On Saturday there was a huge treasure hunt in San Francisco; a yearly event held in honour of the Chinese New Year (it takes place on the same night as the big parade). Our genius friend who’d written the Palo Alto one asked us to join his team, so of course we said yes. It was really really fun. We cockily entered the “Regular” level instead of the beginner one, even though we’d never been on one of these before, and the five of us solved 14 of the 18* clues. Not enough to win or place (there were hundreds of teams) but a very respectable showing for novices not from the city, I think!**
The other fun part was that there were additional prizes for best team name (i.e. most awful pun) and best costumes. Since it is the Year of the Pig, the names and costumes were all porcine in nature. The top costume was a group in lab coats with pig tails in the back – Team Niels Boar (the lab coats also had pictures of “boar”on atoms) with a close second being the Porkchop Assassins - ninjas with pig noses. The top name was “I Never Sausage A Team!” The pig is the best animal for puns, I think, what with all the pork products.
Next year is the Year of the Rat, I believe. I’ll have to get the costume and pun ideas percolating. We didn’t have time to do anything impressive this year… next year will be different!
Also different next year will be my level of preparation. I’d thought my foot was healed but it wasn’t***, so I started favouring it, which gave me blisters on my other foot. We were walking briskly for about four hours solid, up and down hills and stairs… a lot of walking and no time for breaks. We ended up relying heavily on a more foresighted team-mate who’d brought crackers and fruit. Also, I’d brought along a laptop thinking internet capability might be useful. It would have been, had we been able to actually connect anywhere. We weren’t, so the laptop was just dead weight. Next year I will beg, borrow or steal a Blackberry or something.****
Live and learn!
* We would have gotten more if it hadn’t been for New Year’s; the crowds and the parade itself turned into a huge strategic consideration which delayed us several times. On the other hand, it lent a wonderful air of surreality to the event; looking for the inscription on a manhole cover by the light of sparklers and firecrackers, while people with banners and huge masks ran around.
** Even the top five teams only got 17 out of the 18.
*** I should have known this from my last dance class, where I decided I could try barefoot spins again, which ended up with the instructor dabbing the carpet with paper towels and asking me if I had hepatitis.
**** Or perhaps I will have an iPhone by then... I am not schlepping a laptop again, though.
Lev Not-The-Cat always thought that diva was singing "Walking on Broken Dimes", and now I can not listen to that song at all without thinking of him singing it in falsetto.