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Friday night / Before the Race
I'll start by saying that instead of looking forward to this year's Urban Challenge with excitement and anticipation I was dreading it. I was completely unprepared: my knee was hurting from my attempt at running earlier in the week, I was distracted because of the engagement and had done virtually no prep work, Sarah, one of our main internet resources, was unsure of being available to offer support due to her mother's unexpected (and serious) illness, and last of all we were having a total monsoon on Friday.
I'm not joking! It rained HARD (like almost 4 inches) all day long and it seemed that there was no end in sight. The forecast for Saturday was rain, not showers or drizzle, but rain for every hour of the hourly breakdown. It looked bleak.
By Friday night, I had packed my Disney rain poncho and was holed up at Aggie's apartment ready to cram in some local Philadelphia information but I was sure the UC was going to be pure torture. Brian, one of our other helpers, called to say he might be unavailable for a large chunk of the morning due to the rain. You see, we have one sump pump in our basement and our house is prone to power outages during storms. We lost power briefly on Friday night and the pump was working hard enough that he had to get the backup right away or baby sit the pump and potentially spend the morning bailing out the mess if the power quit and the rain kept up.
Aggie wouldn't listen to me whine and instead had me take notes on a piece of paper regarding the locations of various statues all over the city. The first of these was a statue called Sign Boy near City Hall. (Remember that, it's important later!)
Eventually we went to sleep, nervous but kind of excited. We woke Saturday morning around 6 to fog and some light drizzle but no real rain. The news, however, showed that Kelly drive was closed due to flooding. Would this alter the course? Hmmm.
Dave & Busters Race Headquarters
We got to D&B around 7:30 and checked in with ease. They handed out plastic bags to everybody so we'd have a place to store our clues so they wouldn't get too soggy. Kevin McCarthy, Mr. Urban Challenge, even recognized us as former racers. He probably says that to everybody, but who knows. He might have recognized us from the photo on the website from when we won the summer checkpoint clue contest.
We had time to kill before the trivia challenge started. So we just milled around and watched people arrive. They provided drinks (water and Naked Juice) to everybody while we waited. They showed still shots from prior races and gave tips on camera operation and basic strategy on a giant projection screen. One of the most notable tips was always play like you're in first place. That's extremely valuable advice. We did not heed it, but we should have!
Trivia started right about 8:30. The first question caught us a little by surprise so we got it wrong ( a spelling question that Aggie would have gotten right if she'd had a few more seconds) It turned out not to matter because we did well from then on. We only got 4 questions wrong and that was good enough for FIRST PLACE! We, and the other teams in the first batch of trivia people, left HQ with a 21 minute lead over the last pack of racers.
We left HQ and quickly scanned the clues. Aggie called Joan and put her to work on CP1 and I called Sarah to get her started on CP2.
Checkpoint 1: A confounding crossword
Across 1: Having beliefs or behavior that is not openly acknowledged but kept secret (6 letters). Down 1: WKRP disc jockey (5 letters). The two intersect at the next to last letter of each word. Find it NW of headquarters.
We started walking North of HQ while scanning the clues as we waited to hear from our helpers. We realized that we were in pretty good shape because we knew many checkpoint answers right away. CP8 was easy because it had to do with Harry Potter. Aggie knew CP3 off the top of her head. CP9 was about the Phillies, so I called Brian right away to get him to verify who the starting pitcher of Game 6 of the 1993 World Series.
I literally jumped up and down with excitement when I saw that "Sign Boy" (remember him!) was the answer to CP11. Aggie also had a good guess for the answer to CP4 and had Mom make a call to information to verify her hunch and to come up with a street address. She also asked Mom to work on CP12 which related to artwork and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Mom had our Philadelphia Outdoor Art book so this seemed like a good task for her.
All of this only took about 10 minutes and then we began to concentrate more fully on the crossword puzzle for CP1.
We knew the WKRP DJ had to be either Johnny Fever or Venus Flytrap but we weren't sure of the other word.
First we tried covert but that didn't make sense with the intersection of the two words. Suddenly, I had a brain storm and came up with closet. It fit! We called information to get the address of Fever Closet or Closet Fever and came up with Closet Fever at 701 N. 2nd Street.
We ran over there and got our pictures taken by another team. We didn't know CP2 at this point, but we did know CP3 so we headed off in that direction towards Independence Hall and hoped for some info about CP2.
As we're walking, we get confirmation from Mom that Aggie's guess for CP4 was right. We put her to work on CP5 that had to do with characters from Friends.
Aggie had called Joan and got her working on a math problem that was part of CP6.
Somehow, and I have to admit I have no idea who told us or what happened, but we got the answer to CP2 from another team.
Checkpoint Two: The Patented Wacky Equation! Find it within a mile of HQ. The English word for the Portuguese word Cha + in mechanics, small part filling a prepared recess cut in two joined parts or components, and thus employed to lock these parts together + palindrome = checkpoint 2.
The answer to this was Tiki Bob's at 461 North 3rd Street.
We ran to Tiki Bob's and had our picture taken and then headed back to Independence Hall. I'm sad to report that my knee was already starting to hurt. At this point, it was more of a dull ache than an actual pain but it did not bode well for the rest of the day. Also around here a lady stopped to tell us that a woman had just been mugged around the corner from where we were. Great!
On the way over, Joan called back with the answer to the math problem of CP6 and we put her to work on CP5 related to the TV show Friends. We also told Sarah we got CP2 and put her to work on CP10, a pesky anagram, and told her to use the handy anagram unscrambler that Aggie had sent her earlier in the week.
Checkpoint Three: In the Navy! CP3 is a statue of a man in Independence National Historical Park. This particular man shares his name with Bette Midler's piano man "back in the day" when she premiered her cabaret act at the Continental Baths.
Evidently, Bette's piano man was Barry Manilow (how could I not have known that??) and Aggie knew that there was a statue of Commodore Barry at Independence Park. We zoomed off to get our picture taken with the Commodore. On the way over, a park employee dressed as a colonial tried to help us but we already knew the answer so we didn't stop to chat.
We had a brief panic when we though we'd have to go through a security checkpoint to get to the statue but we lucked out and Aggie asked some tourists to snap our picture. OK! Off to CP4.
Brian called back to tell us the Phillies pitcher was Terry Mulholland so we put him to work on CP7 which had to do with Evel Knieval. Mom also called to give us the answer to CP12: Thomas Fitzsimmons who had a statue near the cathedral.
Checkpoint Four: I Yam What I Yam! Checkpoint 4 shares its name with an action packed 70's movie in which one character rants: "Hey, Miletto! Come on, get up here! I want you to ask this f*$# somethin: ask him if he ever picked his feet in Poughkeepsie." Find it on South Street.
Aggie had guessed from the bold print clue that they were talking about Popeye. Not Popeye the cartoon but Popeye Doyle, main character in The French Connection, a popular 70's movie and one that had been referenced during the UC summer checkpoint challenge contest. Mom had verified that there was a store at 333 South Street called French Connection.
Skip Chick! She was waiting just a few stores down from French Connection! Interesting to know that she was at CP4 for the second year in a row. Could it be that they always lurk in the same place?
Passed the skip chick and continuted to French Connection and got our picture taken.
Checkpoint Five: It Ain't No Central Perk! Checkpoint 5 is a tavern that shares the first word of it's name with a character on NBC's Friends and contains an entrance to an Underground Railroad tunnel on it's bottom floor. Find it on a "palindromic" street in central Philly.
OK. Now we were in a real bind. At this point, nobody has made any progress at all with CP5.
Joan & Brian had called with the answers to CP6 (the math problem) and CP7 (Evil Knievel). We knew CP8 (Harry Potter) CP9 (Terry Mulholland) and CP11 (Sign Boy) and CP12 (Fitzsimmons). That meant the only clue we didn't know was the anagram for CP10 and we had 2 helpers (Joan & Sarah) working on it. Both CP6 and CP7 were down at Oregon Avenue and would require a subway trip to reach or a long walk/run. We decided to use our skip now, for CP5, and head down to Oregon Ave. right away since we knew everything else but the anagram.
We also made a decision here to walk/run down to Oregon Ave instead of waiting for the Subway in both directions. Last year we decided that foot power was almost always a better option than public transit. I'm still not sure if we made the right decision on this.
[By the way, the correct answer is Joey G's Tavern on Camac 243 S. Camac Street. Easily solvable if they had concentrated on the palindrome part and not the Friends part. That was my fault I think for not pushing them to investigate the palindrome angle.]
Checkpoint Six: A perfect 4.0! Checkpoint 6 is a café on W Moyamensing Ave whose address can be found by solving the following equation: 29Z+9 where Z is: [diagram of a triangle. Angles given are 70, 56 and the third angle =(Z-5)]
Joan had come up with the answer to this quickly: 1720 W. Moyamensing. We didn't know what was there though, and she got sidetracked, (by me, I'm afraid) trying to figure out what was actually there. She dug up some information about a famous doctor who had some memorial at 1300 Moyamensing and that caused us to second guess her work. We wasted valuable time on this when she could have been working to solve CP5. [Pesky hindsight!]
Along the very long walk down to Oregon Ave. we passed a mailman and we asked him exactly where we were going. He gave us great advice and I think we would have struggled a bit finding the road if he hadn't told us exactly where it was.
Turns out 1720 W Moyamensing is a place called Big A's.
Checkpoint Seven: Filled with Sexist Hogs, we're Sure! Checkpoint 7 shares its name with an organizing member of the He-Man Woman Haters Club and an Evel Knievel like daredevil who is a frequent guest at "Knievel Week". Find it within a mile of Marconi Plaza.
Brian solved this one for us, learning that Spanky from the Little Rascals was the He-Man woman hater and that Spanky Spangler was the dare devil. We had a bit of confusion choosing between Spanky's Automotive Repair and Spanky's Motorcycles but the motorcycle place fit the clue a little better and when I found out it was 635 Oregon Ave., right down the road from Big A's, we knew it was right.
We ran between Big A's and Spanky's trying to barter our answers for the answer to CP10. We'd been told by one team the answer was Urban Deli but we were pretty sure that was a wrong answer (the clue said it had to be one word) and we still didn't have any idea. Unfortunately for us, nobody else did either. Joan actually got a friend of hers who lives in town to start driving around looking for one word establishments that could be the answer. Her friend also checked a phone book and proved that Urban Deli didn't exist and a couple calls to information also proved that Urban Deli was wrong.
Checkpoint Eight: Even We've Been Swept Up In the Hype!?! True or False. Elves frun the Gringott's Bank in the world of Harry Potter. If True, then Rodin's Thinker is Checkpoint 8. If False, then Rodin's Gates of Hell is Checkpoint 8.
This one was totally easy. Everybody knows that Goblins run the bank! (We'll learn later that everybody doesn't know this!) We hopped on the subway and rode back to City Hall. The ride was nice but the stairs to get down to the subway nearly killed me. OUCH! This stupid illio-tibial band thing sucks!
On our way up the parkway we stopped in a Subway (Eat fresh!) for a drink and to beg the poor sap working there for help on the anagram, and then continued down the parkway to the Rodin museum. At this point we thought about stopping at 7-11 to get some Advil for my knee but decided against it. [I've since learned this was a stupid move since it probably would have helped my knee a lot. In fact, yesterday afternoon it was good as new with the ibuprofen.] We also passed some teams and continued begging for CP10. One nice team told us the answer and we offered them CP12 which we thought was Thomas Fitzsimmons. They're startled since they thought the answer to that one was...........George Clymer!
Panic! A wrong answer! Oh no!
We call Joan and Sarah and try to get them to investigate this George Clymer guy since now we know the anagram. We try to get hold of mom but she stopped answering the phone. She must have been hiding from us since she gave us a bum steer!
We encounter a few more teams at the Rodin museum and there were a lot of steps that were hurting me. After some slight bickering we did agree that we were not going to win, especially not with my bum knee, and that we should just have fun and not fret so much about speed. We were doing a lot better than last year and we should be happy.
Time to head back down the parkway to Checkpoint 9, the Barbados Flag.
Checkpoint Nine: Play Ball! Which one of these players was the starting pitcher for the Phillies in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series? If Curt Shilling, then the Greek flag is CP9. If Danny Jackson, then Swaziland flag is CP9. If Mitch Williams, then the Spanish flag is CP9. If Terry Mulholland, then the Barbados flag is CP 9. All of these flags are found on the Ben Franklin Parkway.
At the Barbados flag we see the team wearing blue camouflage sitting on a bench franticly calling people and reading maps. They were begging the people on the phone for help on the anagram clue. They had no idea. They seem frazzled and somewhat reluctantly took our picture at the flag. It doesnt work right and they had to do it again. I felt guilty about distracting them with the picture taking and gave them the answer to the anagram.
After all, we're not in a position to win, right? Plus, somebody gave the answer to us, we didn't figure it out on our own. They did not give us any answers in return. (I must note, we didn't ask either it was a foolish gesture on my part to not barter for the clue.)
Checkpoint Ten: Word Scramble Unscramble the letters below to form the one-word name of the establishment that serves as Checkpoint 10. Find it southwest of City Hall. Ideal Burn
The answer to this is Rindelaub's Bakery 128 S. 18th Street. I have no idea how anybody ever figured that out. When we got there, a nice lady took our picture and told us about 10 teams had been there ahead of us. We headed off to Sign Boy at CP11.
Joan called at this point and gave us a lead on Clymer. It seems he devoted much of his life to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and Joan's best guess was that whatever it was we were looking for would be at the Fine Arts building near Cherry street.
Checkpoint Eleven: He's So Cute! Get your photo with Sign Boy cuz he's Checkpoint 11. Find this art near City Hall.
This was easy since we knew the answer from studying the night before. We met two young guys here who took our picture and who agreed with our vague lead on George Clymer. All four of us headed over to the Fine Arts Building around Broad and Cherry.
Oh yes, George Clymer: Our nemesis.
Checkpoint Twelve: Breathtaking! Checkpoint 12 is an artwork inspired by a Philadelphia merchant born in 1739 who signed both the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. Find CP12 within a mile of Market Street.
The blue shirt guys had reached the building first but they were looking confused. There wasn't any obvious artwork and no mention of George Clymer. I called Joan and had her confirm that he was the only double signer born in 1739. She did that easily. Mom had really goofed on Fitzsimmons. Not only was he not borin in 1739, he didn't even sign both documents!
Anyway, the boys in blue took their picture in front of the building telling themselves that lovely architecture could count as artwork. They took our picture there too, but we weren't convinced this was right and kept Joan on the phone investigating you-know-who. (Forget Lord Voldemort! George Clymer is he who must not be named!) The blue guys then took off, heading to CP1 and CP2 that they hadn't done yet.
I checked my watch and we were only three hours and thirty minutes into the race. We had lots of time before we had to be back at HQ and we decided it was worth spending some time trying to find the correct answer here.
Joan searched our art database and came up empty. She searched by the term Breathtaking. She searched by his name, she searched by every possible combination of terms. She used multiple search engines and still came up completely blank.
We returned to Sign Boy hoping to get help from other teams. Everybody was confused. Nobody knew anything except the name George Clymer. Aggie tried to beg/barter the answer from many, many teams.
Meanwhile I got on the phone with the art department at the Philadelphia Public Library. I talked to a really nice librarian who spent at least 15 minutes searching for George Clymer in all the philadelphia art indexes and he came up with nothing. He searched by Breathtaking! and found nothing. He was completely stumped.
By this time, we'd squandered close to 45 minutes. Another desperate team came by and said they heard that CP12 was down by 4th and Independence but they didn't know what or where exactly it was. Again all they knew was his name.
We gave up and started walking back to HQ down Chestnut Street by way of 4th and Independence. We had Joan call the historic park and they told her they didn't know where George Clymer could be located but if we called the number for park dispatch and asked for Phil Sheridan, he could probably tell us. I tried the number and got the voice mail of a law firm. A total bum steer.
Suddenly, Aggie notices that there are brass plaques set into the sidewalk and that they bear the faces and names of signers of the Declaration of Independence. At the corner of 6th and Chestnut we found You-Know-Who! We took our picture with his plaque and made a beeline to Dave & Busters (HQ).
Back at Headquarters
We had resigned ourselves by the time we got back to HQ that our plaque was probably not the right answer but that the clue was vague enough that they might accept it. It was art, and it was within a mile of Market Street. But we still wouldn't have been shocked if we didn't get a medal.
We were the 26th team to arrive back at HQ at about 4:35. We were happy to hear that our answer was acceptable and we got a medal! Kevin was shocked that CP12 was proving so problematic. The correct answer was a statue in the park called The Signer. It's a guy clutching a pen triumphantly over his head.
When we got up to the bar a team of girls immediately started talking to us. They said they couldn't believe they beat us back to HQ because they had gotten some help from us. (We didn't remember giving it to them!) Anyway, they had arrived back at HQ first but were disqualified because they had a wrong answer --- the Harry Potter answer! The easiest one on the whole list! They were telling us how they were sure they were losing and had no chance at all and how stunned they were that they finished first.
The team that won was the Blue Camoflague team! If you remember, that was the team that didn't know the anagram clue. We gave them that hard answer that they didn't know for nothing in return. We thought we were far out of the running and in fact, at the point we gave up that clue we were winning the race!
We gave up the answer because we believed that we were doomed. We should have asked for CP12 in exchange for CP10. Or we should have just forged ahead and maybe we could have finished more quickly or would have had the same George Clymer experience. Who knows? All we do know is that we helped that team to win because we thought we had no chance of winning and in doing so, sabotaged ourselves. We didn't follow the main rule which was always race like you are in first place!
We might not have won, but I bet we would have finished in the top 10. And what's most important is that next year, we'll know that it actually is possible that we're doing so well that we could win. We're pretty good at this type of race and should show the appropriate level of confidence in our abilities.
You know what's really ironic? George Clymer was a stickler for punctuality and abhored wasting time and really hated if others wasted time on his behalf. Check out this quote from his eulogy (given, by the way on the front steps of the Fine Arts Building) "He was indeed the first to come; so that the board never waited a moment for their president...."
| The Signer - Answer to CP12 |
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| (not George Clymer!) |
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