GE 2017: The San Francisco Stride

"San Francisco has only one drawback, 'tis hard to leave"  - Rudyard Kipling

We had a GREAT day walking all over San Francisco doing scavenges.  The Fit Bit says we did 10.2 miles today and I'm feeling every step tonight.  But we had such fun.  Quick highlight of our top few scavenges:

Scavenge # 21:  Enjoy the 50th Cherry Blossom Festival in Japantown.
There was lots of activity and dancing and great outfits in Japantown today as well as heavy crowds.

But my favorite was the kids' beating their hearts out on the giant drums.  With lots of foot stomping and butt wiggling and great enthusiasm.

Scavenge 24:  Visit the heart of the '67 Summer of Love sweet spot and find a single celled shop.
First part of solving the riddle was to head to Haight Ashbury.

To the totally groovy part of town

And find the Amoeba (single cell) record shop, which still has thousands of vinyl records

Scavenge 13 and 14:  Visit Chinatown and find the cookie factory in Ross Alley

The cookie factory actually makes 10,000 fortune cookies - by hand - every day.  Only a simple conveyor belt and a series of older women tucking in the slips of paper with the fortunes and folding and stacking the cookies. Fascinating and the whole place smelled delicious.

This evening we got our four hour notice for our next destination: Hong Kong.  We leave at 1:25AM and will actually lose Easter as we cross the date line, skip Sunday, and arrive in Hong Kong on Monday morning.  Here we go ... the world awaits.

GE 2017: If repetition creates a master ….

If repetition creates a master ….then Rainey and I are officially MASTERS of around-the-world scavenger hunts.  Today starts our TENTH time on the Great Escape trip.  We have taken these three weeks off our life - each year for the past decade - and had adventures, solved riddles and decoded puzzles in more than 50 countries. We have dragged along with us, over the years, our children, siblings, nieces, parents and close friends.  Best memories ever.  We can’t wait for the 2017 event to begin…

For new readers, here is a brief overview about this incredible event:

•       The Great Escape global scavenger hunt is a travel competition. There are ten teams: each team has two people.  We will go west – around the world – starting in San Francisco and ending up, 23 days later, in New York City.  But, and this is the fun part, the event is a “blind date with the world” so we do not know what countries we will visit.  We find out the next country only four hours before we move on. 
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•       When we land in a new country, the Great Escape organizers (Bill and Pamela) will open that leg of the event and give each team a long list of possible scavenges for that leg .  With the time allocated, you can usually only complete a fraction of the list.  So the strategy is in what scavenges each team selects to complete. The more you do, the more points you make.  And each challenge has different assigned points.  So do you do a series of lower point scavenges in a morning or try for one big value - but also harder and longer to accomplish - scavenge? 
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•          The team that wins the entire event will be crowned “The World’s Greatest Travelers” and get to repeat the entire trip next year: for free!!

Today we met in San Francisco for an orientation event with Bill and Pamela.  Introductions and an explanation of the rules.  Then a lovely Bon Voyage party. The organizer's son (Lucca) will also be on the trip with us.  And their daughter goes to college at UC Berkeley so she joined us for dinner. Pamela turned FIFTY today so there was extra cause for celebrations.  

The event will start this year with a day of exploring in San Francisco.  We start at 8:30AM tomorrow so I'm off to bed.

But first .... Meet the intrepid adventurers in this year’s competition.  As you will see, the event is totally addictive.  People fall in love with the experience and come back year after year.  

The Traveling Bohemians: A Father / daughter team

One of my dearest friends, Marnie Cervenka, was supposed to be on the trip with her youngest daughter, Catherine.  Marnie did Great Escapes a few years ago with her older daughter and had a blast. But this year was not to be.  A cancer diagnosis and treatment at MD Anderson side-lined Marnie, who beat back cancer over the last 3 months with incredible grace and grit.  Instead her husband Greg stepped up. Greg and Catherine did half of the Great Escape trip a few years ago and are back this time for a full 3 weeks. 

Nola Second Line:  Betty and Jim

Betty and Jim hail from New Orleans.  They have done the trip now three years in a  row: at their own pace.  They jealously protect their LAST place position in the rankings each year. 

Slo Folks: Tom and Paula

Another repeat team, Tom and Paula were on the trip last year and we so enjoyed scavenging with them on the Kenya leg (think hot air balloon ride over the Serengetti at dawn).  They are from San Luis Obispo, California and my money is on the Slo Folks coming in strong in 2017. Great competitors with adventurer soul and great gear.

Team Ying:  A second father / daughter team

A million years ago, when Alan Ying was a pre-med college student at Rice, he worked for my fledgling law firm.  Then he went off to study medicine and create apps for doctors and conquer the world.  So it is extra special to have him and his daughter on the trip. Sydney is a freshman at the same high school as my youngest son, Jordan, in Houston, Texas.

Yolo Go Now:  Mark and Lily

This team came all the way from Shanghai to compete.  If we go to China, they will have a clear advantage.

Thunder Snow:  Jenny and Mark

Now this is an interesting concept:  these two never met each other before today.  And they are about to go around the world together!!  Apparently Jenny wanted to do the event and needed a partner.  Some mutual friends suggested that Mark might be up to it.  And off they go ... taking a stranger to strange lands.

Flying Snitches: Avni and Rochi

A girl power team from Phoenix, Arizona

Long Gone:  Jeff and Ella

Another repeat competitor, Jeff came on the event several years ago as a "single" and got randomly matched up with another stranger by the organizers.  Now he's back with his girlfriend.... all the way from New Zealand.

TSA Precheck Yourself:  Mike and Gilly

From Los Angeles, this couple are on a year sabbatical from life and decided to do something crazy while they had the free time.  Why not see the world in a whole new way?

GE 2016: So Long, Farewell... End of 2016 Great Escape

We arrived in Washington DC on Friday night for the last leg of this event.  A simple Par 1 (after the very difficult Par 6 of Europe) ... which means we had from 7:00AM until 4:00PM to do a series of challenges in the nation's capital and then a final check-in.  Since Rainey and I have seen the monuments and landmarks several times, we decided to do the unusual scavenges (i.e. the ones that involved new stuff). Just a few examples:

- Photograph the 75 steps where the priest falls to his death in The Exorcist.

- Have a drink at Martin's Tavern and explain its fame: In the heart of Georgetown, this old pub is where John F. Kennedy proposed to Jackie O.

- On Embassy Row, find three embassies for countries we visited on this trip.  In Washington, all of the embassies are concentrated in one general area. Since it was "Open Embassy Day," many of them were open to the public and playing music from their country, handing out samples of local food, giving trinkets, etc. The whole area was packed and full of excitement.

This is the Mexican embassy, the country where we started this event 23 days ago.

-Protest outside of the White House:  We joined a rowdy protest for release of the redacted 28 pages of the 9/11 report (supposedly the pages that directly implicate the Saudi royal family in the attack).  Not the cause closest to my heart, but why not?  Transparency is always preferable to secrecy.

And then the saddest part of every year ... the final check-in which marks the END of that year's event.  This means it's 365 days from the next Great Escape event.  So awful to say goodbye to everyone and close out this year.

But the Littlepage Booth teams ROCKED the 2016 event and came in first, second, third and fifth (Chloe and Chris - even though they missed the last week of the event).  So proud of us all. Getting a medal in this event involves a lot of hard work, long hours, late nights, dawn excursions and 14+ mile days of walking (per my fit bit). But our teams did it.

Medal ceremony:  First place - Lawyers Without Borders

Second Place:  Two Traveling Texans (T3)

Third Place: Soca Warriors (minus one warrior)

Heading home now.  So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu ... until next year.

GE 2016: Blasting Through Baltic Europe

Finally back on internet and with 5 seconds to spare.  We have been on the road for 5 days straight now... hitting 4 new countries for me along the way (Woohoo). Bill dropped us in Warsaw, Poland and we had to travel through Lithuania (Vilnius), Latvia (Ryga) and Estonia (Tallinn) and end up in Finland (Helsinki).  It has been a wild ride. Everything I brought with me is filthy and smelly and, when I open my suitcase, there is an odor like a sewage pit.  I have cursed every extra bra and pair of socks in my suitcase as I've lugged it through the countries (although Booth has helped out quite a bit).  But we had some truly WOW moments.  Who knew that these old Soviet bloc countries are so nice?

We traveled with Savannah and Bop as well as Wendy and Georgia for this leg but we split up during the days - when we got to the various cities - so people could chose the scavenges they most wanted to do in each place. But we did get to spend some time with everyone, especially eating together.

Rainey and I have been running hard and have completed over 125 scavenges so I am only going to hit the true highlights:

WARSAW, POLAND
We landed in Warsaw and got to spend almost a full day there before we headed out on an overnight bus to Lithuania

- Get close to the heart of Chopin
Believe it or not, Chopin decreed that when he died his heart should be cut from his body and returned to his homeland of Poland.  So his heart was removed and stuffed into a wall in a church in Warsaw. You can't make this stuff up.

- Find the narrowest house in the world
It is called the Keret House and it is probably 6 feet wide and looks like an AC vent... not a house.  We walked by it 2 or 3 times before we figured out we had found it.

- Visit the statue of the child soldier
Very cute statute dedicated to the youths who helped during the Polish Uprising in 1944 by relaying messages, starting fires etc.

- The Invisible Experience
Although it was not in the scavenge book, this place seemed too interesting to miss... so we signed up for an hour long experience simulating being blind.  We were led into 5 separate pitch black rooms where we had to negotiate, walk through and describe an apartment, a city street, a jungle, coffee shop and an art museum. The art was all sculptures that we had to identify through touch alone:  Atlas with the world on his shoulders, replica of Michelangelo's David, a seated buddha... you get the picture. Really gives you a new perspective of how incredibly difficult it is to be blind.  Our guide was blind and freely answered questions about his own trials and tribulations. This event got an easy A+.

VILNIUS, LITHUANIA
We arrived in Vilnius at 6:30AM after a long, hard night on a bus. The bonus scavenge for this day was to sleep in an AirBnB place and, after many false starts, I found a place that could hold all six of us near to the main city center. I've never used AirBnB before so I probably missed the part of the listing where it told me that we would be sharing the house with the owner (an older man who did not speak a word of English and who we promptly nicknamed "Daddy") and that there were no actual beds in the house, only couches.  Daddy met us the front door at 7AM with wild hair and fuzzy slippers, freshly awakened.  He has clearly not cleaned the one and only bathroom in several years.  The whole house smelled of moth balls and damp.  It was extremely "modest" accommodations ... to say the least... but it did provide a flat surface for all 6 of us to sleep and it was in a good location. Plus we laughed ourselves silly about where we found ourselves (at Daddy's in Vilnius... no place we ever expected to be).

Rainey and my bed ... a fold-down couch with no sheets and only a musty blanket.

- Climb to the Three Crosses
You could see the crosses on the hill overlooking town.  So hike uphill we did... in the rain

Note to self.  The people in Lithuania are INCREDIBLY unpleasant.  They seem to get true enjoyment from being as rude and unhelpful as possible.  So while the town of Vilnuis was nice, I am fairly sure this is the one and only time I ever need to be in Lithuania. I have no idea what caused the bees in their bonnets, or if they only hate Americans, but the country has a permanent scowl.

RYGA, LATVIA
After sleeping at Daddy's,we took a bus early the next day to Ryga and spend five hours racing around the town before heading on to Estonia. It was Independence Day in Ryga so the town was celebrating with parades and speeches and lots of activities.  Great energy.

- Rent a bike to do scavenges
This is my favorite scavenge as having bikes makes everything closer and quicker. Rainey and I found a place to rent bicycles pretty close to the bus station, the weather was sunny and cool and the day in Ryga turned out really fun.

-What was Central Market originally?  Assemble a travel picnic.
This market is in an old Zeppelin hangar (how cool is that?).

TALLINN, ESTONIA
We arrived in Tallinn late on Wednesday night .. via an evening bus from Ryga.  We got a hotel on the edge of the Old Town and woke up this morning to find that Tallinn is surprisingly nice.  It's an old walled city with towers every half mile or so... and they have maintained most of the ancient walls and cobbled streets.  Very quaint and some great architecture.

-Visit the Continent's oldest continuously running pharmacy.
It is in the town square and it's been open since 1422 (Yikes).

- Visit Alexander Nevsky Cathedral
I've just about had enough of temples, cathedrals and churches... but this one was a particular beauty.

- Locate a secret building that says, "There is nothing here."
Turns out that a section of a hotel in town was used by the KGB for interrogations (a/k/a tortures) and surveillance.  The door leading to that area has a sign on it denouncing that anything exists beyond the door (in Russian and Estonian).

- Take a dip in the Baltic
Since I am the designated eat-all-of-the-gross food scavenger, Rainey has to do the awful swim-in-cold-water challenges.  And he got flat down and neck dip in the freezing Baltic this morning.  What a good team mate he is.

We took an afternoon ferry from Ryga to Helsinki.  Check-in for this leg is at 11:30AM tomorrow so we're going to get up early again and try to see some of Helsinki.  The trip is almost over, which SUCKS.  In fact, Savannah leaves us at 6AM tomorrow morning to fly home.  She is skipping the last leg in Washington, DC.  When we met everyone for dinner tonight the mood was pretty somber.  "Ending" is always so much less fun than "starting."  But it has been a great Europe leg.

Sadly, the one consistent conversation theme that we've encountered on this trip, is people asking us whether all Americans are crazy since the US has nominated Donald Trump as a presidential candidate.  In fact, a repeated question was:  "This is a joke, right?" Frankly I may starting claiming to be from Canada, just to avoid the hot embarrassment.