The Haynes/Carr-Danniells weekend and The Great Urban Race

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This was a full immersion Haynes/Carr-Danniells weekend, starting with Theresa Haynes taking her kids, River and Micah and Skye to the play High School Musical and then whisking Skye and Micah over to Girl Scouts where I picked them up before dropping them back off at the Haynes household with a baby sitter so that Cindy and I along with Theresa could carpool over to the Roxy to see husband, Kip Haynes play with his band, Beautiful Criminal. (It may seem redundant but I’m trying to keep all the names and the way they relate to one another straight)

After hooking up with more friends and checking out the cool show we collected Kip and Theresa’s brother, Tim and headed to Canter’s for some late night noshing. The following morning Cindy got the girls to their YWCA basketball which they lost just barely (Newly acquired assistant coach Rebecca stood in for me) while Theresa and I headed off to race in The Great Urban Race and Kip got stationed to be our support crew. Originally Kip was my running mate. We took second in the last Great Urban Race, but his ankle was acting up so Theresa agreed to step in for him. Bravo Theresa. Also thanks and shout out to Theresa’s parents who also helped hugely with questions and clues.

The Great Urban Race is an urban adventure. Teams of two solve clues and complete challenges while navigating city streets, using public transit. The clues are ridiculously obscure so you really need someone by a phone and computer to help out.

I knew that racing with Theresa was going to be different than with Kip when initially one of the main questions was what our matching outfits would be. “Black t-shirts, I guess” was my response. Fortunately Theresa won out(really no fight, she was Ok with whatever) but I did end up getting some cool Plaid shorts which Cindy really liked,( I liked them too, ok.)

This time the race was a bit more complex involving both the Metro Rail and the bus system. Last time Kip and I ran we managed to run the entire race and never take any Mass transit, but we never left Santa Monica. This time we went from Hollywood to downtown up into Echo Park and Silver Lake and then back to Hollywood.

The race started off a little bumpy for us. We went to FAX the clue sheets at a place near the start that I had actually went to the day to make sure it wouldn’t be a problem and sure enough day of the race it wasn’t working . So we ended up racing the other direction to an alternative FAX. After making sure Kip received the FAX we jumped onto the Metro Rail and headed downtown on a hunch and now we were cut off from communications because well we were underground on the Metro (funny how on 24 their cell phones work just about everywhere including underground bunkers like their head quarters, hmmm?) So when we came up we found out that we had overshot the first destination and we were back in the Metro again.

At this first clue one of us (me) had to do a handstand. Which I did, problem is I just kept going and practically flipped over.






OOOPS!!!!



There we go. Like I said we were off to a rough start.




Like when I bit Theresa's finger at the next clue that required us to have a photo of one team member feeding a slice of pizza to the other.




Good thing she got her hand out of the way and has a good sense of humor




Looking a little sweaty




A bit more relaxed or had we collapsed in exhaustion at this point




Near the end back in the Metro




Almost done




These are our pathetic caricature's. A mandatory stop that took forever because of the long line of racer's waiting to be drawn. I saw him make a lot of cool drawings, but literally two racers before us and he realized he needed to speed up and scale it down a bit. Hey at least I got a skated board.

I don't know exactly what place we came in, they haven't posted the results yet, but we had a great time. Thanks again to Theresa and congratulations on finishing your first race.

Post race celebration up at the house and good byes and good nights were said but no the Haynes/Carr-Danniells immersion weekend was not quite over.

Skye and Cindy and Micah and Theresa still had a few hours of selling Girl Scout cookies at our troops booth.

WOW!!! What a combined family weekend.

We'll see you guys tomorrow at the park.