Great Urban Race

What is The Great Urban Race?

The Great Urban Race is a wacky urban adventure. Teams of two solve twelve clues, have a wild city adventure and complete fun challenges while discovering the city in a fresh way.

http://www.greaturbanrace.com/

Last Christmas, one of Shane's gifts to me was registering us for this awesome race! This weekend the big day finally came. We headed to San Diego decked out in our 80's gear. Some of the other costumes were pretty dang awesome.

After checking out the clue sheet, Shane and I headed out to get our race on. It's designed to take the average team between 3 to 4 hours. Racers are only allowed to travel on foot or by public transportation - no bikes, taxis, hitch hiking, etc. Needless to say we covered a lot of ground!

We used a map that we snagged from a hotel and Shane's phone to help us make our way around the city. It was up to us to decide which order to complete the clues; the goal is to map them out in a geographically smart way and not have to backtrack. The clues were were fun and sometimes pretty tough to figure out! Having a digital camera is required - we had to return to the finish line with pictures doing certain funny things along the way and at different clue destinations. It was super fun.

I swear I never finish anything without some sort of injury. Check out my blistered toes and bleeding heel!

We finished in the middle of pack, tired and happy. What a sweet memory. We want to do again next year with some friends!

Funny/cool story: Our team name was "Moose on the Loose" and the girl who signed us in instantly exclaimed, "You guys are Mr. and Mrs. Moose, from Wipeout! I love that team!!" We smiled and confirmed that we were, and we thought it was pretty fun to still be recognized for Wipeout. Then at the end of the race we saw the same girl and said goodbye to her as we were walking to the car. She stopped us and said, "So, what inspired you to dress up like Mr. and Mrs. Moose?" Haha! We laughed and told her we were Mr. and Mrs. Moose! She didn't believe us so I pulled up Shane's shirt so we could prove it! The girl freaked out and took a picture with us. She said, "This is like, the best celebrity sighting of my life!" Ha! Pretty fun, eh? We thought it was pretty cool.

Overall, awesome day. Thanks for a radical gift, Shane!

WEEKEND TOP 3

This weekend was another very lovely Long Beach Shally weekend. I love it here and I love my husband.

Enough of that, on to the WEEKEND TOP 3 (I just made that up...) We experienced 3 new awesome things this weekend that I'd like to share with you all, my dear friends and family.

#1. Little Saigon Massage

We went with some friends on Friday night to a dark, pretty sketchy strip mall in a place called Little Saigon to get a one hour massage for $20! It was quite the experience. We entered through a sheet veil into a very dimly lit room jammed with massage beds and Vietnamese people who don't speak English. I laid next to Shane as a Vietnamese man worked me over! It was funny and relaxing and funny.

#2. Cottage Cheese Enchiladas

On Saturday I had some leftover rotisserie chicken from Costco (the best!) and we were having the missionaries over for dinner. So I decided to make chicken enchiladas and found this cottage cheese recipe (Shane suggested we try it). It was AWESOME! I'm not taking the credit - this recipie is the bomb. Here's the link, you have to try it! http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cottage-Cheese-Chicken-Enchiladas/Detail.aspx

#3. Red Tide at night

We decided to walk by the ocean on the way home from a friends house and we saw something AMAZING! Red tide is an event in which estuarine, marine, or fresh water algae accumulate rapidly in the water column and results in discoloration of the surface water. And it looks really cool at night - the waves light up like the Belagio in Vegas! And when we walked, the sand lit up under our feet. SO COOL!

Those, ladies and gentlemen, were our WEEKEND TOP 3.

Giddyup!

As you know, Shane grew up in Utah. Which means he grew up going to the rodeo. So when he saw that a rodeo was happening in LA, naturally he bought us tickets.

Luckily for me we got our friends Aaron, Dorothy and their little guy, Cormack, to come along with us. Me and Cormack are buddies.

Saturday, we had an awesome day: a church service project, beach volleyball, and surfing (Shane came with me and owned it!) Then Sunday we took a leisurely bike ride in the beautiful Long Beach sunshine.

Check out this Segway tour! It cracked us up.

Cheers to another golden weekend with my boyfriend!

PS. Props to Shane for working so hard, doing sooo great, and not working weekends anymore!! HiphipHORAAAY!