Just Another Weekend

• Posted on Dan
• in San Francisco
• on June 23, 2009
• 7 Comments.

We honestly don’t even know where to begin this story. I could easily blame our recent commitment to go to more local events. I know KK will blame me for getting her out of bed at 6:30 in the morning (a brave undertaking in itself). Regardless, we entered a treasure hunt of sorts… and… well… we sorta won. (cough) We sorta won a diamond. (Double cough) We sorta won one of those diamond things placed on top of a ring in a certain way like some people are known to do with such diamond things. (Triple cough)

The motivation to do this actually comes from one of the blogs we read (DC365) who introduced us to Urban Dare. It’s a scavenger hunt game that tours major cities throughout the year where teams race to answer trivia clues which send you to yet more clues all across the city. Well, we were really excited to try it this year in SF and we missed it! But, as you might know, we’re getting pretty good at being SF tour guides and our urban hiking has filled us with plenty of random knowledge. SO, we really wanted to test our city trivia! I repeat, we REALLY just wanted to test our knowledge of the city. Fortunately, a free scavenger hunt just happened to arise this weekend. Who cares if the prize is a diamond ring, we’re never going to actually win.

So, Saturday, we had to wake up so early because the starting point was way far away from where we live and you know us with the no car thing. There must have been 200 teams there, almost ALL with bikes. I swore we had stumbled on a biking club. I was wrong. We sort of missed the boat on the bike idea, so we pretty much immediately felt out of the running to win.

To fill the time and make up for our inadequacy, we decided to mock people. There was plenty of material. There were people stretching and warming up, other teams are all in workout gear with camelbaks on, and one team even had professionally made team t-shirts (the front: Got Diamond? the back: Team Bling). Two of organizers of the event (from the diamond company, who I nicknamed Sleazy 1 and Sleazy 2) were the kind of guys you’d avoid at a bar. They were a little too arrogant, a little too much hair product, etc. They let us know that you can’t use any public transportation. Good thing we were depending on that. Cool. (KK: I honestly was ready to go home at this point. I was pissed that we had gotten up, hauled ourselves across the city, and couldn’t hop on a bus or anything, even though the website had said we could use public transport)

All the clues were delivered over text message. You replied with the correct answer to get your next clue. We missed our first question. Cool. Googling answers and calling Franklin (thanks!) to look up SF photos just wasn’t working out. We pretty much gave up on the game and resigned ourselves to just seeing how we would do at a slow pace. Turns out, we did pretty well. The last clue required some word jumbling and code deciphering, which we actually do for fun. Next thing I know, I’m the only one running to the final location – which happened to be the Wave Organ, which we had just visited in our city walk a couple of weeks ago. That walk actually was super helpful.

I was pretty much the first one to the end and KK was perhaps the first to text in the final answer, and I was there, searching and searching as the Sleazies arrived and kept asking where KK was (I had run ahead). They started taking pictures of me, and there was a video guy and they just kept asking where KK was. I called and told her to run, especially after Sleazy 1 mentioned that “She’ll probably find it when she gets here….” (KK: Dan left ALL of our stuff with me when he took off running, water, backpack, etc. It took me awhile to run bogged down with our stuff, ok?!) They waited and waited and waited until KK showed up to (1) blatantly put down the ring that was never hidden in the first place, and (2) tell me where they had just dropped it. All of this in front of another team who had shown up. Awkward.

They had also already asked me “Hey, what are you going to do with that ring once you get it?” Double awkward. And then when KK got there and I “found” the ring, and Sleazy 2 actually began to whisper “Do it” under his breath. Wow. It was the ultimate moment in awkward. So in a gorgeous location, but under scrutiny of sleaziness, cameras in our face, and a circle of onlookers (tourists, other teams, etc) … we whispered in each other’s ears that we’d put on a fake show… and I got down on one knee. (KK: I said NO! jk) Afterwards, the organizers chauffeured us to the after party in the trunk of their SUV. Literally, in the trunk. It was all very romantic.

Let’s just be clear. We’re not engaged. It’ll happen one of these days, on our terms, in our way. Until then, we have a funny story to tell and you all have to settle for fake engagement photos.

Some friendly competition.

The view from the start.

One of those diamond things.