Why is Jane making that funny face?

Jane, Julia, Joe: The J-Team

Wild Scallion Adventure Race 2005

Start and transition area: Grassy spot just southwest of Montrose beach house.

Saturday, Sept. 24. Start: 11 a.m.

CP1: First, one blader (Joe) and one two teammates taking turns on a scooter (Julia & Jane) follow lakefront bike path to Checkpoint 1 (CP1) in Olive Park near Navy Pier, about 5.5 miles south of start. Receive first playing card (designates you've completed task); blader removes skates and 2 teammates each carry one.

On to CP2: Run and take turns scootering to northwest corner of LaSalle & Wacker: Eastland memorial site (where a steamer ship capsized and sunk in Chicago River in 1915, drowning more than 800 people aboard); about 1.3 miles. Each teammate takes a red carnation, runs down the steps to the river, reflects on the victims, then tosses the flower in. Receive card, a 2.

CP3: Run/scooter down to Franklin, just south of Adams, the east entrance for the Sears Tower; 0.7 miles. Turn in scooter; drop gear. Armed with only water bottles, enter tower, climb stairs to top. 99 floors. Once achieving 99th floor (and enduring horrid singing of well-meaning 20something girls at floor 66), enjoy view for 30 seconds, enjoy a nice poo, retrieve card no. 3. Then descend stairs, not by elevator.

CP4: Retrieve gear. No more scootering (scooters returned to organizers), for now. Run to Redline station at State, north of Jackson; a few blocks, 4/10s a mile. Buy gatorade and a few sandwiches you'd never touch in real life. Take Redline north to Bryn Mawr stop, enduring delays for track maintenance; wolf down ham&cheese sandwich, which tastes great. Exit train, head east to lake and the Hollywood Beach "lighthouse," which is really more of a beacon. Rain begins as we leave train. Becomes steadily more heavy. Lightning and thunder toy with each other. Sky is dark. It's about 2:45 p.m. A cutoff deadline is looming. Pick up card No. 4 from concerned-looking volunteers as rain continues.

CP5: Head south along shoreline toward Foster Avenue beach. This is "coasteering" leg. Must stay right at shoreline, going over worn and pot-marked revetment stones (large limestone blocks placed by Army Corps of Engineers about 100 years ago to protect shoreline). As we near beach about 1/2 mile away, another volunteer (now getting quite soaked) says we don't have to run in the water when we reach the beach. Concerns about lightning, ya know. Nothing is said about the fact that the open ground at lakefront is still about the worst place to be. Run along beach concerned a lot less about the rain and lightning as we are about meeting the cutoff time back at the start (or transition area). Pickup card No. 5.

CP6: Continue along beach, hugging shoreline; this time, Montrose Beach, the far southern end of which lies the beach house and beyond it our goal. Now clear that we have plenty of time to make it before the 4:15 p.m. cutoff (if you miss cutoff, you're out of race). This portion of beach has long, long stretch of limestone revetment (which are huge stones, about 5 feet long, 3 feet wide, 3 or so feet thick), and it's all in worse shape than further north. Looks like a tidal pool, with water everywhere and what are probably rare beach grasses growing happily. Watch your footing; it's like a boulder field in the Rockies. (Remember, Al?) Chris & friend Debbie waiting in the rain to cheer us on (but not to provide any help, which is strictly forbidden; a picture is taken, however). Rain continues, but finally achieve CP and card no. 6.

Transition area: Drop skates. Grab more food, water, gatorade, de-gassed Coke (gets simple carbohydrates, sugar, quickly into the system; better than Clif Bars, etc.). Check maps, grab bikes.

CP7: Pedal to Gompers Park, Foster and Kostner Avenues, about 6 miles. Descend fun slope (hey, it's Chicago; it's flat here), pick up card No. 7. You know what's coming next because it was the same trail in 2002. But, you don't really know what's coming next.

CP8: Follow dirt trail along North Branch of Chicago River, through woods, etc., about 3 miles. This is pretty much an unsanctioned off-road, unpaved trail. The rain has stopped, but it has been raining steadily about 2 hours and about 65 or so of the 83 teams in the race have been through before us. It's all mud, sister. And the funny thing is that mountain bikes with their nobby tires don't really like mud. Huh. Who knew? Trail is familiar to me, which gives me the confidence to push teammates when they have doubts (is this the right trail?) or hear doubts from other teams. (When one opponent asks if this is the right trail, only smile and say: "I'm not saying." Then pass him by, the silly gay boy!) But what happens with the knobby tire bikes is a build-up of mud that basically jams brakes and gears until the bike won't move. I laugh (inwardly) at the first people with the problem: A fussy, young gay boy. Then see a team of 3 Trixies (Lincoln Park latte-toting, cel fone jawing, SUV-driving privledged 20 or 30 somethings) stuck. Stop laughing when it happens to my teammates. I help teammates remove mud. J-Team, go, J-Team! (My bike, thought a mountain bike, is clad with slicks, a training choice for last year's major bike race.) Trail twists, turns, goes up, down. Mud is thick, treacherous. Many bikers go down. It hurts. We have to cross under two train trestles (forbidden from crossing over), which means wading through Chicago River. Water is ankle deep or about shin deep. Cold. Wet, too. We see small herd of deer, some that must be fawns; 4 all told? More hiding? Trail finally gives out onto clearing where volunteers we last saw at Sears Tower greet us warmly. They tell us that there are about 15 teams behind us. We're psyched as there were only 4-6 teams behind us at the Tower. Collect card no. 8 and tool on out of there.

CP9: Headed up Central to Caldwell to Devon to entrance to Northwest Bike Trail or whatever it's called. But this trail is paved, well maintained and the spine of a very nice, huge park that hugs the river all the way to the botanical gardens. And, I know it well, having trained on it last spring/summer. I lead the team, going as quickly as we can. Seems like lots and lots of teams have lost time to the Mud Monster. We've got about 3 miles to go to a clearing in the woods, a spot called Miami Woods. We pass a team of cute lesbians, who are much younger than us. Ha! At the clearing, we enter pavilion for instructions for our first orienteering leg. Orienteering is the sport (in military it's a discipline, not a sport) of using a compass and map to find hidden locations. It's 5:40 p.m. All teams must be out of there by 6:30. Volunteers figure we have no chance of finding all 9 spots in that time, so we and other teams are instructed to find as many as we can. We get our map, Jane pulls out her compass, and off we go. Becomes clear quickly that we cannot figure this out by strict orienteering guidelines, so we decide to try to read topography and any physical features of the land (roads, trails, river, streams) and site clues visually. Becomes clear quite quickly that the fucking river is in the way. We decide to walk downstream, figuring there must be a bridge or something as organizers would not have us wade across that nasty river. We find bridge, and soon find 3 orienteering spots, punching our clue-card at each one. It also becomes clear that we need to wade across the river to make it back in time! I go first. No one dies. We retrieve card no. 9.

CP10: It's 6:25 p.m. Back to the bikes. We head out trail, then quickly realize we shoulda left the woods and gone onto surface streets. I think I know how to get us out quickly and speed ahead (see more deer grazing on the way). Darkness is coming, but worse, we've got to get to the next CP before 7 p.m. or we're out of the race. We're headed to Montrose Cemetery, Pulaski just south of Bryn Mawr, about 5.5 miles. But we're tired, it's getting darker, and there are traffic lights to waste out time. I'm bringing up the rear because Julia's lights are out on her bike. We hook up with a few other teams as we zoom down there. Everyone's watching the time, and dreading the next orienteering course that's waiting for us at the cemetery (they call it "cemeteering"; cute, or just annoying?). A cemetery, where it will be dark. Nice touch. The teams are jockeying for position and getting all tangled. They are annoying us! Especially this one team of not cool, not cute gay boys. We all pull into the cemetery at virtually the same time, about 3 minutes after 7. The organizers don't kick us out. We're relieved, but no time for that. We have to do the course and get out of there. I've had to pee since about, oh, 3:45? There are 9 spots to find, but organizers tell us to find just 5 because they've got to vacate the cemetery (do the families of the departed loved ones know that a bunch of muddy, smelly, desperate crazy people are zooming around the place on bikes?). The J-Team is careful to not bike anywhere on grass, let alone anywhere near a grave. We quickly find our 5 and get out of there, with card no. 10.

CP11: Sprinting as fast as traffic, nightfall and tired bodies will let us, we're heading down Wilson straight to Montrose Beach, about 5.5 miles. Seems to take forever when you really, really, really have to pee. You remember some story about a guest at a royal banquet in the middle ages who was too embarrassed to get up from the table and excuse himself for a whiz that his bladder burst and he died. You remember a Tour de France "color" feature in which some bikers talked about the standard practice of whipping it out while speeding along on the bike and letting it fly. Every stoplight is an eternity. Why can't those J-Girls peddle faster? As soon as we're in Montrose park, I find a tree. Back at the transition area, get off the bikes. Put on dry socks, wolf down Clif Bars, grab more de-gassed Coke (thanks, Chris!). Put on blades again; girls pick up a scooter each. We'll be scooting along faster this time! Check out of transition area (where we see several people who are done and packing up their cars to go home), picking up card no. 11 on way.

CP12: Head south on bike path toward Recreation Drive underpass to get under Lakeshore Drive. Damn! It's closed, and seriously closed with chain-link fence. We're headed to Clark Street near Newport, about 2.5 miles, so going further south will be extra distance. But the blades are zooming along great, there's not much light from street lamps, but enough, and there are few obstacles on the trail (but we do see a racoon). We cross under at Roscoe underpass and head down Roscoe toward Clark. Traffic is light, though it's 8 p.m., or so. Gay boys are not yet out in force. As we approach Clark, Jane's front wheel catches in a pavement crack and she almost does a face plant. We head up Clark, CP12 is in view. This one is easy. But at the big 3-street intersection of Clark, Sheffield and Newport, an opposing team's scooterer cuts across my path. Nice. I wheel around him, saying "thanks for cutting me off." We pick up card no. 12; the offending opponent apologizes, "I thought I cleared you." Nice to apologize, but "clearing" someone is not good enough, especially when someone's on blades, and it's a deadly intersection in Wrigleyville. Jeez. ... Onward.

CP13: The last CP, only 2 miles away. We'll have a full suit of cards. Free beer awaits. We're zooming down Newport, going wrong way down one-way street, at night, with few streetlights and lots of heavily canopied trees. But who cares? We've got blinking lights and we're going to make it to the end without death, serious injury (bruises? no problem) and before the cutoff time of 10 (which sounds really, really sadly late all of a sudden). As we near end of Newport where we'll pick up Southport and follow that to the finish, the annoying gay team (with the clueless guy from CP12) catch up and ask about the bike path on Southport. Jane explains as we wait for traffic to clear. Then their blader catches his wheel in something and takes a nasty looking tumble. He goes down hard and screams; screams like he broke an arm. We all stop and turn back. His teammates are right there, checking him out. The J-Girls are moving in, "Are you OK?" I ask too, but from dark place inside the feeling rises up that I just want to make sure he'll live and get going. When the injured guy says he's OK but he hurt blah blah blah something, I say to the J-Girls: He's ok. Let's go. The last 13 blocks of the race are a straight shot down Southport to Clybourn, where an oktoberfest is in full fest mode; beers await. We're blessed with few traffic lights and stop signs where cars actually stop & let us pass. The gay boys catch up, but are not trying to sprint past us. I let up on my harsh assessment of them. Another team of gay boys (these are a bit cuter) come up from the east, looking lost (why'd they go that way, sheesh). Jane gives them help, improving our Karma that I had blackened. We all end pretty much together. Photos are taken; it's about 8:55, nearly 10 hours of racing. But we made it, got card no. 13. The beers are cold.

(results and photos not posted yet on urbanadventureracing.com, but should be up soon?)


p.s. Image function doesn't seem to be working so can't add photo. :-(