Expose yourself to Type B Fun

It took us months, but Fudge Christine and I have finally made good on the fiasco we created last December. Oh yes.
She invited me to be her teammate for this "race" (read: snipe hunt) that helps raise funds for Portland Public Schools. And everyone knows they need all the help they can get. The race was reputed to be some sort of scavenger hunt/clue following debacle--fun. Anyway, there are a limited number of entries available for this event, and they have to be won at public school auctions. The upshot of this system is we were pretty certain we would not be pitted against decathlon Trivial Pursuit champions. We were right. When we arrived at the race start location in SE Portland and sized up the competition, they were all pretty regular looking folks. We avoided making eye contact with them and digested the hearty breakfast we had just eaten at Zell's. We had disliked our waiter very much, and that was satisfying.
We were given a list with clues leading us to 12 locations. At each location we would have to complete some sort of challenge. We were also given a list of 12 items that needed completion or collection as part of a scavenger hunt. These items were wholly unrelated to the 12 locations. We had four hours to finish, and we were not to take any form of "private" transportation--we could only hoof it or take the bus. The 12 locations were all around town. We were encouraged to use technology to help us complete the race. We were also encouraged to seek help from non-racing entities.
Now, the sad thing about this for us was that VBM was off riding his bike somewhere instead of waiting by the phone for me to call him. And Fudge Christine's SO has a broken arm and is a one-armer, PLUS at Fudge Christine's house, all they have is dial-up because Fudge Christine spent all her money on a gigantic super-fast laptop. So even if the One Armer was up for fast online searching, all he had was dial-up, you know what I mean? We had two clues that absolutely needed outside help: one was on craigslist and the other was just some map coordinates. I quickly got my mother un-law on the horn and she handily set us up with the craigslist clue. She was also spot-on at least one other time to clarify the location of some sort of landmark. I may have called her a few more times, but I'm a little foggy about that. Fudge Christine put a call into Alaska for the GPS coordinates and we were on our way. The first thing that happened was we got stuck on a bus on the Hawthorne bridge when the bridge went up. We had a woman draw a picture of us and got a coin minted in the year 2000 (both on our scavenger hunt list) and ran off the bus in search of our first location. On the way there we had zero luck with getting another bus, so, we ran all the way down there.
Fudge Christine then had to drink a cup of green colored Russian tarragon soda to get us checked off on that location. She guzzled and we were off.
Now I will just mention that it was really pissing me off that about 74643537 Chinese restaurants have OPEN signs and are not open and are therefore not giving me any fortune cookies for my list.
We had to beg for 3$ in Pioneer square. Not. Cool. We tried to appeal to this one kid's sympathies who was unlocking his bike. He whined about how he was a student and had a flat tire or some shit and finally gave us a goddamned nickel. If I didn't want to get out of there so badly I might have punched him in the back of the head, but we needed 3$ fast. Fudge Christine got a bead on some women with Nordstrom bags and we explained our predicament. One of them gave us the three bucks outright and we scrammed. After that we got snubbed by a snotty little retail girl at Dosha Spa/Aveda Store when I asked her for a perfume sample. I also wanted to throttle her, and I was getting ready to, but Fudge Christine was already running down the street, so I had to go. I should not have had coffee. That is all I can say about my urges to kill.
Fudge Christine is an unusual person. We have been friends for 6 years now, so I feel safe saying that. She is s-m-r-t and she knows her way around downtown Portland I'll tell you what.
Still, if she won the lottery, she'd call you up and say, "Hey." And then there would be a silence.
And then she'd say, "I won the lottery." But she wouldn't get very excited about it, even if she was almost peeing her pants. During this race, she was really quiet most of the time and she was dead serious. I wasn't sure if she really just wanted to win, or if she was just being plain old Fudge Christine.
Right now, as I am writing this, a real-life honest to goodness thunderstorm is going on! Rare in Portland. I will have to be careful and watch out for the First Alert Storm Team as they will be all over this. Oh! Hail!
Sorry.
We had to get our pictures taken, play video games, answer Union Station trivia, learn an Irish jig (that one really pissed me off, actually. I was hungry by then and I felt like the race ambassador wanted too much of us for the challenge. Also we had to wait at the location for her to show up. Not. Cool.) We played badmitton with a superball that looked like an eyeball. We said "green eggs and ham" to a stranger with a dog. We did the funky chicken in the plaza at the rose quarter. We went into 5 different bars looking for a certain kind of coaster. We ran our asses off all over town. (Portlanders: at the end, we ran from the Rose Quarter to 14th and Division, no shit! At the end. This does not include all the OTHER running we did.) We got a business card from a tattoo parlor with the words "nautical" and "star" written on the back. We got close to completing everything, but in the end, we failed.
Still, we got third place.
So we went out and had a beer.
This event was Type B fun. Type A fun is the kind of fun, according to VBM, which is fun while you are doing it and after you have done it, when you tell the stories and savor the memories. Eating cake is definitely Type A fun. Type B fun is that kind of fun which is really not that great while you are doing it, but after the fact, you are really glad you did it. Like rafting the Grand Canyon, which was really a mix of Types A and B. Or going to college. Type B all the way.
Fudge Christine really didn't need me along. She had all the clues figured out. She knew all the landmarks to find. I didn't even have any snacks to give her, because she brought the snacks. Which included starburst, by the way, which I have not had since about 7th grade. Man, they were good. Especially the orange ones. I love those. She also did all the crappy stuff on the challenges, like playing Galaga to 30,000 points or 15 minutes, whichever takes longer.
Even though she didn't need me, I was glad she took me with her.
Fudge Christine, you rock.