swingchickie | weekend craziness recap

whoa, what a weekend. 7pm on sunday evening, and i am totally exhausted and hurting (though not as bad as jack)!

where to begin? so, this weekend i was helping B (she of no LJ) with a performance she was running for the philadephia fringe festival... which meant that friday and saturday evenings, and sunday afternoon, i was in the city. saturday afternoon, B and her boyfriend P had invited me and jack to team up with them for a scavenger-hunt-type Fringe event called "afoot"... so at 2pm, jack and i found ourselves slathered in sunscreen and ready to scoot around the city as a foursome.

let me tell you, "afoot" was so. much. freaking. fun. the basic gist was this: the scavenger hunt was timed, and teams left every 15 minutes. our team was given a map of the city, a pile of envelopes, and another envelope containing our first clue. each clue was basically a page-long poem of sorts, that gave us hints as to what path we had to take through the city... once we ended up where we thought we were supposed to, we had to go through the pile of envelopes... each envelope had something written or drawn on the front, and we had to figure out (based on where we were) what envelope held our next clue. to make it super-tough, about half of the envelopes in the pile were fakes. eeeeeee. we were allowed to call in to the Afoot team for help, but after the first call (which was a freebie), each additional call added 7 minutes to our time.

the very first clue killed us. we found our way to Christ Church, but then the poem/clue got really confusing halfway through. it said something about palm trees, roses, birds, dripping jaws of gore... so we figured our next stop was somewhere in the church's garden where we might see some gargoyles or something. after 20 minutes of running around the church like lunatics, we finally made that 1st call for help and were pointed across the street to a mural of trees, roses, a duck, and a jawbone. grrrrrrr!

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then, on to the stack of envelopes to find our next clue...

and through the brick covered walkway (at market and front streets) towards our next destination.

i was especially proud for being able to solve one in particular... it had us in between I-95 and a building under construction, and the poem said something about "does 3 of a kind beat a royal flush?" i searched the construction area, to discover: port-a-potties owned by "a royal flush inc"! hee!

the hunt had us all over philly -- historical sites, the top floor of a parking garage, restaurants, statues...

even (this was AWESOME) to a t-shirt shop, where we had to pick a t-shirt and the owner printed our next clue ON the shirt while we waited!

by the time we were halfway through, we were DYING... we'd scooted several miles already, and it was around 95 degrees out. thank god after a few more stops, some Afoot people were waiting on a street corner, with ice-cold bottles of water for us and a quick snack (foot-shaped cookies... with our next clue under the cookies on the plate!)

another clue led us through a gate into a really secluded ivy-covered courtyard, where we encountered a guy playing a violet viola ("violet viola", it turned out, was on one of our envelopes to open).

anyway... we finished the whole hunt in a little over an hour, which was not the winning time (some group did it in 37 MINUTES, the Afoot people said they literally sprinted the entire thing). we ended up completely red-faced, both from sunburn and physical exertion:

after that, jack and i were dying of thirst and had 4 hours to kill until B's show. so we headed down the street to the continental (non-philly peeps: a swanky martini bar with tapas-style food) and glommed onto their AC for a while. once we'd cooled off and downed gallons of ice water (and had a few noshes), we went back out into the heat and sun to wander around and find other stuff to do. at one point, we passed a tattoo parlour, and jack commented that he was still figuring out his next few tattoos. we walked a few more blocks, and decided to go back to the tattoo place to look at their work and get some ideas (yes, and take advantage of the AC). 30 minutes later, jack had actually found something he loved, and was sitting in a chair getting inked!

i don't have a good shot of the final product... but the flames are red and yellow, and the 13 is blue. it's really cool.

after the tattoo pit stop, we grabbed a super-fast sushi dinner, changed clothes, and went to the theater for B's long-form improv show (which was fantastic). crashed as soon as we came home, from pure exhaustion. woke up this morning, quick cup of coffee and breakfast, and back down to the city for the final show. once the performance started, i cleaned up our stuff backstage and decided to catch a showing of "the king of kong" that was starting shortly right down the street at the ritz. seriously people, what a FUN documentary. it's about 2 guys vying for the world record score in donkey kong, and it has more thrills and intrigue than the average spy movie. AWESOME.

so, now i'm beat. i tried hooping and made it about 20 minutes before i had to bail... too tired and sore after yesterday! looking forward to watching my DVD of "perfume" and hitting the hay EARLY!