Fort Worth Urban Dare recap

Andy and I competed in the Fort Worth Urban Dare on Saturday. The tickets were a gift from my mom for our birthdays.

Urban Dares are Amazing Race-style scavenger hunts where you are given clues and then race around the city taking photos at certain places or complete dares at various points.

We checked in at The Ginger Man Pub where we got our t-shirts and at noon, all teams were given clue sheets. You’re allowed to run, walk, take buses or subways to the checkpoints. Teams are encouraged to call people for help, use Internet on phones, etc., to solve the clues.

Our clue sheet looked like this.

And the rules:

We gave ourselves 15 minutes to figure out the clues and then plot them on a map. The pub had free, open wifi so I set out to Google clues and write down the answers. Andy made phone calls to help with other clues.

My way was working better so Andy started plotting the points I’d found on the map so we could come up with the route we wanted to take. At just over 15 minutes, we basically had everything in place.

We set out to the first clue which happened to be the first on the list. Incidently, I thought I recognized this airplane but a Google Image search for “airplane top of building fort worth” showed us a picture and we were able to jot down an address to confirm.

#1 Our pic with the plane in the background.

#2 Our next stop was for the clue “Get your picture with a statue of a high desert princess” which was at the National Cowgirl Museum.

#3 The next stop for us was for the clue “Get your picture with the statue Woman addressing the Public” which is at the Kimball Art Museum. On the way, we spotted some guys playing football in a field and tried to see if they’d do the 6 person pyramid but they’d already been asked so we were on our way to the statue.

While there, another team had asked a group of 6 to do a pyramid so we snapped a pic too. Completing this bonus helped shave 5 minutes off of our time.

#4 We were on our way to a stop when we happened to see the dare with the clue “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. When your billboard gets blown down, take the poles and turn them into art. Go there for your wheelbarrow dare.”

We had to do a wheelbarrow walk around some markers. I held Andy’s feet and he crawled around the markers. He ended up army crawling at the end but we made it. I didn’t get a pic here since we were both participating in the wheelbarrow dare but I took this shot from another racer’s blog.

We had incorrect information on that stop so we were lucky to have noticed it en route to another stop.

#5 Next stop was at the north end of Trinity Park for the clue “Go to the memorial for fallen firefighters and police for your spellbound dare.”

A pic of Andy at the park:

Our assignment was to search for letters in the park that matched the word on our Urban Dare passport card. We were to write down the numeric values of the letters, add them all up and check in with the worker to get our passport stamped.

Here’s our passport:

So our word was “environmental” and we set out looking for every letter in the big field. The letters were on small signs like this one (taken from another racer’s blog).

We got hung up here on the letter V and probably spent an extra 15 minutes searching for that letter alone. Frustrating.

#6 Our next stop was for the “get your picture with a mural of a giant zipper” clue which was quite a ways away at 1111 Monroe Street.

#7 Nearby was our next stop for the clue “Alfred Hayne was the hero of the Spring Palace fire. Go to his memorial to take a picture.”

We weren’t too far from our next stop which was the Fort Worth Water Gardens. The clue was “go to the Active Water Pool and get your picture at the bottom.”

Before we went into the pool area, we decided to do one of the photo challenges “get your picture kneeling down to propose to someone not in the race.”

So I proposed to this man. He said it was his first.

#8 And this is the part where Shannon nearly had a panic attack. I’ve been to the bottom of this Active Water Pool and it was scary enough and then some people a couple of years ago died from falling off the steps into the whirlpool. I was freaking on the way down.

We were walking toward our next stop and asked a kid to do a cartwheel for our dare that said “get a picture of a non-racer doing a cartwheel.” This kid was fast so Andy just got him at the very end.

#9 Next stop for us (should have been a different one than this but it wasn’t), the Tarrant County Courthouse for the clue “get your picture with a fountain built by the women’s humane association” which is the horse fountain.

#10 Then we realize that we have just one stop left but aren’t sure where to go. A call to Kam clarifies this for us and we have to backtrack where we just walked from to do this clue near the convention center – “Go to the Aviation Wall of Honor for your bubble dare.”

Once we finally got there, the challenge was to get a piece of bubble gum out of a pile of whip cream without using your hands and then blow a bubble. I chose to do this dare.

Then we needed to head back about 3 miles to our final spot. We had no idea how or when the buses operated so we walked and ran the last 3 miles back. This part was HARD. We’d already been walking and running for 2 hours so going another 3 miles just seemed impossible. Both of our shins hurt, our leg muscles hurt, our backs, everything. We should have known more about the buses and we would have shaved 30 minutes off easily.

Total distance walked/run: 8 miles. On two very out-of-shape people. Wow. We were tired. We had a lot of fun in the process though.

Here’s the map of the route.

Here’s the Google Map with the points marked.

Things we’ll do if we run another Urban Dare:

• Assuming wifi is available again, I will just research the clues myself online. I’m very fast with Google searching and found most of the clues on my own. Having two wifi capable devices would make it even quicker.
• On the word challenge (#5), we stuck together at first to look for the letters. We should have split up right away and searched for letters independently.
• We should have known how/when to catch a bus. We’ll research public transportation next time.
• Maybe most importantly, we’ll be in shape next time. We ended up walking most of this course with bursts of running but a year ago, we could have run the whole thing. That would have made it much quicker.

Overall, we had a great time and look forward to trying again maybe in Dallas on May 1. Now, off to work on that “be in shape next time” thing….

Related posts:

1. Attempts at pics of the Fort Worth skyline
2. Fort Worth vs. Wichita
3. Fort Worth Museum w/Casey and the boys
4. 8 miles, interrupted
5. Scavenger Hunt

Tagged as: andy and shannon, exercise, fort worth