DEATH RACE 2010

Matching Shirts: "Nice Ax... Want to See My Posthole Digger?"

Required/Optional Gear

$50 in Pennies (approx. 30 lbs)

Posthole Digger

Ax

3 inch Knife

10 lbs of Onions

Large Greek Translation Textbook

Registration

Timeline of Race Events...

Friday, June 25th

6pm - Race Registration

8pm - Shuttle Van to top of Tweed River Mountain, leave useful gear on top of the mountain

8pm-4am - Aimlessly hiking up and down the Mountain grooming trails and moving bridges from place to place (Approx. 10-15 miles??)

Heading BACK up the Mountain

Saturday, June 26th

4am - The "Official" Start of the race

Task One - go back up the mountain again to retrieve your gear (Round Trip Approx. 10 miles)

7am - They reach the top, after about 700 feet under barbed wire, to find that they have to go back down again to retrieve 'paperwork' to get their gear, barbed wire included

9am - Reach the bottom of the mountain again, NOT the high point of the race so far

11am - Back up top they are allowed to retrieve their gear and head back to Amee Farm for task Two

1pm - Finally the hiking is over, or at least we THINK it's over.

After all the hiking

Task Two - Wood Chop or Farm work, because they both had axes they are given the task of quartering 25 logs of their choice, it's a slower process than last year, but much easier than the farm work option, which involved loading and moving 15 wheel barrows of manure across a large field

Choosing Their Logs

3pm - Wood Chop is complete

Task Three - Pennies in the Pond, involved counting out hundreds of pennies and bagging them up in zip locks in multiples of $5. At this point Chris decided to donate all but the required $5 of his pennies. He didn't want to count them and he'd had enough of carrying the extra 30 lbs. It proved to be a good move for him. John donated about $20 worth of pennies and kept the rest.

4:30 - After diving to the bottom of the pond to retrieve their pennies we were off to the next task.

Task Four - Up ANOTHER Mountain!?!? - Team Chris/John split up here, with Chris and Meredith heading up the hill to the 'Onion Store.' John and Colin soon followed and caught up to us about half way to the Cottage. By this time Chris was REALLY struggling with his hip. When he walked it looked as though his right leg was about 2 inches shorter than his left one. NOT a pretty sight! :) John looked great, he looked like he had it in him to go all the way.

Before his last push up the Mountain

At the cottage John bought some Chinese herbs before he and Colin made the final push bush-whacking up to the 'Onion Store'

6:30pm - We all reach the cottage, half way to the top of the Second Mountain

Task Four/Five - About 200 yards from the Onion Store Chris ran out of gas. His official Quit time was 7:54pm. John made it all the way to the Onion Store. There he followed a number of orders from the 'king.' His tasks included moving chopped wood from one location to another, cutting up his onions and buying his way out of eating a pound of his onions. He completed his tasks at about 9:30pm, and at this point he elected to stop racing rather than hike back down the unmarked mountain in the dark.

So officially neither John or Chris completed the race, but they had a great time and both are planning to return for more punishment next year!

Unofficial Racing Times:

Chris - 8pm-7:54pm - 23+ hours

John - 8pm-9:30pm - 25+ hours

Official Racing Times:

Chris - 4am-7:54pm - 15+ hours

John - 4am-9:30pm - 17+ hours

Ok Life, Here We Come!

Well, it's official... we're moving to London and having another baby! Yes, you heard me right. We figured we might as well get two HUGE life changing experiences out of the way simultaneously. Well, not exactly, I mean, I'm not planning to actually give birth on the plane or anything, but close enough. The move is at the end of August, the baby is due in December. Have I completely lost my freaking mind?? I mean having a third child is pretty nuts all on its own. On Monday, as my Mom and I watched Josephine and Chris circling our living room in crazy hysterics, I remarked... "you know the only other thing we need right now? Another child!" What a laugh! Ha! It's going to be total and complete chaos. Anarchy. The shit will hit the fan over and over and over again, and I'll just be running around trying to wipe and mop it up! WOW! I don't need luck, I need prayers! And lots of them! :)

But on a lighter note, the beginning of our summer has brought a lot of fun family times. First, Josephine graduated from preschool. And let me tell you she was absolutely adorable. She was so proud of herself; she likes to mention to complete strangers, "I just graduated from preschool!" Very cute.

Chris Jr. has had no such similar life accomplishments of late. Well unless you count the lotion incident from my last entry, but that's a stretch. Although he did have a wonderful time tubing with Daddy at the lake over Memorial Day. He was bobbing up and down, nothing but smiles, yelling "faster, faster" and "bounce, bounce." Notice the new shorter hair cut in these pictures. The only real solution to the tub of Aquafor in his hair was to cut it all off! :)

One small Chris Jr. accomplishment... we've started some really basic potty training, which consists of him running around naked from the waist down peeing on command as often as possible on as many flat surfaces as he can find! Each time he does it he smiles and laughs as if he is so proud of himself! Now we just need him to aim into a container of some sort, preferably a potty. Should be a fun and wet summer! :)

Fun UK Tidbit:

Yesterday Josephine's dentist told us that over the years he's had many families move to and return from the UK and they have all shared the same experience. When US families take their young children to the dentist in the UK the doctors laugh at them. They say "these are baby teeth! why would we clean them?" It's accepted practice in the UK that children are not seen by a dentist until they are at least 16 years old! YUCK!!! I guess this explains a lot about the state of oral hygiene in England! He recommended that we make pediatric dental appointments when we come home for visits/holidays. So we have that to look forward to, which is nice. :)