Tag Archives: ClownDown

Clowndown: Grifted & Scallywagged.

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Comsmopolitan Warrior was back at Clowndown this year to defend their honor. There was a falling out after last year where our Camera Crew were under the belief that they could have beaten us if they were running the race.  We’ve spent the last 12 months hearing how badly we were going to lose this year against the newly formed team Deutsche Schnitzelhunt.  Clearly they underestimated the effects of my training regiment:

A single 1 Mile run over the course of 12 months.

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We made one tactical mistake but it was early enough in the race for us to recover.  If you check the photos above you will see the seriousness in which team Deutsche Schnitzelhunt took the compitition.  Seriously, look into their eyes.

Now check the fourth picture.  That’s about halfway through they race when the realized that we came to play.  Literally at that moment they knew it was over. They were helpless against our geographical knowledge and our natural athletic ability.

  • Team Cosmopolitan Warrion finished in 8th place (3 spots better than last year).
  • Team Deutsche Schnitzelhunt finished 12th (4 spots worse than if they were our camera crew).

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Side Note:

As mentioned before we made a rather large tactical mistake early on in the race.  We tried to take the Brown Line at Diversy south but the all southbound service was closed.  This led us to take a train north to Belmont where we came across the guy below.  Not sure what was going on but he was complaining about his sweater.

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When he finally got his clothes back on he stood up asked us about the blue line then declared to the entire train the following:

I’ve been grifted and scallywagged.

ClownDown 2008: Team Cosmopolitan Warrior.

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On Saturday Todd and I formed team Cosmopolitan Warrior to compete in the ClownDown 2008.  For those who don’t know ClownDown is a citywide adventure race in Chicago similar to the Amazing Race.  This years race included 42 teams and 13 destinations throughout the city.  Cosmopolitan Warrior fared pretty well considering it was our first year.  We ended up finishing 11th (just missing our top 10 goal) and in under 3.5 hours.  We ended up making 2 tactical mistakes that probably put us out of a top 5 finish:

  1. Missing a stop on the Red Line and ending up at the Clybourn stop.
  2. Heading for the Harold Washington Library instead of the Original Library (ie Cutural Center).

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The highlight for me during ClownDown was after running about 3 blocks we stopped to wait for a bus in Greektown.  While waiting a couple teams ran by us before the bus finally came.  About 3 blocks later we see the teams running up ahead to the next bus stop and Todd told our bus driver not to stop for the other team.  His response was simple:  “If they’re not at stop I’m not stopping”.  Good to his word, our bus just kept rolling as the other team tried to flag down the bus.  It was glorious.

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* A special thanks to our Camera Crew: Josh & Eric.

** I plan on posting a video in the next couple of days from all of our footage; it should be interesting.

*** The rest of the photographs can be found on Flickr.