Urban Dare...

Urban Dare.
Fail.
When we signed up for this Urban Dare, and watched people's U-Tube videos, and saw pics, etc. It looked like the Amazing Race. You get a clue, you arrive at a destination, you perform a dare then get another clue. The dares had rock climbing, eating fun things, riding a paddle boat, things like that!
Ours did not.
So here's the breakdown of the Urban Dare Race along with me and Lib's photo re-cap. There were fun moments; I mean how can there not be with my best friend in the whole world and me as a team.
We were the Darling Devils.

Joining us were my bro and his wife, our friends Court and Nat, and later on Julie and her man. We started out well enough. We arrived early to grab some breakfast and as some were waiting for me to come from the parking lot, some woman walked out of a what we didn’t realize was a restaurant and said - "You guys looking for something to eat? We have Bloody Mary's and Mimosas!". Sold. So we started our morning off with a couple of drinks and a very greasy breakfast. Probably not the smartest thing, but most of us were smart and just ate a portion as not to offend the "cook".


Julie & Gabe phone us that they have arrived and checked in, so we head over to Auld Dubliner where we check in, and end up hanging out for a while since we were so early. We got out T-shirts (You didn’t have to wear it if you were in a costume), our bibs and a passport. We of course all treated ourselves to a few more drinks...I mean we were in a bar and started getting excited. Court and Julie were a team, Gabe and Shane then D and Nat (Beer Brains 09 - consisting of tutu’s and personalized trucker hats. That's D. I love her).


The head guy tells us all to head out and meet in front of Laugh Factory. We all gather, they have a costume contest, then we are handed clue sheets. Lib and I dart to the side, plop in the shade and start to go through it. I realize right then - this is not what I was expecting. There is a list of 12 clues - all ending with an answer of some place you're supposed to go and take your photo. There were only 3 "Dares" and a "Photo Hunt challenge". WTF! Oh well, we start in. D had loaned us her phone, but unfortunately we are technologically retarded and it was difficult. We can also call people, so I was on the phone calling friends to help with answers. We get to a point where we have the answer to almost everything and figure we should get going.
Here's where we went wrong.
We decided, well let's just to the 1st thing on the list. The clue was "This was #2 in the Travel Channel's top 101 places to eat. Go there and take your picture in front of it.". Thank you to Vanessa - the answer was Roscoe's Chicken & Waffles. We attempt to use D's navigation thing - I speak the name into the phone and after some cursing and having no idea what its doing, Lib squeals - "It’s working! This way". We're off.
We running, and running and running - "How Long!!!" Oh Right (I think to myself) you're usually in a car, it's a bit farther than we thought. It's cool, we start to laugh and as we're running I'm calling people and making notes. Seriously - How we didn’t die is beyond me. Running while writing/texting/calling isnt the smartest idea. We just happen to come upon one of the dares! The luck! So we jet over and the gal tells us that the name of our passport (Which was SteamPower) has # value's. There are little sticks in the ground all over the grass each with a letter and a # value. We are to find ours, add them up and give her the correct total. We start. We have fab teamwork here as I shout the value's to Lib who writes them down while still juggling D's phone. We right out the #'s - she shouts them at me as I add em up on my phone calculator (See my phone was good for something). Stamp. We're off.
We are now running up a f-ing hill.
We happen upon another one!! Sweet! We jet over to see what it is. This is the "Urban Lab Chantilly Clad" or something. It's an odd looking installation. As we run up to the girl, she says "3-Legged Race! Run 3 times around this thing". We're off, after a few stumbles we f-ing rocked. This was the one we probably did best at. We got in a perfect rhythm with each other and lapped all the fools stumbling next to us and then STAMP. We're off!
Now we're almost to Roscoe's. I decide we need to figure out where we're going to go so we don’t end up back tracking. We sit down, I'm on the phone with my lovely mom getting the addresses of all our locations since Lib is afraid to turn off D's phone and lose Roscoe's. We pull our our map. FAIL. It's not a detailed enough map. WTF!!!!!!! We're screwed. We now have no way of figuring out where the hell we're going, because D's phone is not working for us either. Fuck. Well, what can you do. We head off to Roscoe's. On the way we bump into Julie/Court. They tell us where one of the local's is and we head off. We have totally lost our devil horns at this point and we are sweating and dying already. We finally find Roscoe's.
The nice thing was, the other peeps in the race were, for the most part, really cool. Alot of times you'd hit something at the same time and we'd pull the you take my photo I'll take yours sort of thing. So - photo local #1 -

We're off to "Anita Ekberg started in this Fellini film. Take your pic in front of the Spa with the same name". We find La Dolce Vita Spa and shoot the pic with the help of other Urban Dare folk.

We head off, knowing the addy of places and hoping they're this way. We are going for a very long time. We are also now in a very questionable area of Long Beach. I'm not going to lie, there were a few times I was a little worried. We did see 2 drug deals, and had quite of few homeless asking what the hell all these people running around were doing, but other than that nothing too bad. We run into Shane/Gabe. They point us in the opposite direction we're going saying the one is closer. Sigh - we turn around and finally find the "Mel Brooks starred in this TV Series with Don Adams. Take your pic in front of this tutoring academy".

Now, at this point I have an enormous blister forming on the side of my heel. I state to Lib we have to stop somewhere for me to get a band aid. We wander into a very scary liquor store and battle the counter fellow with a language barrier explaining I need a band aid. His buddy - a very ancient Asian man shrieks at him what I want in his language and he finally understands. I also notice the double pain glass shield we have to exchange our money through. Yup. Not a great area. I get my band aids and we take a 1st aid break.


We're off again. We drag up to the "Robin Williams movie where he played a gay biz owner or something...yup. You guessed it. Take a photo. As you can see by this photo - we're kind of over it.

I had spotted our other local while on our way to the Birdcage Cafe. "You need 98% to pass this test, or something - take your photo in front of the nightclub. Thank you Vanessa - I had no idea what the hell that one was!

We're off again. One of the photo hunt challenges was we had to take a photo of someone not in the race re-inacting the famous WWII photo of the soldier kissing the gal all romantic like. I was thinking this was going to be tough, especially since most of the people we have encountered are mean or on drugs. A lovely couple is walking towards us and Lib stops them to explain our task. The dude looks suspicious but his adorable GF says "Come on honey!!! It'll be fun!!!" so they get ready and he looks at me and says "Now what's the pose? Oh..this?" and promptly nails it. They were so awesome!!!!! Look at her pointed toe!

At this point we're a little flustered and we're wandering around trying to find Civic Center. This is when we get a call from Julie. They finished. I wanted to cry. I knew we weren’t close. She says since we got screwed with the wrong map, she'll help us out. We find the Civic Center while on the phone with her and follow some other racers to find the Bram's something Marlin we're supposed to photo ourselves in front of.

I call Julie back and tell her what we have left. "Oh no." She says. Yup - all 3 of our last places were totally scattered. She tells me where they are and this is the moment I almost quit. I just want to sit down and start to cry. I hang up and tell Libby. She has the same face as me. We're so f-ed. I'm now not even sure if we'll finish before the cutoff time of 3:45. We start off to the 1st one, bitching to each other about how lame this f-ing race has turned out to be and why didn’t I look and see we had a bunk map and FUCK!!! We call Julie again, because - yup we passed our 1st damn one due to our anger. So we turned around and took a photo in front of the stupid toy car pileup.

We luckily happened upon the other "Dare" when we saw a bunch of blue T-shirts running one direction - Wheelbarrow Race. Lib drops on all fours and we wheelbarrow around the little cones. STAMP.
We head off to our last and farthest spot. Because guess where it f-ing was. BACK NEAR ROSCOE'S!!!!! Yup, we are so screwed up and should have nailed it when we were on the other side of town. It's the Museum of Latin American Art. Fuck me. As we start dragging back, Libby is wanting to call a taxi. I'm so defeated by this point I almost agree. So, we do what we do best on our way back and just laugh. Try to look at the good side. We got our exercise! We got to catch up! Ya. Fuck.
We finally arrive and take our photo in front of the (which we now hate) Angel of the America's.

We see a really neat mirror thing (I make a mental note to come back when I'm in a better mood and do some camera play) and take our FUCK YOU URBAN DARE! Photo.

We start our trek back. We also realize we haven’t done our last photo thing we need to do to finish the damn thing. We need 3 people not in the race to do the Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, See no Evil. We're also walking through and area where there IS NO CIVILIZATION! We've now heard that everyone in our group has finished of course. Whatever.
So we pass (again) this lovely park and figure fuck it, let's go take a nice happy picture on the bridge!

We then see these women walking towards us. Libby stops them to explain our last photo dare. One women leaves - now there's only 2 of em but another women is walking towards us so I stop her. They look a little wary at first, but since we're pretty much begging the lovely lady who is doing the Hear no Evil says "Come on ladies!!" and promptly assigns who’s doing what. I wanted to kiss them all.

We finally drag ourselves into the bar. Stamp our card. Show the gal all our pictures. They say congrats and we're done. Where's my f-ing medal!? Whatever. We collapse with our group, finding out Shane/Gabe didn’t get there too far ahead of us, and we notice we did it in about 2 1/2 hours I think - which isn’t horrible. But - the fact that we would have probably have been amazing had we had a f-ing map.
I got myself a glass of white - wanting booze but something cold.

Julie and Gabe had to peace out, but I got the final photos of us, exhausted but actually looking happy! :) So in conclusion - won’t be doing Urban Dare again. We all agree we were really disappointed that there were not more activities to do. I think that would have made it better, because even if we screwed up our route like we did - we would have had fun activities to look forward too. Oh well. We finished, and of course there were really fun moments! Thank you to my partner in crime and my best friend in the world - Miss Lib. We do make a pretty damn good team!