Brew Ha-Ha Street Scramble 2006 -- REACH: Hi-Liters route

My route. I should have gotten 760 points (I skipped: 14, 34, 37, 28, 15, 23, 29, 54, 52). However, I wouldn't be surprised if I forgot to answer a few.

Notes: I should have gone 26-12-44-24-45 instead of trying to sneakily spy #54 from across the canal (I went 26-45). This route choice cost me .29 miles. The telephone mounted to the utility pole (#31) is one of the most random things I've seen. I really enjoyed the run through Woodland Park, and I especially liked the subtlety of #33, such a little thing to notice! I also should have snagged #34 between #33 and #51. It only would have added .32 miles, and with the route choice change mentioned above, it would have fit in perfectly. I arrived at Wide World Books and Maps just 4 seconds after 11:00am. I couldn't have timed it any better!

Planning my route such that #51 to #53 was downhill really saved me. I couldn't have run that whole leg going the other way, and I ran by 3-4 teams going the other way here. I didn't read the clue for #27 before I'd missed the turn for the alley. This is where having a teammate comes in really handy. I lost .09 miles here. I had trouble with #32 because I approached from the east. I didn't see any words near the bush. However, the REACH Bad Guys were coming from the west and helped me out here, as the "mom and pop" was on the other side of the bush.

I made another silly mistake after the Lenin statue, where I should have gone to #22, but I took the wrong road and picked up #16 out of order. I actually knew the answer to #16 before the race because I happened to notice the rather large 37,553 number from when I was in Fremont a few weeks ago. I also happened to know the answer to #46 because a few weeks ago, I saw the troll and figured that it was going to be a Street Scramble clue, and I figured that the date on the plaque would be an obscure enough clue... and it was! (I still went there, anyway).

I went across the Fremont bridge with about 10 minutes to go, and I was really hoping that the drawbridge wouldn't go up when I needed to come back. I had time to snag #15, but I misread the clue, and I couldn't find it in time, so I headed back. I think I finished with 3 minutes to spare. With #15, and the aforementioned #34, I would have finished with 800 points!

Just to prove how much the stoplights and density of checkpoints near the start affects your speed:

First 30 minutes: 3.1 miles, 8 checkpoints
Second 30 minutes: 2.9 miles, 7 checkpoints
Final 30 minutes: 1.5 miles, 11 checkpoints (the closest 11 to the start)

I played around with the Google Maps pedometer tonight, and the shortest distance I can come up with that gets all 1000 points is 11.90 miles.

Patrick Nuss