Adventures

On the Run: Sleuthing Through DC’s GO Urban Adventure Race

Yoda & the E Street Band solve the yoga clue.

Yoda & the E Street Band solve the yoga clue and found Lululemon Georgetown. Courtesy of GO Urban.

Where is Kilroy? Do you know?

We sure didn’t, my intrepid teammate and I, when we embarked on the GO Urban Adventure Race, a nationwide series that launched Saturday in DC. The way it works is that your two-person team receives a series of text messages with clues to 12 GO Points around town. Once you get to the GO Point, you have to text back the answer to the clue. Then you’ll receive another clue. You have to take a picture of your team at each GO Point, and often you have to find something there that’s specific and elusive — such as Kilroy.

Turns out his cartoon face peeps out from behind a golden service gate at the National World War II Memorial, near the Delaware pillar. He’s not prominent, to say the least. When repeated circling of the monument in the hot summer sun hadn’t disclosed his location, I headed to the information booth while Mark began working the Blackberry. Two attendants sat at the booth. When I asked for Kilroy, one all but stroked his chin while answering slowly, “Kilroy is near water, and gold….” The other caught the look I gave him and cut to the chase with actual directions. When I turned from the booth, Mark was already waving me to the right spot. Clue solved.

Thank goodness. At the starting area, I had felt a little intimidated while watching other teams. Several were wearing backpacks bulging with…what? Laptops? GPS devices? Special equipment to tap databases at the CIA? All we had were a two-year-old cell phone, a half-charged Blackberry and our, uh, wits. Continue reading

The Daily Feed

Film to Highlight DC Community Gardens

Photo courtesy of
‘Great Lettuce Harvest of 2009’
courtesy of ‘Wayan Vota’

An area filmmaker is now editing a documentary on seven community gardens in DC — and the people who tend, love, and learn from them.

The film will explore the role of these gardens not only as sources of fresh, nutritious food, but as outdoor classrooms, places of healing, centers of social interaction, and oases of beauty and calm in inner-city neighborhoods.

Already there’s a long and heartwarming trailer that shows all the good that playing in the dirt and growing your own food can bring. You can see it on the newly launched Community of Gardeners Web site.