Questivus for the rest of us... [Pt. 1]

A few weeks  months (I'm bad at posting regularly) ago I participated in an event called "Questival." It was an epic 24-hour adventure race/scavenger hunt -OR/AND- a brilliant marketing ploy for a new outdoor gear company, but either way, it was a lot of fun. Cotopaxi, is a new company that claims that it does, "Gear for good." That is to say, for what you buy of their products, the donate to NGO's and Charities around the world. Anyway, I've already provided enough free exposure for them, myself and over a thousand other participants, so if you are curious as to the particulars, then go ahead and click on the hyperlink above.

On to our team, and the fun times we had. Our team consisted of 4 Men (although some might dispute that distinction for some of us), Alan (AKA: Old Man Beardsly), Shawn (AKA: Potato Biker), Gluch (AKA: in-it-to-win-it) and ME (AKA: Mr. Plantastic). (Not actually known by any of these nicknames, but I feel A-Team rip-offs are in order). Politicchic picked out a swell name, #atdawnweride for us.

Alan is my brother-in-law, and Gluch is my main villian from mission days, and Shawn is Alan's friend and grabbed the whole family and drove down from Idaho, he's that hardcore. We had a few overly long planning sessions before the race actually occurred, because the list was released before hand. What list you ask? The list of tasks. The big draw for a lot of participants was that you got a $30 backpack for the sign-up cost of $10. This was incentive to participate, as well as a way to ensure that the tasks were completed properly with members of the team present (I'm pretty sure there was some egregious cheating going on, but who cares? the rules were ambiguous enough and you can only do so much for people's honesty).

Enough of that, the quests: Click Here (It was easier to put it on my old portfolio website then anywhere else, just scroll down, its all there)

As you can see, there is quite an extensive list. I'll chronologically list out achievements over the course of questival.

Friday April 11th at 2 PM: Alan arrives at my apartment, and we await the arrival of Shawn. Gluch was at class or something, so he was meeting up with us later.
Previous to the competition, I had made Llama rights signs and a brownie shaped like a llama. I was terribly proud of both, but sadly the challenge involving picketing for llama rights was stricken from the final rules list. We did it anyway, as you will see later.

Somewhat before 3, Shawn and his wife arrived, and he jumped in with us and we headed down to the start off point, South of BYU. (Since I had the best vehicle for the adventure [a Ford Escape named "Bruce,"] and no smart phone, I was the driver for this escapade.)

3 PM: We arrived to a good line, that grew very quickly. We were lucky to get in when we did, because in no time at all, the line stretched around the block. There were some real go-getters that sold lemonade as per a quest item to the people in line as soon as they got their backpacks. Alan and I betrayed the team and bought lemonade from them.

We got our Backpacks, Mine was blue and white, and ran to go do our first task.

3:15 PM- Took a picture with Professor McKonkie, a really cool guy. Also thanked him.

3:20 PM- Alan, Sean, and myself then went to the Food and Care Coalition to perform an hour of service. Gluch met up with us there.

4:20PM- We then hustled to the Provo High Track to run a mile. Which I did while the rest looked on. Gluch ran a lap, but was in jeans and street shoes, so just waited for me to finish.
Before:

 After (Note Gluch's feigned exhaustion):

While there, we also threw a sticker on my vehicle, whose name is Bruce, and took a picture of my Llama cake/brownie.

4:45 PM- We booked it on over to the Utah Valley Conference Center to shake the Mayor of Provo's hand. Apparently, he got an tsunami of requests to do this, and so set up to 10 minute periods to get it over with, at his leisure. Smart guy. We also "clocked", and "planked" there. I had no idea what "clocking" was. Apparently, you hold your hands out like the hands of a clock in some diverse location... and "planking" is laying prone somewhere. These are stupid trends. But alas, they were tasks to complete, and so we completed the hell out of them.

Somewhere around 5 PM, we rushed to perform the task of eating a hot dog with hot sauce in a hot tub while wearing hot pants.

Sorry.

Anyway.

Gluch also seized the day and planted a flower in the planter outside the apartments where the hot tub was located.

5:30 PM- We drive down to Spanish Fork to visit the Krishna Temple.

There we do the following: selfie with a llama, yoga pose in a scenic location, and best of all, we shoot a sweet little training video with my camera that I had planned previously. Gluch (Dave) really rose to the occasion. =

And the Video:



At 7:15 or so we watched the sunset.

We will continue the tale on the next few posts.

And at the conclusion of Each I will include the following:
http://cotopaxi.com/pages/questival-raw-unverified-scores