Jan/Sean
Team WEATHEHEKAWI
*
* handles: hooch, jmorgan811
* watch their videos: www.youtube.com/wea0728
* Team Name Challenge:
Jan & Sean are believed to be descendants of a long lost Native
American Tribe which is thought to have it's origins in
They were a nomadic people, however they were not believed to be very
good at tracking or navigation. As a result, the tribe tended to
stray from their intended course. Eventually the tribe disappeared
completely, and was thought to be lost forever. Recently
archaeologists have unearthed maps used by the Weathehekawai people.
Upon examination, these maps were found to be both incorrect and
incomplete. Legend has it that late at night during the full moon,
the ancient voices of the tribe members can still be heard calling out
to each other, trying to find their way home...
"Where The Heck Are We" Going?
Well, at this point we don't know. But soon our initial destination will be revealed. Then it's off to
Last edited by jmorgan811; 07-26-2009 at 07:47 PM.
This is a wonderful adventure for you guys. I'll be keeping up with you. I have also forwarded your email to some of my other family members (Kay, Tip, Bev, my sisters, etc.) so you'll have mucho gringos checking you out and keeping up with you. NumbaTwo - watch out for the European Sheilas!!! Love to both of you and good luck/bon chance/buena suerte/viel gluck (OK. That's all the languages in which I'm even remotely familiar with common phrases!!)
Art
how about the "Canadian Sheila's"
Don't worry about the European "Sheila's" - its the Canadian Sheila (aka Kismet) and Laura (aka
kismet
Well, Ifinally got it right, with your help.
Thanks for your help...Now I am good to go! I look forward to two weeks of exciting reports from exciting places, and I'm real excited! GOOD LUCK!
Danna
OK, Kids. I'm ready for some exciting news. It has been raining in KO (and in Starkvegas) for most of the time since you guys left. Being in the house, I'm looking for a little excitement. Help a boy out!! I figure you guys are probably about 8 hours ahead of us, so you're probably supping and wondering where you can buy a Swiss knife to help you in your quest. Yes, I'm bored. That's why I'm rambling!! Love both of you guys!!
Art
Very good one, Sheila! Eh?
Art
Do Us Proud!
Great article about your grand adventure in today's SDN! I'm very excited about following your progress!! I’ll have to admit to being a little worried after discovering that you’re genetically predisposed to getting lost, but I have confidence that you’ll do us proud.
Libby
day 1 is in the books
...and boy was it a doozy! We travelled all over
We have uploaded some videos of our challenges to http://www.youtube.com/wea0728 so check it out!
I will go in to more detail when I have some time, but it has been a wild ride today, as you will see in some of the videos. Tomorrow we fly to
-Sean aka Numba2, Stan, Hooch, and other unmentionables...
Old 07-30-2009, 03:44 PM
Sounds like you Yanks are off to a great start. I saw the reference to the
Art
Sounds FABULOUS!! Things on the homefront are relatively quiet. Lots and lots of rain, though. I'm excited about following your adventures.
Libby
Third place with a bullet!
Found the post-day 3 stats and see that you guys are in the thick of things. Great work! Just watched all the days 3 & 4 videos. See that Hooch ditched mom in favor of a brew. Wonder from where that inclination was passed down to him? Another beer-related question: When you guys were doing the "bobsled" thing, did you have to bribe the folks with free beer? I can tell that you guys are having a ball!!!
Art
better late than never...
Sorry for the delay in updating the blog, we've been working our tails off and it hasn't left much time for updating blogs and such. Let's recap day 2...
Stiegl Brewery tour...First of all, in our attempt to get to the brewery we managed to ride the number 27 bus the wrong way, twice. But I am now very familiar with a certain route around the city center and outlying areas. Once at the brewery we ate an interesting sausage and cheese platter...I liked it, Jan did not. The beer was gut, ya!
World's thinnest house...is, in a word, thin.
Pferdeschwemme... I went a little "Hi I'm Vince from Sham-Wow!" on it, but I think it works.
Through poor planning and even worse communication myself and several other competitouristas were turned away from Red Bull's Hangar 7, but no great loss...we made up for it last night.
More to come...
Edited to add: Sean will be writing all the blog stuff unless otherwise noted.
Last edited by jmorgan811; 08-01-2009 at 06:10 PM. Reason: because I frickin wanted to, ok?
Old 08-01-2009, 06:22 PM
...and then there was day 3
This day left us feeling like complete failures...yet somehow we managed to scrape together a spot at third place.
Kelsteinhaus (Eagle's Nest)... This was Hitler's little "home away from home." A bunker built into the side of a mountain, and it's gi-normous. We were practically breaking our arms patting ourselves on the back for all the research we did on this challenge beforehand, only to find that we were wrong about some things. Details aren't important, we got the points since it wasn't a Risk/Reward challenge, but we were bummed when some of the other teams informed us of our mistakes. It really was an interesting place, and all of the disturbing Nazi crap was confined to the
Toboggan run... yeeeaaahhhhh. Not so good. We did not have enough time to make it to any other challenges due to transportation woes, so we used a little resourcefulness to improvise a toboggan run of our own with two other teams. The judges must have taken pity on us, because they actually gave us points. Thanks guys!
One of the reasons we ran out of time was because we had to catch a train back to
And with that, day 3 was in the books!
Old 08-01-2009, 06:42 PM
and on the fourth day...
We had a deceptively good start to the day and thought the worst of our problems were behind us. Little did we know...
Viktualeinmarkt... after lucking out and getting 5 hours of sleep (I expected to get 1-2 tops) we made our way to Munich's premiere outdoor market, where we convinced some locals to show us a few different methods for eating a popular white sausage. Things went relatively smoothly and we were on to the next challenge...
Frauenkirche... Aside from walking right past an item we were looking for the first time, this challenge went well. In and out in around 30 minutes, and we were feeling good about our progress. No snags in travel or navigation...
Loden Frey... This is like the Macy's or Bloomingdale's of
...at this point it's around 2:30 or 3 in the afternoon. Our last challenge was to find two different sculptures in the city and say a little something about them. We knew it might be difficult to find them going in, but we tried anyway. We managed to find the first 'sculpture' with a little help, but as you can see in our video, it was removed very recently. No harm, no foul. There was still plenty of evidence that we were in the right spot. Off to find the last sculpture and wrap up this cake-walk of a day, right?
Wrong.
Nature's call precluded a direct trip to what we later discovered wasn't the correct spot. In the course of 5 minutes, thanks to oblivious hourly employees of random German restaurant, my teammate and I were sent out different doors to look for each other. We didn't see each other again for 2-3 hours.
Luckily my teammate came through (way to go, Mom!) and found the other location, where she discovered that this sculpture ALSO had been removed. Again, the evidence was overwhelming so we feel like we achieved our goals.
All in all not a bad day, possibly one of our better ones, but we will have to wait and see the scoring to know for sure. It's closing in on 2 am here now and I was planning to be in bed an hour ago, but I wanted to update everyone.
Tomorrow we take another swing at
Old 08-02-2009, 01:18 PM
You guys are kickin' some booty! WayToGo! First place is within reach. Keeping up with you has been a lot of fun. And, a note of interest...WZZQ 102, the defunct
Last edited by Art; 08-02-2009 at 01:26 PM.
Art
what day is it?
Days...blurring together...can't think straight!
We wrapped up
Koniglicher Hirschgarten... This was the king's private deer garden. Sounds lame until you walk in and realize the place is basically a giant beer garden that can accommodate up to 8000 people. We created a new brand name for raddler's, which the British would call a shandy...and some really kick-ass guys and gals helped us film the commercial. We also came up with a great new mascot for the place, so go check out the videos!
That was it for the challenges...well, for the challenges that were worth any points. Myself, Tyler and Steve had another challenge when we managed to board the wrong train, which had us arriving in
Old 08-05-2009, 12:06 PM
Hooch: Does this mean that your next adventure is going to be backpacking through
Art
Fallen to sixth place? Time to go out tonight and get good and drunk and don't even think about the competition. Just like we used to do every year at our district softball tournament at
Art
Fun, fun, fun?
Your videos indicated you guys were having a ball. The race results don't tell the whole story, I'm sure. Another adventure which you will never forget so, all things considered, it was...fun, fun, fun!!!! Have a safe trip home. A-Bomb is officially a kindergarten student. God save the
Art
I will try to update the final two days of the challenge for the blog when I have some time, maybe tonight. If you've been following the live scoring you know we didn't win, but we still had a blast, so I'll try and recount our adventures when I get the chance.
Congrats to Rad and Lanthy, and to everybody who was in the competition with us. We had a wonderful time, made some great new friends and had one of the best trips ever...what more could you want?
Hooch
Old 08-28-2009, 04:42 PM
Day 6
So it's a month later now, but I'll try to remember this as best I can...
It's all kind of a blur but I THINK this is the night that the Oedipus Gang supped along the
Hooch
Old 08-28-2009, 05:05 PM
When the levee breaks...
Day 7 was our undoing...
We entered the day in 2nd or 3rd place, but this day was full of surprises.
Day 7 was a 'double points' day and was also a '4 country mystery tour' day. We later found out that three of the four countries were the
We also did a little skeet shooting with laser rifles...no, not quite like the red and blue laser rifles from GI Joe. I scored second over all which I was pretty happy with considering I've shot a gun like twice before in my life.
But lasers aren't dangerous enough, so then we moved up to real crossbows. I still maintain that my crossbow's sight was off, because I was dead center for the first shot, which lined up vertically, but was off to the right by about a foot. So for the second shot I tried to adjust by shifting to the left a bit. Great, now I was only about half a foot off center. I tried to compensate on the third shot, but apparently I didn't do a very good job because all three bolts ended up right of center and we graded out pretty poorly.
...and finally, one of the coolest things we did this day. We go to
Hooch
Old 08-28-2009, 05:19 PM
the last day...
Just two challenges this day...we tried to get the most points possible to at least make it respectable.
Snow World... This. Was. Cool. (no pun intended) World's largest indoor skiing facility. I am an accomplished skier, having skied several times in my younger days in
Rail Biking... huh? Yeah that's what I said too, but this was pretty neat. Now it probably didn't blow me away like some of the other folks on the tour who have lived in big cities all their lives but I rather enjoyed it. We boarded a pedal-driven device and peddled our butts 14 kilometers along some old abandoned railroads with one twenty minute break in the middle. And half of that was UP HILL!!! Both ways! In the snow! wait...bah you get the idea.
And that's it...that was our last challenge. That night after we returned to
I made some great friends, had some incredible and wonderful experiences, and even though we didn't win I had a great time. And now I'm an official Competitourista! I wonder if there's a tattoo for that, like the Iron Man tattoo that Sheila from Team Serendipity is sporting...hm, I'll have to look into that.
Cheers!
Hooch
Old 08-29-2009, 10:31 PM
No tattoos....just hot-iron branding.
SteveB
Hooch
