So this week was the infamous adventure race that had been looming for a while. Jesse and I had decided that we needed to do the 12 hour one instead of the 6 hour event because we would probably need more time to find all of the controls. I don't think our logic was quite right though.
I packed on Thursday night and made sure there was no way in hell I could forget my passport the next day. The plan was to leave at 10am, arrive at the ferry terminal in Anacortes at about midday or 1pm to book the 3:25pm ferry. I got up in the morning and packed the car and got away on time. Everything was going well until I got to the border, then it started going horribly late. I waited in the car for nearly 2 hours to get up to the border, then I was told to go inside to get processed. Unfortunately now it was midday and I think all of the border guards had gone for lunch. Just an absolutely unmotivated waste of space of a bunch of workers. I watched half a dozen of them meander around aimlessly while the line was nearly out the door. Ended up being about another 2 hour wait to get to the front of the line, at which point it was a 2min job for someone to stamp me into the country. So frustrating, but when you get to the front of the line you can't show it cos they're all "look at me and how important I am". Just an awful system.
I finally got to the ferry terminal at about 2pm, after Jesse, who left at the same time and drove from bloody Portland. It was supposed to be a 1 hour 40min drive for me according to google and a 4.5 hour drive for him! Then more bad news, we were only on the waitlist for the 3:25pm ferry. We transferred all my stuff to his car and then dicked around for a while. We missed the 3:25pm ferry and the next one was supposed to be at 6:30pm. We dicked around some more until the ferry finally came at 7:30pm. At least on the ferry we had a nice cold beer and had some live entertainment (a band was going to the island for a gig) Finally got to the island and the race headquarters at about 10pm. I wondered how far from home I was as the crow flies. Probably less than 200km and it had taken me 12 hours!
In the morning we are up bright and early to some truly atrocious weather. Just perfect to spend 12 hours out in! At the morning briefing we learnt that there was 60-80km/h gusts on the ocean where the kayak leg was supposed to be. For obvious reasons they decided to cancel the ocean kayaking and told us they would try and formulate a plan for the kayak leg on a nearby lake.
The race started at 7am. The start was pretty hilarious as there was a line across the field and all you had to do was have your bike on it somewhere. As there was no set route (just a number of checkpoints that we had to clip) half of the field were facing one way and the other half facing the other way. When the start gun went everyone took off in different directions. It must have looked pretty funny (I am standing in front of the tree in the middle):
Also note Jesses tent, We were the only ones stupid enough to camp!
Early on Jesse and I made a couple of stupid navigational mistakes but didn't have too many problems over all. The bike leg was pretty gruelling at times and we had to walk our bikes up some pretty steep hills. This of course made for some pretty awesome downhill bits. One notable control was in the middle of an amazing piece of downhill. I nearly shat myself because I randomly decided to stop and wait for Jesse halfway down and then happened to look up and saw a cave. I remembered the clue was something about being in the dark so we run up to it and sure enough:
So lucky we didn't miss it as I was having so much fun riding downhill that I totally forgot we were supposed to be picking up controls. It would have been pretty demoralising to get to the bottom and then have to climb back up half to go back for the control. Other than that the only other notable experience (apart from getting absolutely covered with mud) was coming around a corner at full speed and seeing a tree across the trail. I must have been right on the braking limit as when I stopped a couple of centimetres short of it I could smell melting brake pads and there was smoke coming from my discs!
We finished the bike leg in 4 hours and headed out on the run leg. We made some interesting navigational decisions that were probably a bit silly in hindsight. We thought it would be quicker to dump our bags in a couple of places and go out and back to pick up a couple of controls instead of picking a route past them. This included one brutal 300m climb up to a tower on the top of a hill. Up the tower out of the trees we couldn't believe how wet and wild the weather for the race was.
We finished the run leg in 5 hours and managed to get back just in time to be the last ones out on the water on the kayak leg. Again, just awful weather to be out in a kayak. We lost almost all visibility at one stage as it was raining so hard on the lake that the splashed were bouncing up and creating about as much water coming up as was coming down. We got around the kayak leg an about an hour and were presented with the bucket of water logic problem. For two engineers we failed pretty hard at figuring it out. Poor Jesse was freezing but finally got the answer and they let us go. The final leg involved carrying the kayak back up the hill about 400m to the headquarters which almost killed us.
We were greeted with delicious burgers and beers but we were so knackered that we could barely hold a conversation with anyone! One random co-incidence was that Jesse recognised a girl from the hike we did up to Goat Pass hut in NZ last year! Ridiculously small world moment!
Needless to say we hit the hay pretty hard and slept well that night. The next day we packed up and made it back to Anacortes no worries. We had a delicious breakfast at a wee diner thing there and went our separate ways. I was pleasantly surprised that I made it back through the Canadian border in about 10min so only took a couple hours to get home. I realised that my clothes were so damn dirty that I probably had to wash them twice. I opted for the bathtub pre-wash instead of paying $1:75 twice, I'm such a cheap bastard!
Somehow I found the strength to head out to Poco (Port Coquitlam) for dinner with the Fishers and made a fantasy hockey team draft. I figured I had as much chance as anyone else! Joan cooked us delicious dinner and dessert and sent me home with some tasty brownie
Crashed into bed pretty hard on Sunday night and assessed the damage. Pretty sore left hip for some reason, creaky Achilles tendon and a sore right knee. Gotta be good for ya right? Was some pretty good type 2 fun for the weekend.
Found out the next day we came 4th out of 12 teams and were the last team to actually finish! Standings here: http://sanjuanislandquest.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=74&Itemid=97 notice that 5th and 6th place got in from the run leg before us but chose not to go out on the kayak leg! Softies!
Also check out the sweet video they made: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=611983583887&set=vb.128213720595515&type=2&theater
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