Daily Archive

Shortly after finishing the Idiotarod, we shot this video recap during which I was mildly incoherent. I suppose that’s to be expected after pushing a cart 3 miles in the midday sun with occasional stops to plant trees, all while similar likeminded folks ran past squirting water guns, flinging bags of flour in my face, and decorating my head with shaving cream.

In all the madness, I forgot to mention a few important facts. Here they are.

Weirdest thing somebody said to us: “I’m not trying to rape you, I’m just trying to pull down your pants.” This came from a shaving-cream-shooting opponent as she shot Barbasol down the back of Lauri’s pants. Perhaps this should be outlawed next year. Then again, this is Asheville. And the girl did say she wasn’t trying to rape her, so maybe we should give her some credit. Plus, it was a girl!

Apparently, there is a line we don’t cross when picking up trash: For Lauri, it was a condom wrapper. Gross.

Coolest thing that happened during the race: Since we were in last place and because this race takes place on the city streets of Asheville, we had a personal police escort for the last mile of the race. As we trudged along the neighborhood streets, one resident sprayed us with her hose and her boyfriend offered me a beer. I quickly shook his hand, accepted the beer, and we were off. I cracked open the beer and started chugging. After downing half of the New Belgium Ranger IPA, I soaked in the moment. I was pushing a shopping cart made to look like a ping pong table. I was completely covered in sweat, flour, shaving cream, and dirt. I was wearing striped tube socks. I was drinking a beer. And all along, I had a personal police escort.

Richard was right: When I talked to race founder and organizer Richard Handy a few days ago, he told me that this race would be the most fun I’d have while giving back. I’m willing to buy that. Even though we officially crossed the finish line without two of our team members (although they weren’t too far behind, and did finish, just not with the cart), and even though one of them suffered a freak injury, I did have a great time. We planted a ton of trees (ok, it was more like 15, but as hard as the ground was, it felt like a ton, and I’ve got the blisters to prove it). We helped beautify the grounds of a church. And we donated 51 cans to a local food bank.

And after the race was finished, we even got in a game of beer pong.

That’s all for now. A four-hour drive home is staring us in the face. Thanks for checking in on the updates.

We may not have finished in first place, but we did pick up the most trash along the way… therefore, we are the winners of the Oscar The Grouch award. In other words, I now have a gift card worth $25 to an Asheville establishment called JK’s Kitchen.
And this is just in, Lauri just won a made-up-on-the-spot award called the Slyvester Stallone award for refusing to accept a ride back to the finish line after the cinderblock bombers sprained her ankle.

In last place, but I think we may have won some prizes! Stay tuned…

An opposing team nearly rendered Lauri’s ankle useless with an unsuspecting cinderblock bomb. With no chance of winning it all, we’re trying to win the award for most trees planted. Oh, someone else sprayed shaving cream down her pants. Yikes.
Back to digging!

And we’re nearly off.

Carie is getting loads better at ping pong. Too bad real ping pong tables are three times bigger than this one.

We’re here at the start of the race and I think most people confused this with the Nakedarod. Mainly the guys. This scares me.

Faithful blog readers, I proudly present our cart for the Asheville Idiotarod: idiotapong.

Chosen partially because we think it’s somewhat original (at least, my Google searches say so), our ping pong/table tennis idiotarod theme allows us to dress like, well, idiots. Also, if the race is lame, we can stop and play beer pong. I’m not sure this will warrant a prize, but I’m quite proud of our team effort.

I painted the board. Lauri scoured three counties worth of grocery stores to find just the right style of shopping cart (Thanks to Go Grocery Outlet, by the way, for lending us the cart. And in case you were wondering, yes, we asked for the cart and they agreed to let us borrow it.) And John lent his engineering expertise to make a perfect union between board and cart.

Now, all that’s left to do is meet the rest of the team. Two of Lauri’s friends will be joining Carie and myself to round out our five-person team. With any luck, they’ll be better ping pong players than Carie. I can’t actually prove this, but I think last night was the first time she’s ever held a ping pong paddle.

Check back throughout the day, as I’m hoping to post updates during the race. Assuming that I’m not too busy playing beer pong.