Utah Valley's Amazing Race---1st Stage

To conclude our May updates, we ended the month participating in the 1st Utah Valley Amazing Race (held May 30-31). We participated with another couple, the Bronson family, and traveled from Alpine to Mona for 24 hours doing a variety of different events. The winning team won a trip to Cancun, Mexico. To forewarn you, this blog and the next might be long; however, I wanted to give a run down of everything we did and how it went.

It began around 4:00pm on Friday, May 30th, where our team met up at the Scera Shell Outdoor Theater to check in. Our team was called "The Glover Gang". During the check-in process we received T-shirts (to be worn throughout the event), a hat (from one of the sponsors), and an Amber Alert GPS system. The GPS system would be placed in our car and track how fast we were going throughout the race. I was designated the driver because of the least likely to speed, I guess.

Anyways, on to the actual race. Right before 5 o'clock four different people took everyone's clues and went and hide in the University Mall Food Court. When 5 o'clock hit, we raced to the mall in hunt for our clue master. Our clue master was hidden in the corner of the Food Court, but we found him fairly quickly. We decided from there to figure out all the clues on where we need to go and then actually go. Here is how the 1st stage of the race went (from 5:00pm-2:00am) and what we ended up doing at each clue location.

(1) Seven Peaks (Provo)- All four participants went down the 100' Free Fall slide

(2) Lindon's Utah Auto Sales - Drove a car to the Purple Turtle and Discovery Park and had someone take a picture of us in these locations

(3) Bajio (American Fork) - Ate a shrimp taco with beans/rice (as fast as possible)

(4) Hutchings Museum (Lehi) - Solved a bunch of clues found on the display cases with black lights and then talked with some weaponry men who gave us a dead cricket to eat

(5) Parade of Homes (Alpine) - Toured a newly built Parade of Homes and hunted for clue sheets hidden throughout the house

(6) The Music School (American Fork) - Each participant played a different instrument (Chris-guitar, Megan-piano, Erin - bongo, and Ryan - drums) and we played "Smoke on the Water"

(7) Cold Stone (in Spanish Fork) - We had to down a quart size ice container of Cake Batter w/ Chocolate Cookie Dough (the girls could handle this flavor a lot better than the guys)

(8) Bowling in Payson - We had to get a total of 360 points before leaving---luckily, it only took us one complete game

(9) Orem Owlz Stadium - Had to find a point card in the dark baseball stadium at UVU.
Unfortunately we didn't do this during the day when you could see better; however, we found 50 points (the lowest card of three) and took

(10) Trafalga (Orem) - had to win a certain number of arcade tickets with minimal amounts of tokens; Erin won us enough on the first try so we gave the rest to some kids and hurried to the next event

(11) Sundance (up the Canyon) - Erin rode up to the amphitheatre on a bike while the rest of us ran the trail where we ended up writing a limerick about the event

(12) Noah's Center (Pleasant Grove) - Played at this Rec Center wallyball against the volunteer helpers. We had to score 21 points before leaving

(13) BYU - We had to start at the WILK and then go run to the Bell Tower by the Marriott Center and the Maeser Building and take a picture of our group at each (the actual event was to ride tandem bikes to these two places and take a picture but they didn't have enough bikes for everyone)

(14) Finally, we went to downtown Provo and looked at the statues on Center Street to
decipher a word

We ended up finishing around 1:30 and headed back to the SCERA Shell to check in. It was quite an exhausting day; however, we only ended up giving up 100 points possible (50 points from the Orem Owlz Center for not finding another card in the dark and 50 points for not being able to play a game of pool at the Noah's Center). This put us tied with seven other people for 3rd. So, after the 1st leg of the race we were in the top ten of 31 teams. It was off to sleep in the car, or attempt to sleep in the car, for a few hours before arising for the next leg of the race. I'll post about that either later today or tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Belated Mother's Day Blog

Erin and I are trying to catch up with all the major events that happened during the month of May, and of course, I forgot to blog about our Mother's Day. So, here is a little bit of what happened Mother's Day Weekend.

My mom and her sister decided to come out to Utah and celebrate Mother's Day with their mom, or my grandma. As I guess tradition would have it, we all decided to sign up and run Race for the Cure in SLC (we ran this 5k last year for Mother's Day).

Here is how the race went. As a surprise to my mom, my older brother, Jason, flew out and ran in the race for Mother's Day as well. Jason, Erin and I had a little competition to see who could lower their time (by %) from last year the most. The competitive spirit was high, but Erin prevailed by beating out Jason by less than a second and killing me. We want to congratulate both of them for doing incredible. Jason was the first to finish for the family and Erin cut the most off her time. I guess my accomplishment would be running the whole race and not throwing up at the end (unlike last year). The winner (Erin) won a Jamba Juice from the loser (Ryan), which is overdue.

Anyways, back to my Mother's Day themed blog. It was great to have my mom out here for Mother's Day. We had a fun time celebrating at my grandma's house and enjoyed her company while during her short stay. By the way, we also got to taste some amazing Tucanos while she was out here. Very good!!!

As a conclusion to this entry, Erin and I wanted to send a tribute to both of our moms. We appreciate your dedication and righteous examples you set in raising both of us to who we are today. We love you both a lot and thank you for everything you have done and continue to do for us.

We love you Mom Dixon and Mom Glover!!!