The Amazing Granville Island

For my race recap for The Amazing Hunt. I’ll do a quick overview then get into details about our team’s performance. As this just happened this morning and I’m slightly intoxicated (more details below, remember to click “continue reading”) I don’t have the exact names of some of the establishments visited.

Teams: Andy & Shane (Best Friends), Beverley & Janine (Entrepreneur Moms), Christian & Damon (Highschool Buddies), Jenny & Rebecca (Sisters), Nora & Sean (Dating)

At 10:00am we all met at Starbucks. The host of the race pointed me out and knew my name, since he’d read my blog and listened to our podcast before. Jen and I left our raincoats in the car and packed with us a couple bottles of water, sweaters and cell phones. Along with 4 other teams we walked over the starting point, to the West of the Granville Island entrance, near the private lagoon condos.

The race was on shortly after doing a couple of intros. We sprinted toward the first clue, ripped it open and it instructed us to find a certain marine company. It advised us to find the Museum.

At the museum we read the next clue aloud. It instructed us to go into the Net Loft where we ran into a ROAD BLOCK. This is a task which only one person on the team may complete. In this case, we had to sit down and count tiny beads, hundreds of them. Only one team managed to get the right number and the rest of us took a 15 minute penalty in exchange for skipping the task. Yes, it was the frustrating tough.

In hindsight, Jenny should have done this task since she is more methodical. Instead I did it and ended up spilling a couple on the floor. We were one of the teams that took the 15 minute penalty.

The next clue had a FAST FORWARD, where you could head over to Woofles & Meowz and chow down on a dog cracker or you had to find what was in a picture on the clue. Jen and I bolted to Woofles but there was already a team there. Knowing that only one team can complete the FF, we started out to find a fountain that was on our clue.

We didn’t hesitate to ask passers-by for help, although no one was really useful. Shop owners and tourist had no idea where anything was, but there was one couple walking around with their child in a stroller that REALLY helped us find the fountain (in the photo on the clue). We ran into them later in the race and they wished us luck.

Once arriving at the fountain the next clue lead us to the triangle plaza surrounding the French bakery. We didn’t quite get the clue and ended up just stumbling on the location. There we encountered a MERGE and two other teams ahead of us.

Since we were the third team to arrive had to sit and wait 10 minutes for the next team to catch up so we could pair off. We should have gotten cell phone numbers prior to the race so that we’d be able to call the other team in this situation. The wait wasn’t too bad and one of the boys teams (Christian & Damon) arrived to help us out soon enough

For the merge, teams had to pool their money (we were both only given just over a dollar at the beginning), buy a baguette and finish it together. When the bread was devoured we raced to the pit stop atop the Mound at Ron Basford Park.

The boys team we had just partnered with for the baguette task generously allowed us to cross the mat ahead of them, since they made us wait at the MERGE.

With only a short time to rest, we were off again – this time right into the Public Market, where we came across a DETOUR. There was also a YIELD in place, a team was already yielded so we didn’t have to make any quick decisions. For the DETOUR we had to chose a task to complete together, either eat stinky blue cheese or eat funky tasting wasabi-covered sashimi. We chose the sashmi and gobbled it up rather quickly. We then made our way to 1441 Cartwright street, which happened to be the Granville Island Brewery.

Inside the brewery there was another ROAD BLOCK, one team member had to chug. Without blinking I took on this task and we pulled ahead of the pack. The next location was Pier 32, once there you had an INTERSECTION. We either had a clue with a NAME or with a LOGO. We took a LOGO and wandered back out around the island.

For the DETOUR Jen and I ate the sashimi SO fast and did really well. At the brewery I had to down FOUR beers lightning fast, which of course… I did.

Once we found the logo, we proceeded to the pitstop where cameras, the host and other teams were waiting. What a race, too bad we were the 5th team to arrive.

The winning team was the boys (Christian & Damon) who we completed the MERGE with, it must have been the good karma they got by letting us cross the mat first at the pit stop.

We were ahead of them coming out of Pier 32 but that last clue got us, we overthought it again and wandered way further than we should have

I just have to say one thing negative though, there was a woman (obviously an employee of the corporation that owns Granville Island) that was giving our producer a hard time because of the teams running around. We were told explicitly in the beginning NOT to run in the markets, which we weren’t. I suppose she wasn’t aware of the race and maybe she even got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but we could have really done without her intervention. From that point on we weren’t even allowed to walk quickly from clue to clue (outside or in).

We would have really like a couple more brainteaser tasks to complete together, other than that, the game was really fun.

I ate white bread, sashimi and downed 4 beers while walking at an expedited pace for several hours on this lovely sunny Saturday with my sister. It was super fun and I’m looking forward to the next. I’d really like to try another although I don’t own a car and I’m pretty sure the next couple events require them.

A huge thank you to the camera guys who caught almost every moment on tape (including my runny noses and sweaty temples), our host Stephen, and especially Bill Lin for all his efforts. Everything went smoothly, the clues were great, very well put together.

A couple items of note for next time: 1) wear a sports bra 2) read up on the location ahead of time 3) bring some Granville Island beer with me because man that was good.