Tuesday, July 20, 2010

The Competitour...

What follows is the amalgamation of all the posts made on our team blog for our Competitour in the summer of 2009. I have edited a bit to remove superfluous data and try to maintain the integrity of the thread... this is really more for me than anyone else, but there's definitely some good reading in here when I get to recapping the days/challenges.FYI I bolded the topic/title of the posts to keep it readable... >---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jan/Sean

Team WEATHEHEKAWI


* Starkville, MS

* 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 Mississippi.

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 Europe for an adventure like no other. Follow our adventure on YouTube at www.youtube.com/wea0728 and right here on our blog. Let us hear from you all. We will need lots of support if we are going to surpass the 10 other teams to become the victors!!

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 Eureka) that you have to worry about ( hahaha).

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 Geneva (the city center) and took a train ride about 45 minutes around Lake Geneva to the Olympic Fairgrounds and Museum!

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 Munich (that's Germany, kids!) and then take a train to Salzburg, Austria (and that's Austria, just in case you're keeping track)...Switzerland to Germany to Austria, and that's all before lunch! Ok I'll stop yelling at you now...until next time!

-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 Starkville newspaper by Libby. I'm going to try to access it. Hang in there!! I'm ready for them to post some stats or something like that so I can see how you guys are doing. I know you're having a ball!!!! Just watched all the videos so I'm certain you're loving it. I would have ordered a beer by not saying a word - just waving a 5 Euro note in the air and pointing to the tap, but that's just me.

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...

Salzburg, Austria:

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!

Hellbrunn Palace... If I were a contemporary of the Cardinal whose name I cannot remember, we definitely would've been friends. Several places around the palace are 'booby trapped' with different water tricks. The video doesn't do it justice. And don't bother watching me sing...if there's no loud music to cover my singing, it's like nightmare-karaoke. You've been warned...

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 Dokumentation Center. We took a bus up a one lane road literally into the clouds, we could not see anything. Wish we could've spent more time there, but we had to hustle up and get our toboggan run done...

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 Munich that night. We arrived in Munich, boarded the S-bahn (think subway) and Tyler met a group of ladies that invited us out to join their bachelorette party. So Tyler, Dan and myself left our hotel at 11:30 at night to find Kult Fabrik...you can get the rest of the story privately, I'm not airing out other people's business, or my own. Suffice it to say I returned to the hotel happy but weary at just after 5 am, Munich-time.

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 Germany...on the third floor they have all the traditional clothing like Lederhosen and such. We were going to incorporate one of the employees in our video until she informed us we weren't allowed to do ANY filming inside the store. So what did we do? We snuck around the corner and did it anyway...bad dog!

...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 Munich...different challenges, different adventures, same crazy pace. After we wrap up our day in Munich we will hop a train to Cologne. Who knows what will happen after that...stay tuned!

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 Jackson rock station, debuted online today. If you have web access and get tired of Pandora, check out zzq102.com. And...what the hell is wrong with "your daddy's beer"? Hooch didn't seem to mind hitting his daddy's beers when he was a "teener or tweener"!!!

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 Munich yesterday, but it seems like a month ago.

Nymphenburg Palace... Hugh Hefner eat your heart out! This palace was the bomb-diggity! Paintings of beautiful, scantily clad women all over the place! The hunting lodge was a disco club waiting to happen, the bathhouse had amazing art work (i.e. more nude women) on the ceilings, and even Prince Ludwig's rides were totally pimped out! I thought convertibles were a relatively new invention!

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 Cologne, Germany around 2 am. What is up with all these late nights?! When it was all said and done we had a blast on the train ride, and managed to get our challenges done today as well, but that's another story, and I'm going to bed. Big day tomorrow!!!

Old 08-05-2009, 12:06 PM

Hooch: Does this mean that your next adventure is going to be backpacking through Europe? Have you forgotten "Hostel" and "Hostel 2"?? You know they had to be true stories, don't you? I mean, Hollyweird would never embellish. And stay away from the Dutch weed!! OK. THAT was fun!!! Later, you guys...

Art

Wuzzup?

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 Meridian. Works like a charm. No pressure because you'll be too busy thinking about your stomach!!!!

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 Starkville School District! No. Wait. She's a female so maybe she won't be like her daddy!!!!!!

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...

Marksburg Castle... We ran into a couple other teams here, and some of our favorites to boot! (I miss the Cougars!) The castle itself was pretty interesting, and I was happy with the videos we were able to produce considering that we weren't supposed to be filming in the first place. I thought our ViktorWear commercial was great...

Koblenz Walking Tour... This was a cool challenge. Very interesting and entertaining...we got to see a statue of a little boy spit water on unsuspecting people, we saw a clock face that moved it's eyes and stuck it's tongue out, we saw a piece of the Berlin Wall that had been transplanted to this locality...Koblenz was one of my favorite cities for sure.

It's all kind of a blur but I THINK this is the night that the Oedipus Gang supped along the Rhine River and met a Super Sayin Vampire by the name of Willem (pronounced Vil-em). Good food and great company...

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 Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. It was a place called Vaalserberg, where you can literally stand in one place and be in all three countries at once. They also have the world's largest hedge-labyrinth, which we turned in a total suck time on. But that was only one challenge...

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 Maastricht, at least I think that's where it was, and find out that our final challenge of the day was to complete an unguided navigation adventure in Cassemates, which was several kilometers of underground fortress created by the locals to defend themselves from invading forces. This challenge was a blast, but we turned in a bad time here as well, thus dooming ourselves to a place in the middle of the pack. No worries though, this was definitely one of the coolest things we did the whole trip, and I had a blast fumbling around in the dark, breaking codes, figuring out riddles and generally being an explorer.

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 Utah, Colorado, and even once in the Appalachians. Turns out skiing is a lot like riding a bike...at least for me it is, because it came right back to me.

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 Aachen (I think that's where we were) several of us went out for a drink and enjoyed each others' company. All in all I really like the rest of the teams and had a blast on this trip, so if you're reading this just know this trip was totally worth it.

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


branding eh? show me the design, I might be game...

Hooch

Hooch

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