Thus spake the Trasheater - a N'awlins Urban Challenge Recap - by Kevin Purcell
Ok, it's time to do my part for posterity as a member of the UC '03 Fluffy Bunny ground support team. As the only person who ran almost the whole race without officially participating in it, I think I have a somewhat unique perspective on things and will try to recount the day's events to the best of my recollection. If anything I write doesn't mesh with your personal account, please don't kill me. I'm just one man, trying to tell it like it was. Now on with the race.
PRELUDE:
We awoke around 6:30 a.m. New Orleans time after a day of walking, running, and driving around the city that left Dave, Damian, and myself thoroughly spent. Joints creaked as we stretched and tried to clear our groggy minds for the exertion ahead. Dave, always the early riser, headed down to check in and get a good spot in the "Blue Room" for the trivia questions. Damian and I wandered down shortly thereafter.
As the elevator neared the lobby, the din of voices and commotion grew louder, rising to a crescendo as the doors slid open. Team members, support crews, and confused hotel lodgers wandered about the lobby and the UCers slowly filtered into the room that jutted off the lobby right by the main entrance. This was the center of the UC world: The Blue Room.
The Blue Room was a decent sized party room with a large oval dance/dining floor in the middle, ringed by a slightly raised walkway on either side. At the far end was a stage, behind which they had installed two very big TVs side-by-side. The trivia questions would be shown on the TVs, so the teams were slowly filling in the dance floor directly in front of it. I was informed that lowly support crewmembers were relegated to the outer walkway, so only competitors were allowed the prime real estate on the floor.
I headed back into the lobby to check on the other ground support members: Daniel and Lee. The two of them would drive around in their car and attempt to scout out clues for us before we actually got to them. This could save valuable time in finding checkpoints that weren’t restaurants or other establishments with an address. Those pesky plaques and sculptures could be located ahead of time and their exact location given to us before we arrived.
Finally the trivia challenge began. I called the Runco complex (heretofore referred to as the "War Room") to update them. As the answers were being displayed, I ventured into the Blue Room to check on Team Fluffy Bunny. Dave and Damian were far from confident - the trivia portion had not gone well. Luckily, many of the teams seemed to be in the same boat. Shortly thereafter they announced the starting order. The Bunnies would be in the 3rd wave, just 6 minutes behind the 1st. In a race that usually last between 2 and 3 hours, 6 minutes is nothing. Confidence was high.
Just as the race was about to start, I remembered something - the cell phone reception in the hotel lobby sucked. Since they were starting just outside the hotel, I was worried that this could present a problem for initial contact with the War Room. Poor reception would not do. Daniel told me his phone was doing pretty well in the lobby and handed it to me to give to Damian. At this point, Dave and Damian (D&D) had been ushered out onto the sidewalk with the rest of the 3rd wave. I headed out there to give D the phone. Just as I arrived, they were handed sheets - horrible little sheets that were a kind of pre-clue - that would tell them where in the city to find their real clue tube. My heart skipped a beat. We wouldn’t be starting from the hotel at all. I had to tell Daniel and Lee. I ran back into the lobby, gave Daniel his phone, and quickly told him what was happening. By the time I got back out onto the street, wave 3 was gone. My roll in this grand race was to run with D&D and do whatever I could to aid in their quest for ultimate victory. From the get go, our finely oiled machine was grinding . . . just as Kevin, the nefarious race director, had planned it.
THE SEMIS:
Immediately I ran around the corner and saw a few teams shuffling off towards the Mississippi, so I followed at a jog. I reached into the pack strapped around my waist and pull out the fiery ball of wonder that is Michael Tomlinson's cell phone (selflessly on loan to me for the weekend). Instantly I was connected with Patrick in the War Room and he gave me spot on directions to where D&D were. After orienting for a minute, I was off to Jackson Square at maybe 5:30 pace.
I arrived in the square and scanned wildly for the Bunnies, but saw only drab, indistinctive attire. The twin beacons of orange and green were nowhere in sight. Again I was expertly directed to their location and found them standing just around the corner from the square. Finally the race, for me, had begun.
I ran up and learned we were on clue 4, looking for some place that shares its name with an old Atari game. Pong . . . Pong or Pitfall; it must be one of those. That's all I could think of. Was Pong even made by Atari? The War Room was on it. All we could do was wait.
The clock ticked by. We were all getting antsy. Dave told me to follow the teams that were taking pictures near by and see where they went. They all took a picture and then trotted off aimlessly, often stopping within a block or two to strain into their earpieces for any useful info from their support teams. I wandered back and told Dave everyone seemed to be as screwed as we were.
After what seemed like an hour, but was probably more like half that, the bomb dropped: Kaboom Books. We made the short run to the bookstore with a random runner in tow - he was clearly following us. We later learned that he was helping last year's winners, the hubby/wife team of the Beards. We got to Kaboom and took a picture. Our trailer called his team and gave them an address and name. Half an hour of work was reduced to a phone call for his team . . . I was pissed. I wanted to throw down and make him hurt. I wanted him gone. But to do that, we needed a destination.
Clue 5 proved no easier. We knew it had something to do with the poem The Jabberwocky: the whole poem appeared to be written out on the clue tube, but the letters were all scrambled. Dave and I recited it together as we trotted down the street, winding our way back to the main intersection of all bus traffic in downtown New Orleans: Canal and Magazine. It took 5 or 10 minutes to get there, but still there was no word on the poem. We were getting desperate. We finally agreed to just skip clue 6, hoping that we’d find the skip person along the way.
Then the Lord smiled upon us. By some stroke of observational genius, Dave noticed another team behaving oddly as they come around the corner. When he peaked around, he saw a woman sitting on a trashcan smiling back at him. He'd found the "Skip Girl". Immediately we called D over. This was huge. We took the picture with her and were now free to give up on 5.
Immediately we were presented with another problem: clue 6 was 3 miles up Magazine and there were no buses in sight. Against the wishes of one Damian Garcia (who had been injured several weeks before UC '03 and was therefore not in prime running shape), we decided to hump it up Magazine. I put my head down and tried to rally the troops as we set off at around 6 minutes a mile, "Here we go guys, time to do what we do best." The one main benefit of this was that we lost our shadow in mere minutes, never to see him again in the competition.
We needed to get to the 4000 block and we were starting in the 1000s I believe. Dave gleefully sounded off as the blocks clicked by. "Come on guys, only 28 more blocks to go!" Soon it was down to 20, then 15, then 10. Damian, at this point, was feeling far from frisky, but Dave offered encouragingly, "Look, we haven't seen a bus yet, we're making good time." Of course a minute or two later that fateful bus came cruising right by, filled with chipper, well-rested UCers. I think we all said a silent, collective, "Fuck." With about 6 blocks to go, the bus pulled over and we came running up. We weren't that far away from the checkpoint and we were in a good rhythm, so I was leaning towards running it out. Dave seemed to be iffy about getting on as well. With Damian, however, there was no question - we were getting on that bus. So we ran up and took the first steps into the bus. Just as we did this, one of the guys on the bus from a rival team leaned over and smacked us across the face with his glove of fear and respect. "You know," he said with a smirk, "you guys are gonna lose your reputation if you get on this bus." Dave and I absorbed the blow, immediately felt its validity, knew that it was purely to goad us into doing something foolish, yet remembered that we were in the middle of the Urban CHALLENGE. That is exactly what we had received, and we were up to it. I believe our unspoken response was something to the effect of, "Alright then, bring it." Dave and I turned, descended the steps, and took off again amidst many ill wishes from Damian (both spoken and I'm sure unspoken) and scattered cheers and applause from the UC bus riders. Damian greeted these cheers with a single raised finger as we sped off to checkpoint 6. I'm sure everyone on that bus said, "Damn, I wish I were as bad-ass as those Bunnies."
Although we got to checkpoint 6 about 30 seconds behind the bus, by the time we reached 7, only one team was anywhere near us. They told us they started a checkpoint behind us, however, so there was still work to be done.
The rest of the semi-finals flew by. The War Room had everything worked out for us and it was just a matter of connecting the dots across Tulane and then back to the French Quarter. Brilliant reconnaissance from the year before lead us right to the Blarney Stone and we assaulted it like a team of Special Forces troops. Teams behind us would have nothing but dust and whispers to follow.
I do have to mention that Damian had me wait and look out for a trolley while he and Dave waited 3 blocks away for a bus - whichever came first would be our ride back to the riverfront. As I waited, I received an urgent plea from Damian saying a bus was in sight and I needed to haul ass to get there before it left. Probably more than 2 hours into the race, after our historic march up Magazine, I burst into a death sprint. My mind raced through the possibilities if I were to miss the bus. Damian urged me on, saying the bus was on its way and there was little time. Like some crappy movie, my cell phone flew from its unzipped pouch and careened onto the sidewalk. My body ground to a halt, I bent down to retrieve the phone, and was off again. I was in an all out, end-of-the-race, full-body-burn, sprint. As I neared the corner, I noticed something odd - D&D were just standing there and there was no bus in sight. I stumbled up to them, legs wobbly, breathing hurried, and peered down the street to see our bus quietly parked 2 blocks away. Fabulous. Apparently some buses in New Orleans are on a strict schedule, so ours was waiting for a few minutes as it had gotten slightly ahead. The word ‘die’ may have crossed my mind.
Once we got back to the waterfront, we motored through our checkpoints there, thanks to expert guidance from Daniel, and headed into the French Quarter again. Dave's cell phone had suffered complete operational failure during the bus ride, but we didn't let that slow us down. As we passed by Jackson Square again, Dave realized that we were passing by the finish line. With 2 or 3 checkpoints left to go, he told me to peel off and scout out the finish to see how many teams were in.
At this point, we'd been out for almost 3 hours. We'd spent a lot of time on the early clues, but had pretty well blazed through the latter ones. Nevertheless, confidence was not high. I was ready for the possibility that we hadn't even made the finals.
But as I came up to the finish, I saw only 1 team standing there: Jeff and Jake, our long-time rivals and best competition. I asked how many teams were in already and they told me only one. Kevin, one of the race organizers, was still going through their pictures. I knew the only clue we weren't sure on was 12, a true/false question. We had decided on false. I asked Jeff what they'd gotten. "True," he replied. I winced. "We got false." Immediately he was panicked. Getting DQed is the worst fear of any UC participant who has just crossed the line. The wait for picture verification is agonizing.
After a few minutes, Kevin walked over to Jeff and said something about clue 12. Jeff turned around and said, "Well, it's time to start drinking." Fluffy Bunnie's biggest competition was out of the final. I radioed the news to the War Room and waited. D&D crossed shortly thereafter in first place, getting all their pictures approved. The War Room went nuts and we thanked them for a job well done. Then the exhaustion set in.
INTERMISSION:
The hours between semi-final and final were spent by Dave, Damian, and myself eating Subway, drinking Gatorade, and relaxing in our hotel room. Dave attempted to get his phone replaced or fixed by the lovely customer service (Hah! I laugh) reps at Cingular, but to no avail. Fortunately he was able to procure another one from a team that had been knocked out of the final, so all was well.
We knew the finalists were going to be meeting in the hotel lobby at 2:30 to be whisked away to the super-secret destination of the finals start. The plan was for Daniel, Lee, and myself to drive, with all possible speed, to their locale as soon as we were made aware of it. Then they would drop me off to meet up with D&D as they commenced scouting. All was in readiness. With Jeff and Jake out, our serious competition was gone. They were the only ones who could come close to us in the running department. Now we were just up against teams of people in average to decent shape - far from the stellar shape we were in - and about to enter into the second race of the day. They were no match for our unrivaled fitness. All we had to do was not mess up and it'd be in the bag. Again, confidence was high.
FINALS:
D&D were taken in the van around 3:00 and the long wait began. As the 3 ground supporters waited outside by the car for the call to arms, I decided to ring the War Room for last minute strategizing. When Nico picked up, he informed me that the race had just begun 30 seconds ago. He said he could get someone to direct us to them, so we hopped in the car and were off.
It turned out they were brought to a cemetery that is roughly the size of Manhattan. Not only is it huge, but all the bodies are kept above ground, mostly in very large (we're talking 15 feet tall) tombs. This makes finding anyone in it quite a challenge because there’s basically no line of sight. As we neared the cemetery, we cruised along a length of it but could find no entrance. We turned to look up one side, but it was bordered by houses with no way through. With time painfully ticking by, we turned back and pulled over to the side of the road. Since it was going to be hard to find them, Daniel decided to give me a hand before taking off. The two of us piled out of the car, ran across the street, and hopped the low fence surrounding the cemetery. We were in.
Now the task became finding them. We made our way to the main entrance and saw the race clock there, so we knew they'd started at that point. Looking to our left or right, we could pretty much see the edges of the cemetery. In front of us, however, were literally miles of tombs.
Daniel soon got the call that D&D were close by, so we headed off in what we thought was their direction, shouting "Dave! Damian!" I'm sure the people trying to enjoy their Saturday afternoon with their loved ones appreciated it. I'll have to thank good ol' Kev for that one. Unfortunately we received no response.
Several minutes later, Lee called Daniel and told him that D&D had emerged from the tombs and were running towards us along the fence we had jumped to get in. Daniel and I spotted them almost immediately and raced over.
After several minutes of navigational confusion we found the final cemetery checkpoint and took the picture. We thanked Daniel for his help, and after a quick look at the tube, he was off like a rabid greyhound towards Lee in her waiting car. We were reunited, with all 4 checkpoints done, and ready to leave the cemetery.
As before, checkpoint 5 left us stranded and directionless. The 3 of us wandered aimlessly towards Central Park as the War Room furiously tried to find some place that had anything to do with Campbell Soup's stock trading symbol: CPB. For 10 or 15 minutes we heard nothing. Suddenly, Damian reported a ripple in the War Room - Budweiser was also a potential match to the clue. Their trading symbol is BUD. Bud's Broiler was just 2 blocks away in the direction of the park. Perfect - we were underway. We'd come out of the cemetery in 3rd place though, and the 15 minutes or so of confusion proved fatal. We found checkpoints 5 and 6 in rapid succession and then waited for a bus back to the hotel as darkness slowly descended on New Orleans. Several teams had gotten on an earlier bus though, so their lead on us was now substantial.
On the ride back to the hotel we had time to collect ourselves, work on the remaining clues, and get very tense. At one point Damian had to move to another part of the bus to distance himself from Dave's "backseat talking." Dave would overhear snippets of Damian's conversation with the War Room and vigorously condemn any discussions he heard of topics he felt were unimportant or irrelevant. It was a long ride back.
When we got off at Canal, Dave was unprepared for the stop and stumbled off the bus with papers and cell phone earpieces flying all over. When we finally got situated, we tore off down Canal in the absolute wrong direction. After several blocks, Damian realized the folly and we pulled a 180, pushing back towards the beacon of the Blue Room that almost certainly held the skip person.
When we stumbled into the hotel for checkpoint 7, we knew things were bad. We were the 5th team in, and the 1st team had been there 25 minutes ago. There seemed to be a stunned silence as D&D took the necessary pictures of the checkpoint person and the skip girl (I was asked to wait in the lobby). Many people in the Blue Room had expected to see the Bunnies coming through first. Several people asked me how it was going, and I could say nothing but, "Not good."
On the ride to the hotel I had been thinking about the race thus far. There had been very little running involved. The cemetery was large, but didn't really offer much advantage to a team that could run fast. Then the next 2 clues were several blocks apart at most, offering little opportunity to really move. From there we had ridden a bus for 20 minutes or so. We were more than half way through the finals and had barely been able to utilize one of our main strengths. Clearly the other teams had taken advantage of this and had jumped out to a large lead. Even if we ran for the rest of the race, we had a lot of ground to make up.
After we left the hotel, though, we ripped through the last 4 checkpoints. Again, our crack team in the War Room hooked us up. The one clue we couldn't get (10) would be skipped. There were a couple that we were not 100% on, but as we got to those clues, there was always something at the location that correlated with the clue, telling us it was definitely correct. At least we could feel good about our checkpoints . . . all our info seemed solid.
It was at checkpoint 9 that we hit a bit of a hiccup. We had torn through 8 and 9, probably faster than the War Room expected. Once we'd taken the picture at 9, all we needed from there was an address for 11, as 12 had already been worked out. Damian asked for 11 and got some talk about checkpoint 8 or 9 in reply. Upon hearing this, Dave nearly killed someone. He went into a classic berserker rage, shouting that all we needed was 11 and that everyone should forget everything else and focus on 11. Damian greeted this request with a hearty, "Shut the hell up, Dave!" and a friendly shove to create some space between them. Only seconds later though, the confusion was clarified and an address for 11 produced.
We took off through the French Quarter, winding our way down Bourbon Street, which was choked with the usual drunken Saturday night crowd. A block or 2 before 11 we flew past Daniel, who shouted at us a description of the restaurant we were looking for and told us to just head straight down Bourbon from there to hit 12. We quickly found 11 and took the picture. Now only 1 to go. Inexplicably, D&D consulted someone for directions to the next clue. Although Daniel had JUST TOLD US to head straight down Bourbon, apparently they need confirmation. We were in the 900 block and the final checkpoint was in the 100s. Funny how that works, it was straight down Bourbon, just before Canal.
We raced down Bourbon and an adjacent street, trying to avoid the crowds of drunken people shouting helpful things like, "Hey look, runners!" and, “Yeah! Faster, faster!” and, "Is this thing still going on?" Dave told us to be careful as we weaved through people and cars and dashed across intersections in the dark. He said what we were all thinking: there was no way we were going to win, so why risk injury by madly sprinting down the streets? He implored us to be safe, but we were still moving with a purpose. We wanted to finish with a respectable time and get all our checkpoints right.
12 ended up having a TV crew in front of it, who filmed the taking of our final picture and then our dash off into the dark. Now we just had to cover the 3 or 4 blocks back to the hotel and make sure we erased a picture we'd needlessly taken earlier.
Soon we were pulling up at the main entrance to the hotel and stopping for a bit to erase the extra picture. None of us were in any hurry to get inside. We knew there would be teams already there, with congratulatory clapping from the crowd for our effort, but the dream of $50,000 was gone. We'd covered the last portion of the race fairly quickly, much faster than any other team would have been able to, but at most we'd made up 10 minutes. We'd just given them too much of a cushion and hadn't had enough time to reel them back in. We walked up the stairs, through the main doors, and turned the corner into the Blue Room. There we were met with a truly strange sight.
At the top of the stairs leading into the Blue Room stood the Doctor of Lies himself, Tyson. When he saw us come in, the most bizarre look of utter astonishment and confusion, like, "What the hell are you guys doing here? You must have screwed up somehow," came over his face. This shocked stare was followed a second or 2 later by the silent holding up of a single finger on his left hand. Unlike Damian's earlier raising of a finger, this was his index finger. This gesture can often mean 1 of 2 things: a) I'm about to pick my nose, or b) number 1. I believe it was Dave who shouted out in disbelief, "Are we first?" Tyson gave the affirmative, and our minds slammed gears from sluggish depression to manic excitement.
We stopped at the top of the stairs to check and make sure our pictures were all correct and in order before crossing the finish line. Where exactly that was, we weren't sure. As D&D checked the pictures, I turned back towards the entrance and saw another team running around the corner. "Another team!" I shouted, and Dave turned to look just as John Beard, with wife Marcy literally in tow, careened into him at the top of the stairs. Instinct took over and D&D immediately struck out at a full sprint towards the back of the room. Now, keep in mind that the Blue Room was full of people, so the mad dash for the finish had to wind through quite a crowd. D&D cut straight down the middle across the dance floor, while their adversaries choose to take the high ground along the edge. In a fever of shocked yelling and applause, Dave and Damian crossed the line first, by a mere second or 2, assuring that the $50,000 was now theirs to either win or lose. From there, it was only a matter of waiting for Kevin to announce the results. This turned out to be a little more time consuming than expected.
WILL THEY EVER ANNOUNCE IT?:
The cameras were handed over and the pictures began to be scrutinized. Maybe 5 or 10 minutes after the Bunnies and the Beards crossed, the Google boys come trucking into the Blue Room as well. Now there were 3 teams in, but still no word on a winner. At first several people asked me how confident we were in our pictures. I didn't know anything about the first 4 in the cemetery, since I wasn't there for much of that, but I knew we were solid on the others. Soon people settled into milling around, chatting, and waiting.
Maybe 10 or 15 minutes after the finish, someone got up on stage and took the mic. He told us that they were reviewing the pictures and wanted to make sure all the pictures were correct before they announced a definite winner. That immediately got me and Daniel speculating. Did that mean none of the teams had all the shots correct, so they were waiting for one that did? Maybe they were waiting for 3 correct teams before they announce the winners, in which case at least 1 of the teams already in would be DQed. We just had no idea. All we knew was that there was no way it should take this long to look through 36 pictures.
Around that time I get on the phone with Nico back in the War Room and became their liaison to what was happening in the Blue Room. After hours of brilliant service, being at the heart of the UC action, the War Roomers were now stuck helplessly in LA as events unfolded thousands of miles away. I tried to describe the scene to Nico, who then passed on the info to everyone else there. "Nothing much is going on. Kevin is talking to a few people, but he's nowhere near the stage. Damian and Dave are wandering around. What the hell is taking so long?"
After maybe a half hour, Dave and Damian were taken to the stage, where they were interviewed on camera by some TV host guy. Immediately we thought this could mean they were the winners. We huddled around the stage to try to catch any sign of victory. But as the interview ended, Tyson told me he heard the host wish D&D luck. Damn! So the interview indicated nothing. The waiting continued.
I tried to keep the commentary going for Nico. I told him about the crazy sprint finish. I wandered from Blue Room to lobby and back again. Still nothing. 45 minutes passed by . . . then an hour. This was inconceivable. The waiting was maddening. Tyson told me he would break a bottle over my head and then stab me with the broken end, whether or not the Bunnies won. That made perfect sense to me.
Eventually the giant foam board check for $50,000 was moved from the entrance to the Blue Room over to the stage, but no other movement towards the stage occurred. Nico kept me apprised of Nick's various levels of mental breakdown under the stress. Sometimes he was ok, sometimes he was huddle in a corner, rocking back and forth in the fetal position. The waiting was unbearable.
I started hearing from people that the last place team hadn't even come through the Blue Room for their first time, let alone finished. The other 2 teams were still nowhere to be seen either. It had been at least an hour, and still only 4 teams were in. This had to mean they didn't have a winner yet. Doubts began to sink in.
Then I saw Kevin walking through the room, escorting Dave out into the lobby. That couldn't be good. I immediately reported it to Nico. That had to mean there was something wrong with a clue. Shit . . . not again. But Damian was sitting off in the lobby; he wasn't taking part in the conversation. Good, maybe it wasn't a problem with a clue if the whole team wasn't involved. Then Dave walked back to the stage to fish his phone and the clue tube out of his pack. There it was, he was going to the tube. There was definitely a problem. I started to feel sick.
As Dave headed back to the lobby, Tyson got the skinny on what was going on from him. I, in turn, talked to Tyson and fed the info to the War Room. Apparently there was a problem with the math on checkpoint 1. The Bunnies and Kevin hadn't gotten the same answer. The good news, however, was that the top 3 teams had all gotten the same “wrong” answer. The probability of all 3 teams screwing up in the same way on the same clue was small. There was still hope.
A crowd slowly amassed around Dave and Kevin in the lobby as Dave showed him how they had done the math. Kevin seemed open to Dave’s explanation and asked for a scientific calculator. A minute later, someone came down with one and Daniel, our local math wiz, manned the controls. He deftly punched in the digits, did all the appropriate operations, and hit the equals button. Now pay me the fucking money!
But no, the look on Daniel’s face said it all. The answer was wrong. They'd gotten it wrong. Daniel pulled the phone from my hands to berate the War Room for their inability to use the sin function. It's a good thing he was thousands of miles away. I believe it would have come to blows had Daniel questioned Nick's mathematical prowess in person. But seconds later the words radians and degrees began to fly around. They had to check the calculator. Was it set for radians or degrees? The answer should be in degrees. Sure enough, it was set to radians. The calculator was switched, Daniel once again worked the problem, and this time the result was perfect. And there it was.
Kevin immediately headed back into the Blue Room, with the crowd following. "I think this is it," I said to Nico, still on the phone after almost an hour and a half of waiting. Organizers wandered over to the stage, the crowd fell into a hush, and the mic went hot. They were about to announce the winners.
Nico asked me to call back on the main line they'd been using so they could put me on speakerphone and let the entire War Room hear my commentary. I did so, and began to describe the awards ceremony. They announce Kevin, and he took the mic. Here we go . . . FINALLY.
He began by thanking everyone involved in running the UC, and other members of his family. Then he thanked all the sponsors for their support. Then he brought up last year's top 7 - the Magnificent 7 - and introduced them. Then he introduced this year's Magnificent 7. Only 5 teams were there though: at this point, 4 teams had finished and one team had given up and come back without completing the course. Kevin pointed out that the UC had little to do with luck, as 4 of the current top 7 teams were in last years top 7 as well. All I wanted was a hot poker to gouge my eye out with. He was never going to get to the winners.
And then came the announcement we'd all been waiting for. The War Room muted their side of the connection so only they could hear me over the phone. I then proceed to eerily talk to myself as Kevin made the announcement. "This year's winner, in a time of 2:03 [That's us!], the team that taught me the difference between radians and degrees [he's talking about us!] . . . David Olds and Damian Garcia!" Everyone erupted into cheers. The line clicked back alive in the War Room and I could hear screaming and shouting on the other end. After an hour and a half of waiting, and over 5 hours of racing, we'd done it. Team Fluffy Bunny was the Urban Challenge's 2003 champions. Run fluffy, run.