To the Chase!

[hnpcc]

Yep, that time of the year again. Once more astrocave and I teamed up to compete in the City Chase, again as "Calm a Llama Down".

Saturday morning we got up bright and early - well, early anyway - and headed to the start line in order get the registration done quickly. The registration desk opened at 8am. astrocave had looked up the Metlink Journey Planner, and determined that we needed to catch the 7.13am train from his place in order to arrive just before 8. So I got Dean to drop me at astrocave's place and we headed in. And arrived nearly 20 minutes early. In Docklands. Where absolutely nothing is open that early. Seriously, it must be the only suburb of Melbourne where you can't get a damn coffee before 10am. We wandered around a bit, commenting on how deserted it all was (and with astrocave telling me about a short film shoot he did there, where the desertedness was part of the storyline) before finally heading back up to where the registration desk was in the process of being set up. By this time it was about 5 to 8. We stood outside in the sunshine, waiting along with another 5 or so teams who had also most likely trusted the Metlink site.

At 8am one team headed over to ask if they were open. "Just a few more minutes!" said the volunteer in charge of organising. We waited. More teams arrived, each one heading to the desk and being told it would be opening in a few minutes.

At 8.35am the desk finally opened.

By that time I was in a mildly crummy mood, not helped by the lack of readily available caffeine.

"We could have caught a train an hour later and still made it here before the desk opened!"

Still, we got through the register team/get t-shirts process fairly quickly and painlessly and finally I was able to get inside the James Squire pub (the starting line) and get an over-priced capucchino.

Re-caffeinated, we sorted out our stuff, changed into the black t-shirt they'd given us, checked our bag and then had about 40 minutes still before the start at 10am. I think next year we might arrive later. Another team came over to join us at the table and we started chatting. Paul had won his entry in a competition and he and Fi had no idea what to expect. Being the kind of junkie who goes and checks out every available online source about what happened two weeks previously in the Sydney event (it helps to have some idea what you might be going to do!) I started filling them in on that and on what we'd done the previous year. Before we knew it it was time to head to the starting line, where once again the organisers didn't like our team name (the woman at the registration desk did!) and we failed to win a Blackberry. I remain undisappointed by that! Paul, Fi, astrocave and I kept on chatting as we went through a brief warm-up and then the race start was announced:

"The clues are all around you! Look under trees, under rocks..."

This was deliberate misdirection, as the clues were in fact off to the left being held by two people. I'd already lost astrocave as we'd headed in different directions, and despite catching a glimpse of Fi grabbing a clue sheet I lost them too. astrocave and I managed to find each other again (helps that he's tall) and we started deciphering clues, ringing our googlemonkey (the postdoc again) and generally mapping out a preliminary route. With a plan and adrenalin pumping we started jogging to catch a tram (Docklands sucks for readily accessible public transport compared to Fed Square). I had a look around for the other two, but decided they must have run off ahead of us.

Coming up to the corner of Latrobe St and Harbourside Esplanade we saw a tram turning on to Latrobe St. Despite sprinting, we still missed the bloody thing, and ended up waiting for about 5 minutes for another one to arrive. Naturally during this time at least 3 trams passed us going in the opposite direction! We were trying to get to checkpoint 6, one of two mandatory checkpoints:

Paparazzi: You won't be doing any quiet reading at the state's home of books.

This was the State Library (duh), which is on the corner of Latrobe and Swanston Sts. Finally a tram rocked up, we hopped on and there were Paul and Fi!

"I thought you were long gone!"
"We got on a tram going in the wrong direction!"

We decided to team up and complete the checkpoints together. At the State Library the queue to complete the checkpoint was fairly long, so we decided to head for a nearby non-checkpoint but still mandatory part of the day instead:

TRIVENGER HUNT: Before the clock strikes 12, go to the MetShop to begin the hunt.

Despite me being certain that the Metshop was still in Elizabeth St, everyone else was correct in saying that it had in fact moved to the Town Hall, on Swanston St. The "Trivenger Hunt" consisted of two parts - firstly we needed to collect three out of four of a zoo entry ticket, chopsticks, a photo of a non-participant in a football jersey and a train timetable. Being in the Metshop meant that we had easy access to a train timetable at least, so we grabbed that and headed out to start the second part, which consisted of three questions:

1. How many clocks on the front of Flinders St Station?
2. How many stops on the City Circle Tram Route?
3. What is the number on the tram parked at Luna Park?

Paul and Fi jogged down to Flinders St Station to count the clocks, while I tried to follow astrocave who'd sprinted down Flinders Lane looking for Asian food shops (he and Paul had already been knocked back at one). I could smell Asian spices but couldn't see an open food shop for looking. After our third attempt, having been up two laneways to find closed shop fronts, we managed to collect the chopsticks and head back to our meeting point. astrocave rang the Metlink information line to ask about the City Circle stops and was told "26", as the other two returned with the answer of "well there's 13 on the front, but we think it's a trick question because there's the really big one at the top as well. So 14."

As it was now approaching 11am and we hadn't managed a checkpoint yet started heading for our first actual checkpoint, number 13:

Beautician Roulette: Spin the Wheel for a good cause in the Old Colonial Inn.

The Old Colonial Inn was on Brunswick St, and we caught a tram as far as Victoria and then walked up. En route Paul put the Luna Park tram question onto his facebook page. I'm starting to see the benefits of an iPhone at times like these! Two minutes later we had an answer: "Number 96".

"Are you sure?" asked astrocave "that's the route number, but is that the tram that's parked there?"

Paul phoned a friend, who's a St Kilda local.

"He says it's 79. He lives around the corner from Luna Park."

We decided to go with 79.

Then we ran into a guy wearing a Carlton jumper who was happy for us to photograph him! That was the Trivenger done already!

At the Old Colonial Inn there was a roulette wheel with some charity tins next to it and a second table set up.

"You're going to spin the wheel, and whichever number you get is the amount you have to collect outside - not in the pub - for charity."

astrocave went first. And managed to land the ball on zero. Score!

"OK, the second part is you get a choice. You can either shave part of your head, shave part of your eyebrow or put a henna tattoo on your face."

"I'll do the tattoo" I said, having realised pretty much straight off that they were transferrable tattoos and not actually henna at all. Had henna tattoos in Egypt, they take longer to put on and take much longer to come off than those ones! astrocave got to carefully sponge the tattoo onto my face while Paul firstly broke the roulette wheel (heh) and then spun 5. He and Fi vanished outside, and reappeared very quickly, opting for Paul to shave part of his already quite close shaven head. Several goings over by Fi later there was a very slight difference in the length of his hair in one strip and some red patches where it had rubbed a bit. The volunteers decided it was close enough, stamped our cards and we charged off down Brunswick St towards checkpoint 11:

Ditch the Routine, Join the Party: www.mscd.com.au

This was one our googlemonkey had looked up, and it was a dance studio on Kerr St. Upon arrival we waited briefly with a few other teams until the previous group had finished. We were doing Zumba! (Amusing actually as "MSCD" stands for "Melbourne School of Classical Dance"!) The instructor took us through a few basic steps, and then the music started and we tried to keep in rhythm. Much to her credit the instructor didn't openly laugh at us, although I certainly cracked up a few times at the guy next to me in particular, who was enthusiastic but doing everything in the reverse image of what the instructor was doing, mostly because he was watching her in the mirror. Finishing up, we started off for checkpoint 5:

Carlton Spray: Visit Pugg Mahone's for a darker tone.

This was actually a bit of a trap for young players, as there are two Pugg Mahone's pubs - one in the CBD and one in Carlton. While waiting for the Zumba, we'd chatted to another team who'd been standing confusedly outside the CBD pub with several other teams before giving up and heading off. We all headed off together to the Carlton one, which for them meant backtracking a bit. Everyone was really hoping this was beer drinking. Or whiskey. Or something vaguely alcoholic anyway - not least as Canadian Club were another sponsoring company. Our hopes of free booze were dashed however, as this turned out to be one member getting a spray tan. I promptly nominated astrocave, for two reasons - 1. I had a nice bra on that I didn't want to get tan stuff on, and 2. he's paler than I am so it would show up better. Paul ended up also taking this one for his team, so Fi and I chatted while the two guys were firstly sprayed with cold air ("That's the brownest I've ever seen you!") and then stood around congealing for 3 minutes before dashing into the bathroom to wipe off as much excess brown as possible. Our third checkpoint down and it wasn't even midday yet!

We headed straight for checkpoint 12:

Scholarly Session: Behind the tyres on Tin Alley at Parkville's Centre of Learning.

As both astrocave and I had attended Melbourne Uni, Tin Alley and the Beaurepaire Pool were both familiar. This checkpoint was a boot camp, with one member timing and one participating. Fi stepped up for her team, I let astrocave do it on the grounds of the Oxfam walk. The boot camp was longer than last years - this was 30s plank, 20 skips with a skipping rope, 45s plank, 20 burpees, 1 minute plank, 20 stretchy weight things. astrocave was ready to kill the volunteer by the time he hit the third plank - very tiring. Fi, on the other hand, did the whole thing with her jumper on and didn't raise a sweat. Very impressive!

Back to checkpoint 6 at the State Library - the queue had vanished at this stage so we were able to step straight up, grab a Blackberry and start trying to convince people to do stupid things on camera. This is harder than it sounds, particularly when you're the umpteenth person to ask them. Two guys kindly agreed to pretend to know how to use one of our two Blackberries while the other team took photos - fortunately we managed to work out the camera fairly quickly. I filmed astrocave performing a random act of kindness by handing out jelly snakes, then we found a group of teenagers who were happy to sing "All you need is love" on camera with both us and Paul and Fi. The teenagers - all for jelly snake payment, talk about score! - were also happy to do the "Lady and the Tramp" spaghetti scene with a jelly snake, also on camera. Our mission accomplished, we got another checkpoint marked off and headed off again.

I should point out that this was (obviously) a sponsored checkpoint. It was a bit of a failure in that respect, in that all of us found it difficult to get the Blackberry to work, and ours froze up twice, which was also annoying. What it reminded me of was The Amazing Race teams complaining about how difficult the Kodak EasyShare cameras were to use - kind of the opposite of what I think they were hoping for. None of us were ready to rush out and buy a Blackberry after that anyway.

Our next checkpoint was the second mandatory checkpoint, number 7 (A&B):

Tight Squeeze: ConvincE a straNger To be your fRiEnd, hoPefully they will be Open and INTrigued to Play youR gAme. Have a gReat time, hAve fun and be good, watch out and be patieNt with the rebels.

We were convinced that this was the Rebel Sport store in Prahran, which I knew was opposite Pran Central and could well have been in a complex known as Centrepoint (I don't know Prahran that well) and that there was a choice of two tasks. When we'd been at the Zumba one team had told us that no, there was a choice of two Rebel shops - the one in Prahran on Chapel St and the one on Bourke St which apparently is in Centrepoint (I don't know Bourke St that well either, it seems). So we headed for Bourke St as it was both nearer and en route to where we were heading.

The task was to get a member of the general public to agree to come in and try on Skins Compression clothing. astrocave and I found this the hardest of all the checkpoints - it took us at least 10 minutes to find someone (Paul and Fi managed it pretty much straight off, which was genuinely impressive). Things were probably not helped by both of us wearing black, astrocave having streaky brown marks on him and me having a facial tattoo. From the looks and people ignoring us I think they thought we were asking for $2 to get to Mildura [1]. Finally we managed to make our body language and smiles broad enough that a guy agreed to come in - and equally as fortunately Paul and Fi came out at exactly that moment and told him that it was only the top he had to try, not the tights as well. For some reason this was a sticking point with many people - wear extremely tight garments in public?! No thanks!

We caught a 96 tram down to St Kilda and headed into Luna Park to do checkpoint 10:

Pharoah's Curse: At the home of Melbourne's smiling face, a weak stomach will result in disgrace!

This was one of those pirate ship things, with a somewhat improbable Ancient Egypt theme, where they spin you around in very large arcs which then turn into very large circles. I enjoyed it, mostly. The 13-14 year old in front of us kept up a constant stream about how she was going to die, OMG this is the worst thing I've ever done - right up till when we finished and she saw her Mum and went "you've got to come on this, it's fantastic!!" astrocave and I cracked up, as did her (probable) father.

On the way to the Pharoah's Curse we saw the parked tram. It had number 96 on it.

"What's with your friend's 79?!"
"I don't know, I'm going to have to ask him about that!"

We walked around the corner to checkpoint 9:

Mind over Matter: A royal feast awaits you at this princely Saints watering hole.

I was very dubious about doing any eating challenges, not least because some people in Sydney two weeks previously had come down with (and in one case been hospitalised with) food poisoning post their eating challenge. But it was nearby so we decided to check it out anyway. It was eating worms. Very small worms. Both team mates had to eat one, or one team mate could eat two, or we could do a sudoku instead. astrocave and Paul both gulped down two worms (with lots of water), while I did the sudoku lying nearby, having misheard the instructions. Of all our checkpoints that turned out to be the quickest by far.

Two checkpoints to go! We caught the tram to our next one, checkpoint 4:

Gold Medal Performance: You don't need to worry about sharks in this water near Mark Webber's favourite park.

At the Melbourne Aquatic Centre the checkpoint that I'd been expecting/dreading since my first UrbanMax finally eventuated - we were directed to the diving pool. I headed off to get changed (no, I don't run in bathers, ever) and came back to find that I had to jump a total of 20 metres. There were a choice of four diving platforms - a 10 metre, a 5 metre, a 3 metre and a 1 metre. Logically the fastest way would be to jump off the 10 metre platform twice. I am not logical. I also have an irrational dislike of falling, possibly because of a very rational fear of landing. Either way, from having grown up in a town with that exact combination of boards I knew there was no way I was getting off the 10 metre (if I couldn't do it quickly when I was 12 I doubted I'd be doing it any more quickly now) and very little chance of getting off the 5 or 3 particularly fast. (The last time I went off the three metre board it took me about 5 minutes.) So I opted to jump off the 1 metre 20 times. This also had the advantage that I landed right near the stairs out of the pool, so should theoretically be quicker. astrocave got bored mid way through and jumped off the 5 metre, so we finished more quickly than anticipated. Heh. Paul, meanwhile, was jumping off the 5 like a champion - apart from one unfortunate jump where he went off slightly on an angle and ended up bombing into the pool. Apparently that hurt. I told you I have a rational fear of landing!

Last checkpoint! We tossed up between checkpoints 2 and 3, both of which were on our way back to the start. In the end checkpoint 2 won:

Roll up, roll up!: A game at this circus could be your Crowning glory.

This was Galactic Circus at Crown, which coincidentally was also where part of Dean's Buck's night was. I'd never been there before, but astrocave had. With Dean. On Dean's Buck's night. Heh. After wandering around the venue a couple of times being mesmerised by the flashy lights we finally found the hidden checkpoint, which turned out to be Wii boxing. Fi and I jumped at the challenge - to leave you either had to win, or to box twice. My group training boxing sessions turned out to be less useful than anticipated - I have no idea how this Wii thing scores, but I managed to win on a 2-1 split decision anyway. This left us waiting for Fi's second round, during which Paul encouraged her to lose as quickly as possible, even going so far as to walk into punches. Our round we were enjoying it too much (well I certainly was!) to think of deliberately losing quickly!! OK, that and I was trying to work out the scoring system.

Now that we had all our checkpoints we just needed to get to Southern Cross Station to hand in our Trivenger items and questions. astrocave spotted a group of teams on the concourse, so we headed over and handed in our chopsticks, photo of Carlton jersey-clad man and our Sandringham train timetables.

Then we got to the questions.

"The clocks is wrong."
"There's 13 at the bottom, and then the big one on top."
"14 is wrong."

astrocave crossed it out and put in '13' instead.

"Yes, that's right."
"It's not actually - there's a big one on the top."

"That's the tram route number, not the tram number."

We looked at the volunteer, somewhat confused.

"It was the number on the tram."
"Yes, but it's the route number. We want the tram number."

"It's 1101" said the team behind us, "she means the vehicle number."

We quickly passed the info on to Paul and Fi. If they wanted the vehicle number they could have mentioned that. Generally speaking if you ask someone the 'tram' number in Melbourne they assume you want the 'route' number. Unless you're emergency services, and then they tend to be more specific. Which this question kind of wasn't.

(Also the explanation for the 79/96 initial confusion - the 79 tram stops/parks outside Luna Park, turns around and goes back. 79 would also be a route number though.)

"The number of stops on the city circle is wrong."

This was a surprise, not least because we'd had the same question last year and 27 was certainly the answer then.

"It's 7" said astrocave who'd overheard another team having the same argument. We passed this around to the teams in general, and then headed off, with astrocave muttering "7. By what definition of 'stop' is it 7?! We went past more stops than that getting from Docklands to the State Library! These questions are stupid!"

We finally found out the day after the race that the "number of stops" question was meant to indicate the "timing points" on the route - i.e. the mandatory stops the tram has to stop at in order to stay on time. Again, extremely poorly worded question.

Still, we'd completed everything and now we only had to get back to the finish. Round the stadium, complete with thousands of jersey-clad football fans watching the game inside, down past checkpoint 3 and along the pier. Up ahead we saw another team.

"Let's sprint past them!"

We did. They sensibly waited until we were a couple of hundred metres short of the finish, then put on a very quick turn of speed and passed us, giggling all the way. We were giggling too. We knew there were 179 teams competing and our aim was to finish in the top 100.

Surprisingly we managed 64th place, in 5hr 51 minutes and 21 seconds. Paul and Fi very nicely let us come in first - they would probably have beaten me easily running! - and came 65th several seconds behind us.

We grabbed our free sandwich, ordered some wedges and finally got to the Canadian Club sponsored part of the day - yes, free whiskey!

The checkpoints we missed were:

Checkpoint 1: Up the Wall: On the other side of the river an Anaconda awaits you.

This was rock climbing at Anaconda South Wharf. We skipped this for two reasons - Paul doesn't like heights and we weren't sure if both partners had to do it and none of us were entirely certain where South Wharf was. Even though I'd been there. Seriously, I had no idea how to get there on foot (although I can give you driving directions... bad ones.)

Checkpoint 3: Click go the Shears:Shred the WOOL at Shed 9

This was a choice of eating wasabi or carrying your team mate, at the Woolshed at Docklands shed 9. Grateful we missed it.

Checkpoint 8: Knowing me, knowing you: There is no time to stop on St Kilda for a Belgian Beer. If you know your partner well you will be in the clear.

(Who's writing these clues, a Survivor producer?) This was at the Belgian Beer Cafe, and involved one person answering questions and the other eating a dry weetbix for every question they got wrong. We avoided it because (a) we knew about the weetbix and (b) it wasn't really on our route.

All up it was a really fun day. The winning teams came in in 3 hours 12 minutes and 55 seconds - seriously, without running the entire thing I don't know that we could have done it much faster. This year's course was very spread out compared to last - four checkpoints in the northern suburbs, three in close proximity in St Kilda, not a huge number actually in the CBD. There were also a lot of activities that really did take a while (not the worm swallowing though!) We'll probably be back next year, hopefully we can win something this time (heh.)

One other highlight of the day for me was briefly chatting to one half of last year's Australian champion team, who'd paired up with half the New Zealand champion team to compete in Melbourne, with which neither of them was familiar. They finished 6th. Stu and I are going to seriously have to up our game in Sydney for this year's Urban Max! I think astrocave and I are just hoping that the organisers find our team name amusing one year. We'll probably keep using it until someone does, dammit.


[1] For some reason asking for money "to get to Mildura" is fairly common. It's like they picked the furthest point they could think of within Victoria, because that would be reasonable or something. No one ever asks for money to get to Omeo for example.