Upcoming: 3rd Annual Birthday Scavenger Hunt!

Apologies again for the blog silence - there has been ever so much going on. Some good, some bad, but the one I want to share with you all is that the Boyfriend is now the Husband! We got married on October 3rd, and in true DC365 form, it was DC-centric and very special to us both. We had the ceremony and a luncheon for our families at The Willard, the cake was from (where else?) Baked & Wired, and afterwards we got beers at Stoney's and ended the night at Amsterdam Falafel. All told, a wonderful and memorable day.

And now I can focus on planning the next big event...the 3rd Annual Birthday Scavenger Hunt!

Mark your calendars now: Oct. 31, Halloween, at noon, we will be starting at the fountain in Dupont Circle for another round of photographic, DC-themed, eating and drinking, costumed madness! This year we're opening it up to, well, everyone, so don't be shy!! Bring your friends, your metro day pass and your running shoes, and get ready to WIN!

(Or at least have some good, clean fun!)

This year, I'm implementing an admission "fee," two cans of food to play, all of which will go to So Others Might Eat as we enter the holiday season. Also, since Halloween falls on a Saturday this year, costumes aren't required, but they are highly encouraged -- there will be a real points benefit to coming in costume, so plan on it.

Otherwise, the rules are the same as last year and the year before. You'll get a list of people/places/things/foods/drinks that are all worth various points, and you'll have to strategize which ones you want to go after. Teams can be of two to ten people, and you can come with your own team, or get assigned to one upon arrival. You can use your feet, metro or the bus only, no bicycles, cars or taxis. The hunt ends at 4pm with prizes and cake, plenty of time for you to get ready for your regularly planned Halloween parties.

The hunt is appropriate for all ages, but if you did feel like starting the party early, there is an optional "bar crawl" version of the hunt that you could easily pursue, and still be competitive.

You can read all about the 1st annual hunt and the 2nd annual, or see the pictures from the 2007 hunt or 2008 hunt, all of which will give you a good idea of what to expect.

Leave questions in the comments, otherwise, see you soon!

Related: Urban Dare (Won), Urban Dare (Lost), Post Hunt

Thing 27: Urban Dare Revisited, Dominated and Won

You didn't think I trained for the ten miler just to run a ten miler, did you?  Oh no, it was all training leading up to Urban Dare 2009.  And guess what?  It was worth it, because we won.

We. Won.

Let's backup a bit here.  Urban Dare is a scavenger hunt/amazing race activity that GFD and I did two years ago, and totally failed miserably.  You can read about the entire pathetic experience here, but in sum, it took us over four hours and we technically never completed the race.  We vowed to do better the next time.

Then I went to Seattle and missed Urban Dare 2008.

Which bring us to last Saturday, a sunny and clear day perfect for the race.  I was in literally the best shape I've ever been in my life, having taken to the gym the day after Urban Dare 2007, and having kept it up pretty regularly, for the most part.  GFD and I also had a system this year, basically a solution to all the amateur mistakes that we had made two years ago.  I was wearing spandex and sunscreen.  We were ready.

The starting point this year was at McFadden's, where we all congregated to get our t-shirts and do some trash talking.  Then out to Washington Circle, where, like two years ago, we were released for the race depending on whether we go the correct answer to a multiple choice question.  This year, neither David nor I had any idea what the answer was (Treaty of Ghent?), but were already standing in the "B" quadrant so we just hung out there.  And we were right!  We ran to grab our clue sheet, and then got to work.  

I don't want to divulge too much of our patent-pending, 100% effective strategy, but we solved all the clues before we left.

Then we were off.  Our first stop was to run about a half mile straight north, to take our picture was "the gentle giant that defeated the British empire through peaceful means," the Gandhi statue west of Dupont Circle:

Then we ran to just south of Dupont Circle, to take our picture with the statue of the "only U.S. poet to he honored with a commemorative sculpted bust in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey in London."  Our picture with Longfellow:

Then over to the Jefferson Hotel (which is currently under construction), which was "the hotel where Dick Morris got in trouble for sucking a call girl's toes."

We look pretty judgemental about toe sucking, don't we?  

Then it was a couple block north to Scott Circle, "the memorial to the person create homeopathic medicine," where we had to do a dare.  We had to hop on one foot twice around the statue, shouting "yellow" and "purple" as we went.

Next stop, the statue of Samuel Gompers who "founded the American Federation of Labor and served as its president for over 30 years."  This was another dare -- we had to throw beanbags until we got one in each of three holes.  David rocked this one and we were back off and running in no time. 

Further down Mass Ave (and yes, we jogged this whole time), and we took our picture with "the memorial to all victims of communism":

Then up to Union Station for our "bubble dare". This was pretty gross. I had to retrieve a piece of bubble gum from a pile a whipped cream without using my hands, and then blow a bubble.  See how sweaty I am this point? Imagine running three miles, being salty and sweaty, and then diving into a pile of whipped cream.  I was sticky and pretty gross at this point.

Then we took a bathroom break.  That's right, we were so confident that we nonchalantly took a pause to visit the restroom and the water fountain.  Then, back to running. 

Next up, we hit the memorial to those that had been in Japanese internment camps in WWII.  This dare was similar to the one we did two years ago, so we knew how it worked.  We got our word, "mendicant," and then had to add up it's point value based on the value of the letters as they were scattered around the memorial.  This year, no homeless man blocking our view, and we finished this dare in no time.

Down Pennsylvania Avenue now to the memorial to General Mead, who "commanded the Union forces at Gettysburg":

Then a few more blocks down Penn Ave to the memorial for General Winfield Scott Hancock, who was the failed Democratic presidential nominee in 1880.  Here we had to do a wheelbarrow dare, so David got on his hands while I held his feet and walked him once around a set of cones.

Here is were, by a small stroke of luck, I almost fainted.  Ok, so I may have the endurance to do ten miles, but by this time it was 1:30pm and it was HOT outside.  I was thirsty.  I started to see spots and probably should sit down.  I crouched while David bought a bottle of water from a street vendor, and then the 36 bus was coming right then, so we hopped on, hoping to get a bit of air conditioning and a small rest.

Our next stop was the Treasury Building, and the 36 bus goes all the way down Penn and stops on 15th Street next to the Treasury, so what the heck, right?  David was afraid it might slow us down, so we kept an eye on other Urban Darers as they were running down Penn Ave and wouldn't you know it but we ended up passing the team that ultimately came in second!  That bus was our lucky break.

We hopped out at the Treasury and got our picture with "Genius of Finance" Gallatin:

Then we got our second lucky break, the 5:00 Bonus photo.  "Get your picture with the memorial where a topless woman is handing a sword up to her hero," for which we could get 5:00 knocked off our final time.  We had a hunch it might be in Lafayette Park, and we were debating whether or not to run around and try to find it, or just pack it in and go back to McFadden's when we looked up and the statue was right in front of us:

Then we ran the eight blocks down Penn to McFadden's, where, much to our utter amazement, we were informed that we had actually come in first place. See how amazed I am?! I still can't quite believe that we went from being miserable failures at this thing to winning a Super Dare three-day cruise in the Bahamas for free!!

Plus, it gave me lots of fodder for my annual birthday scavenger hunt.

Two years ago:  Our first pathetic attempt at Urban Dare.

Thing 75, Revisited: 2nd Annual Scavenger Hunt

I have finally compiled the master photo album for the 2nd Annual Birthday Scavenger Hunt!  You can find the pictures HERE.

Thank you again to all of you who participated and made this year even bigger and better than last year!  The Boyfriend and I are already planning ways to improve and expand in 2009.  

You can read about the first one here, and see the complete pictures here.

And if you'd like to plan one yourself, and are looking for a little inspiration, leave a comment.  I'm more than happy to share my lists with anyone interested.

Thing 124: Nellie's Sports Bar and Trivia Night

Add Nellie's to the list of fabulous patios for summer time drinking in the out-of-doors. Nellie's, located on U Street a short block up from the African American Civil War Memorial, boasts a gorgeous, spacious rooftop deck replete with Beyonce, two rooftop bars and beers served in buckets.


Downstairs, the two spacious, high-ceilinged rooms are decked out with TVs showing nonstop Olympics coverage , along with enormous portraits of 19th century ladies. Rough brick walls and exposed pipes, colorful Chinese paper lanterns hang from the ceiling and an enormous antique mirror lines the wall behind the main bar.

If this doesn't sound like your typical straight-guy sports bar, that's because it's not. Nellie's caters to the gays of DC, and has become something of a see-and-be-seen place apart from the strip on 17th street.



A couple dozen of us had assembled for Good Friend David's birthday. GFD loves beers, Olympics, gay men, nachos and trivia, so the decision was pretty simple.


On Wednesdays, Nellie's hosts a trivia night, two games of four rounds each. We stayed competitive until the last round, during which we promptly lost it all. Questions ranged from the topical (Olympics) to the gay (Bette Midler) to the downright obscure (Ross Perot's running mate?). A lightning round was comprised of ten second snippets of song covers, and the answer had to list the name of the song and the original recording artist.

But our sorrow over losing was easily abated when GFD was presented with birthday nachos, complete with candle and boisterous singing. The menu at Nellie's is your typical bar food, burgers, wraps, wings, and hot dogs, along with some Mexican specialties (arrapas, empanadas and burritos). I can personally vouch for the mini hot dogs, which I demolished in between rounds 3 and 4 of trivia.


So here's wishing GFD a very happy birthday, as he joins the ranks of the Very Old. Wishing you many more, and lots of occasions to celebrate in the coming years!

Related: Trivia at the Wonderland Ballroom. Wow, that was the first Thing...how far we've come.

Book: Historic Photos of Washington, D.C.

Note: I received a copy of this book free from the publisher for review. That said, I'd like to think that did not affect my review. I'd also like to think it makes me kind of a big deal.

It's got to be pretty clear by now that I geek out pretty hard about DC history. The Barry administration or the Willard or Pierre L'Enfant? Yes, please.

The pictures in Historic Photos of Washington D.C. feed that geek in me. I really enjoyed the pictures of DC street cars, the Capitol without its dome, Union Station without its fountain and Georgetown back when it was a wide open space. F Street and Chinatown were composed of quaint store fronts, mom 'n' pop shops or the shiny new department stores like Woodward & Lothrop (now closed) and Hecht's (now closed).

Besides the novelty of seeing a horse-drawn cart making a delivery to the White House, I learned a lot from this book, too. For example:

• James Renwick, Jr. designed the Smithsonian Castle in 1847, which was then built using red Seneca sandstone.
• Dupont Circle used to be called Pacific Circle. It was rechristened Dupont Circle in 1921 with the fountain, titled "Rear Admiral Samuel Francis DuPont Memorial Fountain." DuPont was the first naval hero of the Civil War. The three figures on the fountain represent the sea, the stars and the wind.
• DC has pretty much always been ineffective at snow removal.
  
• The Memorial Bridge opened in 1932 and was meant to be a symbolic rejoining of the North and South by connecting the Lincoln Memorial to Arlington National Cemetery.
• The building that is now Ben's Chili Bowl used to be a burlesque house called the Gayety!
  

My only criticism of this beautiful book is there are too many officials pictures -- lots of presidents at the White House, processions down Pennsylvania Avenue and the monuments looking lovely. I would have liked more pictures of some different neighborhoods, especially Shaw and Howard, Foggy Bottom, Anacostia and Petworth. Considering the huge influx of African Americans to the capital after the Civil War, the book is filled mostly with white faces.

But even for its short comings, this book is essential to anyone seeking historic understanding and perspective on this ever-changing city.

Thing 75: Organize a Scavenger Hunt

A city-wide photo scavenger hunt, my friends. I organized a city-wide photo scavenger hunt for my birthday. Because drag queens and orcas and Creme just weren't enough, I wouldn't rest until rogue teams of costumed individuals roamed the streets of DC harassing tourists and slamming back sangria. It was everything I had hoped it would be.

I had been dreaming about this event since I casually mentioned it to a friend in January for his birthday and he passed on the idea. I realized I was relieved, because I wanted the idea for myself. Then came Urban Dare, and it made me want to organize my own version that much more. And so, as the Saturday before Halloween dawned clear and the previous night's rain dried up, I met my friends in Dupont Circle to let the games begin.

This was incredibly fun and relatively easy to plan, and I urge you all to do this too (or, as the entrepreneurial Boyfriend insists I mention -- I will do it for you, for a nominal fee). Teams met in Dupont Circle at 2, and were handed a list of over 60 places, things, people, foods and drinks, all of which were weighted with different point values based on distance and/or difficulty in obtaining. I did it this way, rather than with clues or a shorter list, so that I could play too. There was an element of strategy involved this way that did not guarantee that I would win (and boy, did I not win. My team got smoked in fact). The teams then had four hours to run around the city, collecting as many photographs off the list as they could in an attempt to get the highest point total.

The list included everything from the DC specific (the point where the four quadrants begin, Duke Ellington's childhood home, Dorothy's ruby slippers), to the crafty (on 'spinning' bikes, in an elevator, playing shuffleboard), to the embarrassing (a tourist with a fanny pack, three tourists doing the "Charlie's Angels" in front of the Spy Museum), to local foods and drinks (sangria at Jaleo, a Julia's empanada, a salty oat cookie from Teaism). Extra high marks were awarded to the damn near impossible - 150 points for either a U.S. Senator, or George Clooney (who was in fact in town filming a movie that weekend). No one managed to snag a picture with George or a U.S. Senator, although our team did do a sweep of the men's rooms at Union Station.
Since it was the Saturday before Halloween, costumes were encouraged, but not required. One team showed up in some amazing lederhosen, which led to one of my favorite moments of the whole afternoon. Stopping at Jaleo for a quick sangria, the bartender told us that there had been another team in to do the same thing earlier in the afternoon. "They were dressed like Keebler Elves, but taller," he informed me.

At 6:30, all the teams met back up at Ben's Chili Bowl for dinner, cake and prizes. First prize went to team No Pugs with an amazing and unbeatable 515 points. The prize is a dinner cooked by me, so really, I was going to be a winner no matter, sharing food with good friends sometime soon.

You can check out all the wacky and ridiculous pictures here. And if you'd like to do one of these yourself in the future...do it! I will be happy to help, just leave a comment and I'll get right back to you.

Thing 37: Spy Tour

Thing 37 marks one tenth of my quest to do 365 fun DC things. It's taken me about three months to get here, and in that time I've pushed and stretched myself to look for things I might never have done. Favorites include the National Building Museum, Ceiba, a Wizards' game, and Urban Dare. As always, I encourage any of you out there to leave a comment with suggestions of things to do next -- what are your favorite activities or places that I might not know about? Send them my way! Readers have already suggested an Argentine gelato place, the revolving restaurant in Crystal City, and Famous Luigi's. They are all on my list, and you'll be reading about them in the coming months.

Sunday afternoon, I met up with a small group at the corner of Massachusetts and Wisconsin, across from the National Cathedral, to take a spy tour of the neighborhood around the Russian embassy. Presented by the Spies of Washington Tour company (and by "company" I mean "one woman"), this particular tour of Glover Park is named the "North by Northwest" tour. It is led by the one and only tour guide at Spies of Washington, a retired Air Force intelligence officer named Carol Bessette. Something of a pioneer herself, Carol originally joined the Air Force for what she thought would be a three year tour. Then, when she decided that her future was in Air Force intelligence, she was told that women could not be intelligence officers. She ultimately found a way around that by having the air force send her to graduate school, and served over 25 years as an intelligence officer. Which means she knows a lot.


Unfortunately, she can't divulge most of it, only that which is available in the public record. But there is some pretty interesting stuff out there, and it is great fun to learn about intrigues and espionage that occurred in regular old apartment buildings. Take, for example, the Alban Towers apartments, which Carol talks about at the start of the tour. In the 1930s, the Japanese embassy kept an apartment there as a residence for the Ambassador. American intelligence wanted to rule out that they had a secret radio in the apartment, and set up a long term operation where they would flick the lights or cut the power briefly over the course of several months. Then one day, they cut it entirely, and sent two agents dressed as repairmen to seek out the problem in the apartment. After a thorough search, they learned that there was no radio in the residence, and it had to be located in the embassy itself.



Carol takes us down Wisconsin to the Russian Embassy, an enormous compound about three blocks wide and three blocks long, its white, imposing block building towering over an iron gate. The tour comprises primarily of a walk around the perimeter of the embassy, with stops at mail boxes or storefronts to tell various stories of espionage or failed spying. We learned briefly about Robert Hansen and his signal site -- a mailbox in Georgetown he would make one single chalk mark on as a signal to the Soviets that he would be making a drop at a prearranged time and place. The Soviet diplomat would then stroll the .8 miles down the hill, check out the mailbox and report back to his superiors. Secrets would be spilled.


There's the story of Vitaly Yurchenko, a KGB officer who defected to the US during the Cold War. The hypochondriac Yurchenko thought that he had stomach cancer, and wanted to die in as a hero in America with top quality medical care. When it turned out he was perfectly healthy, he escaped his CIA handler while dining at the now defunct Au Pied Du Cochon in Georgetown, hoofed it up Wisconsin Ave, and redefected back to the USSR.


She tells us the story of a mysterious package, thrown over the wall of the Russian Embassy containing classified documents and instructions on how to get more where that came from for $30,000. And she speculates on where the tunnel below the embassy may lie, which Robert Hansen warned the Soviets about when they were constructing the embassy. The Soviets had already discovered that Americans had built a tunnel beneath their embassy in Berlin to tap into their phone lines, so it was not out of the realm of the possible. Then again, the tunnel was never found, so it may simply be a spy myth.


Carol is extremely knowledgeable and well read on the material, she is friendly and grandmotherly, and she relates many of the neighborhood's stories to her own experiences with colleagues or giving tours. She refers to young women "entertaining" men in their apartments or hotel rooms, with a sort of faux modesty that is very endearing. Mostly, she tells a good story, and with such a juicy and romanticized topic as spying, it is great fun to listen to.

Carol will resume her walking tours in the fall.

Thing 27: Urban Dare DC

I spent my Saturday on a mad dash across the city solving clues, performing dares and yelling at the Boyfriend, in an Amazing Race-type activity known as Urban Dare. Apparently, some guy goes around the country organizing scavenger/treasure hunt races, and Saturday he came to DC, in time for the best day of spring weather yet.

Who else to do this with than GFD, whose knowledge of obscure DC sights and trivia rivals only my own? In addition, I had the Boyfriend stationed at his house in front of the computer, so we could call him with help solving the clues and looking up bus schedules (phoning a friend with access to the Internet is both allowed and encouraged).

GFD and I arrived at Pershing Square, on 14th and Pennsylvania for the start of the race. Clad in shorts and sneakers, with one digital camera, two cell phones, a treo, a laminated map of the city and a wax pencil for easy marking up and wiping off, and a protein-heavy breakfast, we felt ready. We were in it to win it.

At noon, the race began. The organizers handed out sheets with 12 clues or tasks, corresponding to each checkpoint or photo that we had to accomplish. The start of the race is staggered to avoid a mad crush at the beginning. They stagger the start by asking a multiple choice question at the beginning. Depending on your answer, A, B, C or D, you move to a different quadrant as demarcated in the square, and then the correct answer is allowed to go first. The question in our case was a geographic one: “In what modern country is the ancient Nubian city of Kerma located?” GFD’s eyes got really big and I knew he knew the answer even before the choices had been revealed – D, Sudan. We moved into that square and when it was confirmed that we were correct, we were off.

Before we could leave the square, we had to find a tennis ball with the last two digits of our team number written on it. One hundred or so tennis balls lay strewn around the east side of the square, and there was a scramble to locate your team’s ball. Once we finally found ours, we ran to the outskirts of the square, took out our map, called the Boyfriend and started barking clues at him. “Moai statue, bicycle parts, World War II, CALL US BACK!” and we were off and running towards the Mall.

We decided to head towards the first clue we knew right off the bat, and we would solve others on our way there. “In the view of two sculpture gardens” read the clue, and we knew immediately we had to go to the Mall, where the National Gallery's sculpture garden is across the way from that at the Hirshhorn's. We jogged over to the Mall, and sure enough, there were the telltale light blue Urban Dare tee shirts, indicating our check point. For the dare at this location, our team had to navigate a short course as a ‘wheel barrow.’ GFD go on his hands, while I held his legs, and steered him around four cones and back. The Urban Dare staffer stamped our ‘passport’ and then we were free to go to the next checkpoint.

I did not want to leave the Mall unless we were sure there were no other checkpoints in the vicinity. We called the Boyfriend back, seeing if he had any progress on those clues we couldn’t figure out. Not much progress. Rather than waste time, we started jogging towards the World War II Memorial, where “Dirty Harry made two movies about this last year.” We arrived at the memorial, and there was nothing. We encountered another blue-shirted team and asked them if they had found the checkpoint there. They hadn’t either. “They couldn’t possibly expect us to go to the Iwo Jima, could they?” said one of the members from the other team. David and I looked at each other. Yes, yes they would. We would have to go to Virginia. And we were off and running to the Ellipse to take a picture at the Zero Milestone.

After the picture at the Ellipse, we headed down Pennsylvania Ave to the Edward Murrow Park at 19th and Penn, where we had to play a game of “hide and seek.” An Urban Dare staffer gave us a slip of paper with a word on it (ours was ‘discombobulate’), and we had to find the numeric value for the word. Each letter had a numeric value, and the values were hidden around the park, little slips of paper taped to benches or trees or stuck to small posts sticking out of the ground.

We added up our letters with only one small set back – a homeless man was sitting on a bench and covering the letter M’s value. Once our word’s value had been approved and our passport stamped, we raced west to the GW campus to take our picture with one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and one in the Western, according to a very random and unclear meridian marker at the corner of H and 24th, NW. Then we ran the two blocks to the Foggy Bottom metro, to ride the line one stop to Rosslyn.

While waiting for the train, we had our map out and were both frantically making calls, trying to figure out a couple of the remaining clues. By luck or divine intervention, we sat next to a young man who, upon overhearing our phone calls, mentioned that the “confectioner’s shop named for the Big Hurt or a Supreme Court Justice” was probably Thomas Sweet’s in Georgetown. Of course! And while he was at it, could he solve any of the other clues? “Two consecutive quarters of negative growth probably refers to Recessions. It’s a small bar in the basement of the Quincy Hotel, next to Mackey’s, on L Street.” We thanked him profusely for his help as the train pulled in to the station.

Under the river one stop and we rushed off the train, eager to leave behind the other teams that were in our car. GFD made me walk up the entire escalator at Rosslyn (no small feat, for those who know how long it is), and then we ran the couple blocks from the metro to an art installation called the “Bike Oasis,” the answer to one of the clues solved by the Boyfriend, thanks to Google.


Then we headed over to the Iwo Jima Memorial, where our dare consisted of dropping and giving the staffers 20, and then making up our own “I don’t know but I’ve been told” chant. As our passport was being stamped, an airplane flew over head – one of the tasks was to get our team’s picture with an actual airplane flying in the background (no paper, no models). We scrambled to get our camera turned on in time, and the staffer took our picture with a very tiny dot of a plane in the sky behind us.

From Rosslyn, we crossed the Key Bridge (GFD wanted to run, I was done with running at this point). Once in Georgetown, we hustled down M Street and up Wisconsin to Thomas Sweet’s chocolate and ice cream shop. The line was out the door on such a sunny afternoon, but the Urban Dare staffers waved us over and brought us into the shop. Our dare was to eat a chocolate-covered pecan candy, which we wolfed down (despite it being incredibly sweet and my dislike of pecans), got our passport stamped, and then ran out the door to catch the 32 bus across town. One was just passing us, and we ran after it and caught it at its next stop. We sat down and enjoyed our brief period of rest.

At this point, we felt pretty good. We’d figured out all the clues, we knew where it was we had left to go. It had been about three hours up until now, and we felt confident that we could finish in three and a half – perhaps not fast enough to win, but a very respectable finish nonetheless. We would take the bus to 7th and Pennsylvania, run up 7th to the National Portrait Gallery and take our picture in front of the statue of Daguerre, inventor of the daguerrotype. Then we’d hop on the red line two stops to Farragut North, go to Recessions and perform the dare (which was to hit a bullseye throwing darts), and then on the Chilean embassy at 18th and Massachusetts to get our picture with one of those big head statues from Easter Island. Then straight down Mass to Dupont Circle and the finish line, at Buffalo Billiards.

And our plan worked beautifully, until we got to the Chilean embassy and there were no statues there at all, Moai or any other kind.

The task had been problematic from the start. “Take a picture in front of an authentic Moai statue.” It seemed simple enough, except that when the Boyfriend googled it, the only one he pulled up was located clear up north on the American University campus. That was so far off of the course of everything else, that we just didn’t believe that that could be the only one. Upon further research, the Boyfriend found that the statue had been given to AU by the Chilean embassy. Aha! We guessed that another statue might be located at the embassy at 18th and Mass. Before going all the way over there though, we decided to have someone scope it out, to make sure we were right. We called all our friends who live in the area, finally one of them picked up and agreed to swing by the place and see. About ten minutes later, he called back. “I have it on good authority that there is an Easter Island statue in front of the embassy.” Yes! Which is how we found ourselves in front of the decidedly statue-free Chilean embassy.

I called my friend: “WHERE IS THIS STATUE YOU PROMISED?!” He explained that by “good authority,” he had asked some guy on the street who had assured him there were several Easter Island heads in front of the embassy. I hung up on my friend.

We called the Boyfriend back, who hit up Google one more time, and said that there might be a statue at the Natural History Museum, but he couldn’t be sure. David and I looked at each other, dejected, exhausted, defeated. We had been at this for more than four hours at this point. There was no way we would win. There was no way we’d come in the top ten. There was no way we’d come in the top anything.

We discussed whether we should retrace our steps to the Natural History Museum, or even make our way north to AU. It was all just too much and we were so tired. We posed for a photo in front of a random statue at the embassy of Zimbabwe, and headed to the finish line at Buffalo Billiards.

At Buffalo Billiards we had to complete one last dare, to score a three at shuffleboard, and then we were free to drink a beer. All told, we had spent four and a half hours running frantically around, we were sunburnt, sweaty, with a crust of salt on our foreheads, our legs completely stiff. We drank several waters and a beer, scarfed down a plate of nachos, and hobbled back to our respective homes.

And we can’t wait to do it again next year!

Thing 1: Wonderland Trivia

First activity: Monday Night Trivia at the Wonderland Ballroom, in Columbia Heights. Wonderland, bar of skinny hipsters with thick black glasses and effortlessly cool second-hand sweaters, hosts a Trivia Night that is as quirky as the bar itself. The boyfriend and I arrived after work and shortly before 7pm, grabbed a table upstairs where the trivia takes place, and ordered some food. I dined on a footlong sausage, only $3.00, and a side of thin, crispy fries with gooey, tasteless fake cheese product. The food isn't great, but the beer selection happily makes up for it. Along with the potent Delirium Tremens on tap, they have a variety of beers, including one that tastes of rose water, and one that tastes like soap.

Trivia is seven rounds, two of which are "picture" rounds, and each round with ten questions and one bonus, for a total of 77 possible points. What makes it quirky that the trivia is more obscure (i.e. not "american history" but "failed american presidents," not "sports" but "serial killers"), and if you don't know an answer, but you write a really funny wrong one, you win a free beer. You also get a fab prize for funniest team name (bonus points for topical humor, example: "Al Sharpton's Family Owned and Operated Since 1845"). And if you win the whole to do, you get $100 towards your bar tab. The optimistic begin drinking early in the hopes of getting the full $100 paid off. It is a good gimmick.

How'd my team do? Dead last. Embarrassing, sure. But it earns us the right to pick a category for next week, to give us a leg up in the competition. Which means I'll be back to eat another footlong sausage and show off my knowledge of early 90's hip hop next Monday.