Adventure Race (pt 2)

As we turned the corner on the way to the canoe ramp, we decided to take refuge at the gas station on the corner.  We picked up some provisions (Sports drinks, Combos, etc.) and used the bathroom.  While I was standing around waiting on my team to finish up a guy walked up to me.  "Are you in the race?"  "Yes, why?" "Well, turns out it's taking the lead teams longer than they thought to finish up the canoe section.  They decided to not let anyone else start the section after 6:45pm."  It was 6:50, we had just missed it.  On the plus side, not finishing the canoe section didn't count against our officially finishing the race.  And we got bussed to the take-out location to start the next section.  On the negative side, this was the one section of the race I was really looking forward to doing.

As we waited for the bus we chatted with a couple other teams.  We also ate our Combos.  Frankly, they were the best Combos I've ever had in my life.  After over six hours of moving, the combination of pretzel and pizza flavored filling was heavenly.  We talked about how amazing they were for the rest of the race.

We arrived at the take-out site greeted with quizzical looks from the teams who actually did the canoe section.  The next part of the race was orienteering and bushwhacking.  Stephen was a great help with this section.  Mad props to his land navigation skills!  Instead of taking a long way around this hill to get to the ridge, we climbed straight up.  This was a bit taxing on my already tired self.  I was really impressed that we found the check point at the top of the ridge.  We then had to bushwhack through blackberry bushes. Good thing we all had long pants to put on for this area.

As the sun went down we saw an amazing sunset.  It was time to break out the headlamps.  My Princeton Tech has an amazing ability to produce daylight.  One section went walked through was covered by about a foot of leaves.  It reminded me of walking through snow.

After a couple hours we found ourselves in what looked to be someone's private property.  This was a bit disturbing because we were pretty sure someone was going to come out of the house and shoot at us.  After we found our way off the property we saw the sign that said, "Private land designated for public use."  Whew.  That was a relief to know, but information we could have used a half mile earlier!

We ended up walking down a road for about an hour before we arrived at the beginning of the last section.  They had moved out bikes from the drop off to this new location.  We decided to take a 10 minute break before we jumped on our bikes and headed off.  It was around 2am at this point.  This may not have been the brightest idea.

To be continued...