The Amazing-ish Race!

So this past Saturday (the 10th) was another major milestone for me in terms of Doing Sh-tuff That Scares the He-Crap out of Me.  There was a multi-stake YSA activity, called The Amazing Race, that involved driving all over the city and doing stuff at different sites to get tickets for the door prize drawing at the end.  I, in my infinite wisdom, signed up to be a driver for this activity - I knew I wouldn't go unless I'd made some sort of commitment, so before my brain knew what my hand was doing, I'd signed up, then passed the list on.  So, like a good little YSA, I headed out to the Millwoods stake center around 6pm Saturday night to participate in the AMAZING RACE!!

Of course, because most Mormons are incapable of showing up to church functions ON TIME, I was one of a dozen people who were there at 6.  And half of those people were the organizers of the event.  It was painfully awkward for the first, oh, five or twenty minutes.  There was a group of us standing in a kind of half circle, about three feet from each other, not looking at one another, just staring at the ground, and it's in these situations that I REALLY HATE the paralyzing sense of doom that comes over me and renders me incapable of speech.  I mean, really, I have since come up with a bunch of different things I could have said to break the awkward silence:

"Hi, my name is Claire, what's yours?"  being the first and most obvious, or
"Is there a no-talking policy that I'm not aware of?" humor sometimes works
"So, where is everyone from?" basic, I know
"Well, this is awkward."  or even
"Okay, so, zombie apocalypse scenario: we're the last people alive and must band together for safety's sake.  What are each of you bringing to the group, in 20 words or less?"

But NOOOO....my brain shuts down all non-life-sustaining functions, like speech, or thought, and I freeze like a deer in the headlights.  It finally came down to one of the guys running the show to come over and introduce himself before I regained cerebral functions.  (For the record, I kept thinking I knew him because he looked familiar, and then I realized that he looked like he could be Fady's, like, Caucasian twin.  They're even about the same height.  Fady was my personal trainer, and one of Gillian's H.S. friends.)  So I introduced myself, he asked me where I was from, and this led to breaking the ice with another one of the guys just standing around, J, who hadn't been to YSA stuff in some time and was therefore unfamiliar with most of the people there, too.  He agreed to be my navigator, but we ended up teaming with another car that was not full, S1, S2, and A.  We got our stuff together and headed out to S1's car - and at this point I should have offered the services of my vehicle.  His car was all nice, and new...and a compact.  My es-cah-pey may not be new, but she's pretty nice, and NOT a compact.  But, I didn't speak up, and thus got to spend the rest of the activity squished in the back with A and J.  A, bless her heart, sat in the middle because she's shorter than me, and didn't once argue the point.  Sweet girl. 

The activity itself was pretty fun, but I'm sure it would have been "funner" if it'd been with a group of people I knew.  Or rather, I kept thinking that it would make a great activity back home, and having Gillian, Michael, Matt, Megan, Cara, and Gina in one car with me would make it SUPER fun, and then I started thinking, well, it's kind of like our "adventures", but more structured.  Something to think about for December...So, anyway, yeah, our activities:

1. Go to Southgate Mall and take a picture with the Shoes.  There is a mall, not the huge theme-park one, nearby that has a pair of giant shoes with striped-stocking legs sticking out of them.  Check.  And no, I don't have a copy of the picture, but you can check out the shoes here.

2. Head over to Kinsman Park, and find the bishopric member there to get instructions.  Here was our first snafu.  We got to Kinsman Park just fine, but it's HUGE and we didn't know who we were looking for...we ran into two other groups who got there before us and had been walking around trying to find the people.  Eventually, in a far distant corner of the park, we found the people, and had to chip golf balls into a circle to get tickets.  Add golf to the list of things I am not, and never will be, good at.  I am okay with this.

3. Travel to the Legislature building park (I don't know the official name).  When we got there, there was plenty of parking down near the level we needed to be at.  Yes, it was private parking for an apartment building, but there were almost NO cars there, and we needed 10-15 minutes, max.  Nope.  We parked in the public parking, at the top of the hill...and then hiked down the hill...and headed over to the amphitheater, where the guy there had just pointed two other groups to someone else, because he wasn't actually part of our activity (and thank heavens, because the girl with him was dancing around all crazy, and A and I were like, "Not gonna learn a dance, nu-uh" but we didn't need to).  We got to play Keep Up with four balloons.  Obviously, some of the guys in the group didn't play that game as children, because they were whacking the balloons like you spike a volleyball, which doesn't work so well for keeping them up.  Light taps, people, light taps.

 After earning our tickets, we hiked back up the hill (I had stupidly worn my stacked flip-flops, which made the hiking a pain in the....foot) and back to the car, where A and I expressed the opinion that what our team really needed was a little pick me up in the form of frozen, flavored sugar water, a.k.a., Slurpees.  It then took us the next decade to get to them, because there was confusion between the gentlemen on where we were going next - S1 was following directions from S2 on how to get to the next stop, which conflicted with the directions from A and J on how to get to the 7-11.  But we got there, got sustenance, and jumped back in the Squishmobile for the next bout of driving.  Which also took a decade because our next stop was:

4. Churchill Square, and once again, diverging directions make for confused driving.  Also, the side street we needed to turn down was blocked off by police.  Not sure why.  I felt like I was driving again, we made so many wrong and u- turns.  Finally got parked, walked over to Churchill Square, and answered the following brain-teasers:
 - Who was Churchill Square named after?
 - What was he famous for?
 - What was here 100 years ago?  (Okay, so that last one was a little tricky, but a safe guess (farmland) was correct.)

5. Final stop, and one I wished we had gone in to - the Muttart Conservatory, which is 4 glass pyramid greenhouses with different biomes in each one.  We just stayed in the parking lot and played a paper-plates and cans stacking game, and then it was time to head back to the stake center.

Back at the stake center...oy.  So, I was talking to A for a bit, and then saw a couple of girls from my ward come in, so I went over and said hi, and was talking to C and girl B, when boy B comes up and, completely disregarding my presence, invites the girls I'm talking to over to someone's house.  Now, I didn't particularly want to go to this person's house, and I was not invited to, so that was fine, but, and maybe I'm out of line here, I felt that it was rude that, as I'm standing there, TALKING TO THE GIRLS, he comes up, does not acknowledge my existance in the universe (and I'd been introduced to him previously at FHE), invites them to go, AND THEY LEAVE.  I mean, C said 'bye to me, and she looked kind of awkward about it, but she still left.  Anyone else think that's rude, or is this the norm?  And, once again, brain shut-down.  Mind-bottled, this time, mostly that people who are spoken highly of by adults I respect could act like that.  I'm not saying he was wrong to invite them to go do something else, he was within his rights to do so, and they're certainly within their rights to go, but, I dunno, maybe not in front of someone whom you're not also inviting?  When they're in the middle of a conversation?  Anyone?

So, I gravitated back over to J, who had nobody to talk to either, and after a few false conversational starts, I struck gold: zombie apocalypse preparedness.  You guys, I have found the leader of my Canadian Zombie Emergency Response Operatives team, and he's more prepared than we are.  To the point of having a plan for building raised walkways to connect houses, and a stockpile of weapons - bladed and not - that Michael might weep real tears of envy over.  I think, when the plague hits, y'all need to head north - but bring LOTS of supplies with you.  That, and the fact that he plays Dead Space?  I think I found Gillian a man :-) (He's a bit young for me, but it's good to have friends!)

At the end of the activity, I won a movie ticket!  Which I was happy about, but...isn't this a YSA function?  Isn't the goal of YSA to get people married and OUT of YSA?  So why one ticket?  Why not two, and then, I dunno...maybe I could....>hee hee< ask someone >snort< out on a date? >snicker, hic!<