City Chase '07

The city chase presented by Mitsubishi Motors is a one day Scavenger hunt/obstacle course through the streets of Toronto. It is an urban adventure where teams of two race around the city to find "challenges" hidden around the city. With only a clue sheet, a bus pass, a cellphone (optional) and hopefully a map, you and your teammate must scour the city in the fastest possible time to complete 10 of the 35 available tasks. It is sort of like doing the television show "The Amazing Race" all in one day.


My teammate and I adopted the same strategy that we used in last year's race, we got our clue sheet and headed out to the farthest set of tasks that we were required to do. The difference this year was that we headed to the task with the Quick pass/Fast forward first. This was a card which when used later in the race would put us to the head of the line at any task that we came to. It turned out that we didn't end up using it because of the lack of lineups that we encountered.

The first task was a tug of war against another team with the winner being allowed to leave and the loser having to stay. We lost our first round but won the second and left. Hooray! We then decided to go and do the Mandatory task of selling hugs for donations to the children's wish foundation, My gift of being such an outgoing person really came in handy here.

Other tasks that we had to do were: eating dog food, being chained to 2 fellow chasers while having to carry a 131lb weight, buying bodyglide, playing charades while eating pizza, sucking back licorice with a stranger (Lady and the tramp style'zies), Computer work/cheating off of other chasers with good penmanship, and my favourite: shooting your partner in the butt with a paintball gun.

It was then our mission to get back to the finish line before any of our fellow RiffRaff teams got back. After a quick call to get the status of where the other teams were at, we quickly ran back to the finish line. We came into Metro Square and crossed the finish line with some cheers from other teams that had already finished. Taking a seat on the grass and talking to a couple of other teams about how they did, we then sat and waited for over an hour to see the next RR team come in. The Official finishing order of the other RiffRaff teams:

The RiffRaff: Ken & Jen
The General and the Princess: Amrit & Chuck
Tropical Storm Eduardo: Edgar & Dave
Lime Wedges: Rob & Laureen (way to go rookies!)

This year with over 700 teams taking part, it was really a challenge for the organisers and volunteers to deal with all those involved. Some of the teams that we talked to said that they experienced lineups and long waits at some of the tasks. Overall, I didn't experience any problems and we had no problem following the clues and completing the tasks.

Thank you City Chase for putting on yet another great event.