Milwaukee Challenge

Kathy and I participated in the Milwaukee Challenge during a hot hot day.  This is a scavenger style race where you are given clues to where you have to go, take a picture of that spot possibly doing something like acting out an Academy Award winning film (we did Chariots of Fire).   You must complete 11 out of the 12 clues to finish.  There were over 150 teams, some with 4 team members, and some with up to 8!  I don't think having more team members was any kind of advantage, since the photo that needed to be taken at each "challenge spot" should include all the people on your team, but I did see at least one group of 4 not stay together, they divided in two and split up and two waited on the corner while two ran up and took the picture...now I am not the whistle blower here, I am just saying that rules were not really enforced.

The winning time was an hour, meaning that team got their clues, reviewed them to decide where they were going to go then went in some order from Rock Bottom Brewery to Peck theatre (that is where we imitated the film), then Walk of Fame, then outside the Arena to the referee statue, (* here see below), then to the Public Market, to Broadway and Erie, then to Wisconsin Avenue and O'Donnell park (where two things were accomplished) then back west on Wisconsin, over the river, pet Dee Dee the duck in a picture

 and back to Rock Bottom to check in...all in an hour.  Along the way they "found" someone wearing an athletic jersey from outside Wisconsin, a building built before 1905  

Here is our old building..Federal Building built 1892

                       
and a person from a state starting with M, N, O or P (a different person than the one in a t shirt).  If they did not do one of these things, then they had to include a run to 9th and Wisconsin where the Victorious Charge statue is, and continued in some order after the * above.  Doing all that in an hour is damn good.

We did it in two and a half hours.. judging by the winning time.. not that good but considering there were teams finishing after us and 90% of the participating teams were in their 20s and the other 9% in their 30s, we can say we probably won the over 50 division if there had been one.  We wasted time (about 15 minutes) in the Grand Avenue thinking the Victorious Charge was somewhere there, duh?, why would it by near the mall.  Obvious thinking does not come into play when you are running around in over 90 degree heat.  Then we missed the lone Fireman and his friend statue which was on Broadway and Erie and had to double back to snap the picture, wasted 45 minutes on that one.  So take off an hour and we would have finished in the top group of 30.  Should have, would have, could have..ha ha.  We did well, AND had fun, and even though I enter every competition with the goal to win it, both Kathy and I are completely happy with how we did.  While near the end of the race I said to Kathy, "our current goal is to beat that group walking back ahead of us" so we picked up our pace, jaywalked, and passed them.  In your face!

Overall, we had mixed feelings comparing this race to the Urban Dare, which I did with Leah in Chicago a few weeks back and I also did with Kathy in Milwaukee two years ago.  I think the clues were easier on the Challenge Nation and they supplied five hints on their facebook page the night before, and four of those hints actually helped...though I never did figure out where the fifth hint fit in.  The cost for the Challenge Nation was less than the Urban Dare and I believe cash money was the prize for the top four finishers in the Challenge.  I am not exactly sure what the Urban Dare winner got, entry into the Super Dare competition maybe.  The Urban Dare does have the dares, and they are fun, but the dares that Kathy and I did in 2009 were the same dares Leah and I did in 2011.  The organizers need to get a little more creative.  The clues were a little more challenging in the Urban Dare, but both clue sheets contained irrelevant information.  We learned to ignore the  descriptive information and concentrate on the main topic of each clue.  One error we did was not noticing the line..This clue is our "outlier" meaning this clue takes place farther away..if we had we would not have wasted time looking where we did.

There were also MANY people dressed in costume, best costume earned a money prize as well.  Never saw what team won but the racing (homemade) sausages got our vote.

Thanks Heather and Scott, best anagram unscramblers by far, and they helped us over the phone with band names, building ages and where paving bricks with donors names was located.

Super thanks to Kathy, for running around downtown Milwaukee with me, asking strangers if they live in Wisconsin, and then laughing when they look at us strangely.  Pretty amazing that the first paving brick I looked at had the name Kathleen on it, and how confused was look on that young boy's face with the Cub shirt on when you said pretend you are throwing a football.  Good Times!

                                        Kind of hard to make a human pyramid with two people!