creek water. Chasepoint 6 completed! (7) Fencing is a lot harder than I thought. We got some quick lessons and had to each whack a girl on the head twice in order to advance. We barely squeaked by-- only because she didn't feel like Zorro-ing my ass. We also bumped into Zion and Erica here and exchanged further clues. Chasepoint 7 completed! 1:00 pm At this point, we were feeling really confident and thought we could give the top 10 a run for its money. But due to many miscalculations-- it went downhill from here. Our first miscalcuation is that we didn't figure out the clues for the mandatory checkpoints until way later. And then we realized, it was intentionally done to be harder to get to. We continued West on the Bloor line towards High Park until we arrived at our first mandatory point. (8) This challenge involved getting articles of clothing, bags, shoelaces, you name it, to create a literal clothesline that could span 10 meters and lifted off the ground. This was by far the longest challenge yet, as both of us had to strip down, and run around the park begging people for their belts, jackets and shoelaces to complete the challenge. After a gruelling hour, we managed to finish. Chasepoint 9 completed. Our second miscalculation was doing an extra chasepoint in which we didn't need. We ran over to a Lithuanian area to complete another challenge with another team because we were in the area. (9) We teamed up with another team to complete an obstacle course which included walking together on wooden planks and tossing hackie sacks into a bucket situated on a blindfolded person's head. Chasepoint 9 completed! 2:30 pm (10) It was a long ride back from High Park to Spadina station. We got out, and submitted our olympics trivia sheet for marking (in which Brian dilligently answered perfectly) to get an extra (uneeded) Chase point. Chasepoint 10 completed. 3:00pm (11) We had one more mandatory Chasepoint to go. It was between Balfour Park up at Yonge and Mt. Pleasant or Ontario Place. I went with the reasoning that Ontario place was closer to the finish-- and it ended up costing us the finish line, which closed at 4pm. Mare, correctly thought that being closer to the subway line would save us time. Instead, we got stuck on the slowest, worst street car ever.. TWICE: To go to and from CNE. We had to run to Ontario Place (no easy feat), and navigate a paddleboat forwards and backwards using a horrible steering system. Final Chasepoint completed! We arrived back at Union station and arrived at the finish line at 4:15pm. Fifteen minutes too late to count as an official finisher. Sigh. Either way. It was one of the most entertaining and fun days I've spent in Toronto. Fellow Torontonians are extremely friendly, and it was great to explore the city that I call home through an event such as this. Thanks to Mare, my awesome partner, Sarah and Brian -- the brains back home, Zion and Erica-- our teammate-competitors, and everyone else that made this day the most fun I've had in a long time. If this post has inspired you to take part, We'll likely be competing next year! Join us! | 
