Fifth Annual El Grupo Scavenger Hunt draws 150 people
This event is a benefit for El Grupo Youth Cycling in Tucson. The way it works is that Ignacio and Daniela hide puzzle pieces in diabolical places all over town and then give out a map with hints of varying degrees of uselessness which drive you crazy as you try to find the puzzle pieces.
The event has a Le Mans start and when you get back to the starting point (BICAS, of course!) you have to put your puzzle together.
My team got second place overall, but owing to our exceptionally poor puzzle-building skills we almost had to settle for the bronze as the team behind us rapidly assembled their puzzle and we floundered around like four bickering chimpanzees. Finally Lauren took control of the puzzle and got it done just before the other team, and we got second place.
We weren’t even close to the first place team, which beat us by twenty minutes.
One of the stops was world headquarters of Tucsonbikelawyer.com (that is, my office). People complained that this was a difficult one to find, but for crying out loud folks, there’s a sign on the mailbox and the bag of puzzle pieces was in plain view if you just walked along the sidewalk. (Okay Charlotte, it was in plain view to me; I admit I am 6′4″ tall and somewhat familiar with the locale . . . )
The event was great fun as teams of bicyclists passed each other all over town looking for the hidden caches of puzzle pieces. Onlookers must have been a little confused by it!
We’ll take first place next year.
Update: Pics of the event here (El Gruppo site) and here (Westernskycommunications.com).
–Erik Ryberg
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:01 am
Erik, check out Christian’s Alley Cat pics on the El Grupo website or blog!
Lori
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:04 am
I photographed and blogged the Alley Cat event.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:56 pm
Our team came in just about last, but we kicked butt in another category: I think we get a gold medal for Had the Most Fun. Millions of thanks to Daniela and Ignacio!