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When I found out that Team Brick would be able to participate in the second  Great Richmond Region Adventure, a real-life, problem-solving, code-cracking, city-spanning race, I was very excited. I love this sort of stuff. David Fincher’s “The Game” (1997) is one of my favorite movies. I read “The Da Vinci Code” and all of Dan Brown’s subsequent clones. I do the daily jumble, crossword and sudoku. I idolized Encyclopedia Brown and the Bloodhound Gang as a kid. In preparation for the upcoming event, I even made Mauricio and Isabel solve a practice set of clues that I set up around the office.
 
On the day of the race, we gathered on the sunny front lawn of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts with nearly 30 teams. A packet of clues and a map were handed out to each team and Chris Dove, one of Ravenchase’s resident cryptographers, announced that the majority of the race would take place in the museum district, but that the final clue would lead you to a location downtown. We had until 3:00. Ready. Set. Go!

“I don’ t care if we win,” I said as the we began sorting through clues to determine their locations on the map. “I just want to finish.”

“Let’s just have fun!” I repeated as we walked quickly towards the location indicated by the first clue. As employees of one of the sponsors, we were not eligible to win the $2,500 prize money anyway.

We neared Mulberry Street where we needed to find a number near Sir Arnold’s Picket. Was it the date on the monument? Was it the street number of the building near-by? Did we need this pizza menu stuck behind the mailbox? Did that blade of grass mean something?

After  15 excruciating minutes, Mauricio waved us over. “I got it.” he whispered, “There was a phone number taped to the street sign.” We called and got another part of the clue.

Our second and third clues went a little better and we were feeling pretty good about our progress. We hiked to the Arthur Ashe statue and made quick work of the riddle there. We wound through the  displays in the Virginia Historical Museum and came up with the correct name off a cover of TIME magazine.

We got tripped up a bit by the strips of encoded paper we’d recieved at each stop and lost some time in front of the Science Museum trying to piece them together. It was Mauricio to the rescue once again as he solved the code with a golden key included in our tool kit.

We knew we had to be close to the second leg of the adventure when we got our fifth strip of paper and decided to head downtown while we solved it. We jumped in my Blazer and, as we headed east, Mauricio and Isabel read the decoded clue. “It says to go to Monument and Davis!”

“Crap! We’re not supposed to be driving, yet!” I parked my truck a few blocks away and we received yet another clue at the Virginia Center for Architecture. We solved the riddle, broke the code and were handed a copy of the Richmond Times-Dispatch and a couple of temporary parking passes.

“We’re headed to the paper! This is it!” We ran back to the Blazer and piled in. Dwayne deciphered the code in the front seat as we bounced along the cobblestones, his progress hindered by the Blazer’s lack of shocks.

“What’s the time?” I shouted.

“2:40. We’ve got twenty minutes!”

“There were still a lot of teams wandering around the Fan, maybe we’re in the lead?”

Time ticked away as we neared the paper. Any of my noble thoughts of playing “just for fun” were rapidly dissipating. What if we could win!?

There was a van stopped at the corner of  Franklin and 3rd, trying to take a wrong turn on the one-way street. “Where are we going, Dwayne?” I asked. “Should I park?”

“It says to go to the top floor of the RTD parking deck! Go around the block.”

We did and on 4th Street, the van in front of us was pulled up next to another, blocking traffic. The drivers compared notes through the windows. They were part of the race!

They pulled forward and rounded the block to the 3rd street entrance of the parking deck. There is a driveway on either side of the security booth and the vans were blocking the path on the right, presumedly asking the guard about their passes. My brain flared in the heat of the competition and I made a snap decision. I whipped out my work I.D., flashed it at the befuddled guard and sped off into the deck, tires squealing loudly in my wake. (In my defense, the Blazer’s bald tires squeal under the slightest provocation.) Dwayne looked up from his notes in alarm. Mauricio and Isabel howled with laughter from the back seat, “Oh my God! I can’t believe you did that!”

By the time we reached the sixth floor, my adrenalin had worn off and my conscience was starting to get to me. I’d abused my home field advantage to cut in front of other players and didn’t want to win by being a jerk. I slowed down and let the other vans catch up and pass. They rode by laughing and waving. No harm. No foul.

We got our final clue from the agent on the roof and raced down the stairwell to the video screens in the front lobby. We were just settling in to solving the last puzzle when someone called “Time!”

It was 3:00. The chase was over. We were so close to finishing that I wanted to stay, but all the other teams were heading to the Convention Center for the meet and greet and the conclusion of the race. We wandered down to enjoy some light refreshments and met the winning team, the $3 Bills. They’d finished in a mere two hours and thirty six minutes. They won the $2,500 prize money and secured a  $2,500 donation to Maymont. We were sunburnt, tired and brain dead and decided to head back to the parking deck where we encountered an unexpected final challenge.

The security guard was waiting for us at the lowest level of the deck, arms crossed, toe tapping. He waved me over and was rather irate about my enthusiastic entrance. I did not want to risk ticking off the people who let me into the building every day so I accepted my stern talking-to, profusely and sincerely apologized and was released with a warning.

The next day, I received an e-mail from Lisa Duty, the brains behind this particular adventure. Team Brick had the best time of all the sponsor teams. The four of us each got a free pass to play in any other public adventure and the Children’s Museum of Richmond, our charity of choice, received a $2,500 Ravenchase package for an adventure of their own. I can’t wait to play again!