Hello!It has been far too long and the blog has seemed dormant! We have a really good posting to revive it!
Last weekend Julie and I participated in the San Jose "Amazing Race". It was a charity event inspired by the TV show and it was one of the most fun weekends I've had in a long time!
How did we get involved? Our good friends Jenn, Adrian, Jose and Perla knew the person who organized the event. Shauna did a kick-ass job putting this together. One day at a BBQ, Perla aske us if we were interested. Our competitive side shined through as we accepted the invitation. Next thing you know we were picking team t-shirts ("Patron" - imagine the inspiration behind that one!), picking a team name ("Perla's Playmates" - which was a triva team name Jose and Perla has used before). With that we were ready to rock!
Race Day:
We met for breakfast at Jenn at Adrian's house, the "Balzac Coffee Shop" to double check our list of race pre-requisites:
- Six fierce competitors
- 1 car to fit all
- GPS/Nav System
- Swim Suits (we didn't yet know why - just that they were required)
- Camera
- Spare Cash
- Rule and Regulations
- Lots of Attitude
From here we headed to downtown San Jose for the shotgun start.
From that point forward it was a seriously crazy day. I could write a book about it but I will start with the highlights:
- Burned at least 1000 calories on a city scavenger hunt. We scoured the city to find historical facts, boys traveling with 2 goats and our big time killer: the name of a stagecoach driver stamped in the concrete by the museum. We gathered these pieces of info for clues to our next location...
- Out of the way Ben Stiller - Our next location was a dodgeball tournament. We beat our team for an extra 50 points and we were all still in at the end of the game!
- Next location clue was a series of questions leading us to a crazy web url with our next location:
http://www.swingbatterbatterswing.i8.com/
We wasted so much time on this one! It was the bane of our existence that day!
- From there we were at the Flea market buying nopales in spanish, treading water in a pool with a 10 lb brick, dancing the irish jig and performing karaoke for tips, doing body shots and Irish Car Bombs, ordering lunch in swim suits, performing cartwheels, finding live lobsters, riding a scooter in a nacho libre mask and finighshing it all off with a great BBQ
It was a great time and I would love to do it next year. Here are the pics:
Racing the bartender with an Irish Car Bomb, then off to dance a jig for tips
It was an All Star team - it was so much fun to play together for a day. We each had our own contribution to the team:
Baseball All Star: Adrian
Dodgeball Killer: Jose
Swim Champ: Joe
Persuader: Jenn (as in "Hi, you see, we're doing this race and we would like to stand in our swimsuits in your restaurant and order sandwiches", "Hi, yes we know we can't sing but we'd like you to give us tips to benefit the American Cancer Society in our race", "Hi, yes, you see, we're on a scavenger hunt and we need to take a picture holding a live lobster, yes, out of the tank.... Oh! Hi, you're his manager? I'm Jenn. You see, we are doing this charity race..." etc etc)
Team Stylist and Captain: Perla
Googler: Julie
(2nd Place Finish!)
Since we returned from California, we’ve settled back into our routines of working (me at the college and Amy doing some kindergarten assessment work for the Aurora Public Schools) and playing. 
