Amazing Race-ish

A few months ago my friend Christina at work told Crystal and I about this Urban Hunt LA that she had a groupon for. Crystal is a really big fan of Amazing Race and always talks about signing up for it one day so she wanted to do this Urban hunt really badly! It sounded like a lot of fun so we Crystal signed us up for it! You were supposed to have a team name and dress up in costumes... we kinda half assed did it. We were team "No name" for many inside joke reasons. And at the last minute got matching shirts. There were 6 teams of 2 from our group of co-workers and friends.

We drove up to LA with these 2 crazy things... We'll just call them Thang 1 and Thang 2 for the sake of their blue hair and costumes!

*Pic by Charlotte

They had a costume contest and a lot of people dressed up for it! From "The Dums" to this team named "We're right here" dressed up as Where's Waldo and then there were Angry Birds.... they were pretty funny to see. The PB&J girls won the contest.

80 teams showed up that morning to compete. Crystal and I spent the night before looking at maps and trying to get our self acquainted with Downtown LA from a map.... I printed out maps of Public Transit and Crystal went to AAA to get maps of the city! Neither of us knew what the heck we were getting ourselves into but we wanted to try to be as prepared as we could, and I honestly think we did pretty well at preparing! We had Victor at home on computer for help too!

*Pic by Charlotte


They gave all 80 teams the same paper with the clues on it and said "ready, set, go". We ripped open that envelope and headed to our first clue! There were 14 puzzles and 13 of them had to be completed and correct. For every wrong answer they would deduct 30 minutes from your time! So team No name and the things headed out!
The closest clue was: After being out of service for 9 years, this 109 year old incline railway reopened in 2010. We had to get a picture of both teammates riding this Angels Flight Railway.

We could only use Public Transportation and if you know LA, which we do NOW, but you can take the Subway, the Metro Rail or the buses. We pretty much stuck to the Subway and the Rail. We had to nagivate between different color lines of rail that took us to Union Station, Chinatown, Little Toyko, Olivera Street.

*Pic by Charlotte




There were several challenges where we had to stand in front of something to take a picture, or find something specific like a pizza, an Ice cream man, a bike helmet... this one was the jewerly we had to find in Chinatown.

While in Chinatown we had a list of items we had to buy but they were written in Chinese. So not only did we have to find someone that could read it (which was not an easy task) but we had to get them to speak enough english to tell us what the list said in English. One of our tasks was to take a picture with a "Street performer"... this guy did the trick while we were in Chinatown!

While in this Crazy district of Chinatown we had to find this one paticular store in a mile long block of stores upstairs and down and take a picture in front of the sign while wearing one of their Kimonos. We were pretty fashionable!

When we got to Little Tokyo we needed to find a certain plaza and then play a game of "Where's Waldo". Upon finding him he took us to a puzzle. We had to build a tower of Jenga pieces to be as tall as waldo's cane.... once we did that it had to stay for 5 seconds. We rocked this puzzle! I LOVE Jenga..... Crystal and I worked together as a team so well! We were both good at our own things. This was mine game for sure! Afterall, Crystal got us there!


In the midst of all the craziness one of the challenges was to fold this origami crane.... NOT an easy task..... But by the end of the race I did! It did take me a little bit all day... walking down streets, relying on Crystal to tell me when I was going to walk into someone... but I did it!!

Where were ALL over downtown LA and couldn't find one person wearing a Dodgers hat! On our way across the crosswalk to Olvera Street we found this random guy! We stopped him in the middle of a crosswalk and bombarded him with "Can we take a picture with you?" He must have thought we were crazy in the middle of the street! But we were able to cross it off our list! This guy probably went home with a good story!

One of the places I was looking forward to going to was Olvera Street. I had been a few times before and I know this is a big to-do for LA so I was hoping this was going to be on the hunt. It was!! Once we got to Olvera Street we had to do a sack hop! It was the middle of the day, it was hot and we had to jump around this fountain in sacks and a sombrero. Me first...

Then Crystal.... then me again.... As if we weren't tired enough and it was hot... this was NOT an easy challenge!

Even though this is not the picture I wanted to post of Thing 2 hoping around in a sack, I love her and she made me laugh!

Although we were running through Olvera Street to find certain things, I snapped a picture of this guy playing a Harp. I thought it was cool!

After we solved a few more clues it led us to the MOCA. We had to take a picture of both teammates in from of this crazy flying figure.

By this point in the day we were just EXHAUSTED!!! I think we figured that we ran/walked about 14 miles, along with taking who knows how many miles of planes, trains and automobiles.
In the hussle and bussle of downtown in the Jewelry District there is this random alley called St. Vincent Court. It's decorated to look like a quaint Parisian Street. It was beautiful and quite, you would never know it was there if you weren't looking for it! We had to take some random pictures there to prove we found it!

Our last stop for the afternoon was a random puzzle that we had Victor figure out while we were running around. It was a pain to find, they called it the Upside down rocker, We pointed to the winning yellow car!

This experience was none like any other!!! We came to our ending point and saw so many teams sitting having a drink already.... Out of 80 teams Crystal and I were #54. Yep, 54. We did the best we could and we did great!!! Charlotte and Christina came in with us but Crystal and I logged in first, but we did the whole thing as a team of 4 all day! The day was so much fun learning all about LA. Running around the city like crazy people with our blue haired friends! It was an awesome experience that we want to do again and again!!! Different cities, different people. I'm pretty sure we are all hooked now! After a blog like this, aren't you?

Thanks to the husbands at home and the great teammate and best friend I had! Thanks to the Things for a great day! Can't wait for Urban Hunt #2!