4-21 ARE Challenge day one

12:45 can’t come soon enough – when the appointed time finally arrives, we rip open our clue, figure out the riddle and head to – of course – the pool!  (Andrew has warned us we might get wet – so we’ve worn our bathing suits just in case!) 

Once at the pool – we get our challenge which is to retrieve 10 letters from the pool – some that are floating, some that are weighted and submerged.  Once we have the letters, we’ll be asked to solve a clue.  Only 2 can participate – so Randy and I do it – Randy in the pool – thank God! – me with the cards.  Once we finally get all our cards (especially the ones from the random Polish woman in the pool who is hiding them from us – she’s not even a participant in the game! Come on!) – I get the clue – who is the godmother of the ship? Oh who the hell knows!  Of course the one thing I have NO FREAKING CLUE about.  I start to put together names – but it’s useless.  Thank heavens Randy remembers that he saw a plaque on the 5^th floor with the name and he runs off to get the name.  In the meantime, I’m just spelling random words – like Pimento – and I want bonus points for that – but Andrew says no.  Sigh….

Finally, after what seems like forever but is only a couple minutes, Randy returns with the name and we call the Marshall over for approval and our next challenge!    Next up is basketball – the one thing Ed says “I hope we don’t have to shoot basketballs”!  Oh well – here we go. We get messed up going the wrong way and some pool attendant tells us wrong (he was probably put up to it by another team!) – but we find the court – then can’t find the Marshalls, but eventually we get it going!  It takes us a while – but we all persevere – 3 shots total by each person from 3 different places around the court.  Poor Prim – she’s had shoulder surgery and isn’t supposed to move her shoulder – not to mention has never held a basketball in her life – but she gives it the old college try and gets her shots pretty quickly!  We finally get everyone to sink their balls – and off we go….to the Croquet court.

Now we each have to get the ball through the wicket.  You’d think it’d be easy – but really – its not!  And it’s raining now – oh well – all part of the race.  We manage to get a rhythm going shooting balls, returning them to the start and setting them up for the next player – and don’t do too badly with the challenge.  Fun!

Now it is on to the Pit Stop – which is right around the corner in the Sunset Bar.  Yay!  We’re the 2^nd to arrive which gives us the advantage to leave 2^nd the next day.  Phew.  39 minutes total for our time.  We’ll see how that goes along the way. What fun!