Whirlwind Chase For Children
September 15, 2000
Featuring Kathy Ward, Eileen Corbet,
Jean Ward, Laura Ward and Cherie Dabbs
Ok, you know how people do interesting things to earn money for charity? Like walking, running or riding a bike? Well Cherie got us caught up in the insanity of this Chase. So let me tell you about our evening....
The experience started with this announcement:
So at the appointed time, we met at this neat restaurant called, of all things, Goose Island.
We had a very nice dinner while we waited for Jean to arrive from work. When Jean did arrive, we yelled out her name to entice her to our table. She made us stop yelling her name!
Cherie and Laura
Kathy and Eileen
Jean
Then it was on to the meeting place for the chase (after we fed the parking meters again):
We sat around and talked, planned our strategy to win the game and drank. Soon, the big moment arrived! We opened our clue packet and began the Chase. We studied the clues and wrote down addresses, using my car as a strategy table:
I really don't have to mention the matching sweaters, do I?
So we headed to our first station where we had to answer a trivia question: Name three actors who played James Bond. I couldn't remember Lazenby's first name but I finally somehow came up with Timothy Dalton and we were off for more answers.
Each time we answered a question or "performed", we were given a sticker in our clue book. We walked around Chicago for 2 ½ hours. And we hustled. Our desire to win the competition was high. Laura set the pace so you know we really moved!
The Trivia questions were pretty easy. Name the first Pink Panther Movie. The Pink Panther! Name the song playing. Jean named it...Live and Let Die And for some clues, we just had to go to certain addresses and write down information. What Chinese Restaurant is at such-and-such corner? Chinalite. Fun stuff, right? Well...
Then there were the performances. The first stunt we had to do was actually surprisingly fun. We had to stand in a cirle, hold hands with each other (except for the person next to us) and then get untangled. Our leader, Cherie, kept reminding us that we were just untangling a knot. We did a good job with this one.
Among the other stunts we had to do were:
1. Sing and dance to a "Madonna" song. Eileen and I were fine with the dancing but we left it up to the younguns to sing the actual words to the song.
2. Fly like airplanes while humming Off we go, into the wild blue yonder. We actually had a good formation going with this one. I was quite proud of us.
3. Write two haikus. Not too bad. Jean's haiku actually contained the phrase, tiddly-foo--go figure!
4. Oh yeah, tango. Jean and Laura had to tango while the rest of us "sang" for them:
5. Use props and sing a Sunshine song. "Let the Sunshine In"--I was lucky, I grabbed the tamborine.
6. Wear wigs and sing a made-up jingle (that had to rhyme) about Jewels. We shop at Jewel...we are cool:
Jean, Kathy, Eileen and Cherie
Oh, did I mention that strangers repeatedly asked us what the heck we were doing? Oh yes.
Jean and the French Lady
Also, we had a trivia question worksheet to fill out while we were running around. We made a couple of cell phone calls to our experts, Terry and Becky (Thanks! We got all the trivia questions right!) and yelled at them over all the noise. They were both very patient with our shenanigans.
We finally returned to the bar. It was a two story bar and there was no where to sit on either level. That was a bit distressing until Eileen found us this great table outside:
We had free food and drinks and sat around and talked and laughed while we waited for the Chase results and the raffle.
Ok, Ok, I know you're dying to know how we did. The results were dramatically posted on the wall. There were 38 teams that completed the Chase. We were Team Number 21. We are listed at the top of this page:
Unfortunately it's the 5th page on the wall! We came in 26th! A very respectable 26th place!
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