Sterling Cooper Mowrer Smith

Guys, I'm back.

Upon hearing that I'd lost my poor little darling, Blue Dean, my sweet mama offered to buy me a new camera. I was going to buy a cheapie and limp along until Christmas, but she said she'd go ahead and get me a new one now, because I was really heartbroken about having lost her.

So please may I introduce you to:

excalibur. no, i do NOT have a high opinion of myself! he's just so bright and silver and shiny!

And, so far so good!

first photo excalibur takes!

Thank you Mama for my new camera! I love him and will be much more careful in the future - as anyone who handles my camera these days will attest to. I'm all like, "Hey, you got my camera? Can I have it back now?" To the nth degree.

And what a blog post to break him in on. About a week ago, Rachel Samulski called and told me about a special race in Knoxville called Knoxventure. It's a race basically like the TV show Amazing Race. If you're not familiar with that show - it's a race around the world where where teams go to different countries and are charged with certain tasks. If you're the last team to arrive at a stop, you're eliminated from the race and sent back home. Tommy and Jenny Mowrer are avid viewers and there's even been talk about them applying to be a contestant team on the show.

I knew immediately that this race was totally up the Mowrers and the Smith alley. Ideal candidates. After I signed us up I told Rachel that her idea had been shanghi'ed by us and thanks for the suggestion.

Matt came up with our team name, and it was based on the TV show Mad Men (gosh. We really all watch a lot of TV.) If you don't watch it, shame on you. But just to humor you, the ad agency it's based on is called Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce and it's about ad business men in the 1960s working in Manhattan. Our team name? Sterling Cooper Mowrer Smith. We even used their logo:

at your service, what can we do you for?

All team members had to dress alike, and we decided skinny tie t-shirts with our logo on the back would be hilarious. They were, but in the race only one other person got the joke. Apparently, we are the only four individuals in the Knoxville area with taste when it comes to television programming. Tommy procured and designed the shirts, and Jenny and Matt printed them out and ironed them on.

They were awful. So awful they were great. Oh and by the way - the makers of iron-on transfer paper LIE when they say it's bleed-proof. Here is my shirt post-race:

these colors DO run

but they were really cute!

So race morning, we show up and wait patiently to meet the Mowrers at the stage on Market Square as agreed on. I'm still learning how to use Excalibur, so take some practice shots:

tommy's leg and a trash can

another trash can

Then we found out the Mowrers ditched us and were already waiting in line to pick up our race packets. Nice. Not even out of the gate and we can't agree where to meet. Hmph.

Jenny and I were 100% conspiracy theory on EVERYTHING. I thought we should check the bottoms of our chairs we were sitting on for race clues and she made me take a picture of the official race t-shirt logo just in case there were some questions later on about it. See?

big brother is watching

Oh I should mention that the race was a fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters of Knoxville - and it was a humdinger, let me tell you. The most I've ever paid for a race was for the Disney Marathon and that was $100. For our entire team to register? $140. Plus you could buy a team 'fastpass' that let you out of doing an activity for $10, so at 72 teams... you do the math. A very successful event, if you ask me...

Here we have us planning our race strategy in a partner's meeting:

our strategy was "play smart. but don't play dumb."

We get last minute instructions, then are walked back out to Market Square, and about a dozen brave volunteers hold a bunch of envelopes up and....

WE TAKE OFF!!!

seriously. look at the determination on these faces.

We were given a map with 12 locations circled in downtown and told to go to each one and complete an activity. They had a suggested route, but we could do the activities in any order. We had one team bib which I wore and it would get a hole punch at each of the 12 locations after we complete our activities.

Like fools, we start on the suggested route (with everyone else) and by the time we got to Mast General Store (where each team member was to hula hoop continuously for 15 seconds each) everyone else was there. So we cashed in our fast pass and ran to the suggested next activity where everyone else who cashed in their fast pass was. We waited in line for it but agreed to bust off the route after this activity and go out to the farthest location and work our way back in. See? Teamwork in action!

The first activity we did required two of us to search a car at Enterprise Rent-A-Car and find 12 clues. Then all team members had to match the cards (they were all plays on words) with photographs on clothes lines.

here are tommy and jenny searching while matt and i wait patiently for them to find the clues. tommy accidentally honked the horn and scared everyone nearby and it really cracked me up.

an official stands by to make sure we don't cheat. pfft. winners don't cheat!

checking under the hood

Our work gets graded, we pass, get our hole punch and run off course!

The next stop was the new KAT bus terminal. I had a feeling this would be included and pumped my friend and co-worker, Philippa Satterwhite, for information regarding the bus because she's a daily rider. We had to do two things: follow a bike map and write down the best bike directions from the transit center to Inskip Park and follow a KAT schedule and write down the best directions to take a bus from the transit center to West Town Mall. Tommy and I did the bus because I'd talked to Phillipa and the Mowrers did the bike route. The Smiths got stumped for a bit because they wanted the best directions to the mall from our exact time we were at, but we figured it out, got our punch and ran on!

"huff, puff" repeat a thousand times

Our next stop was at the Coliseum. I was hoping it involved the actual building because I know my way around the Coliseum very well (thanks, Nativity Pageant!) There was a rock wall out on the lawn, however. I've done rock walls before and have actually been real rock climbing before so I volunteered to do this for the team (only one of us had to go up to the top).

Bad idea. I overestimated my upper body strength. I fell like five times.

but i wisely had the good sense to introduce myself to my belayer, gene (which no one else did HELLO. would like to know the name of the person in charge of keeping me alive). gene kept me from plummeting to my death. please note: i had to sign a waiver and everything.

starting off strong...

stuck in the middle (thank the lord i wore panties)...

i for real and serious had a panic attack rightaboutnow but had sweet teammates who shouted me back to sanity. that and gene was really nice about holding me up and giving me a break each time i fell.

But I never gave up. I knew I'd make it to the top.

PUTMEDOWN PUTMEDOWN PUTMEDOWN

Everyone was real nice about me taking twice as long as everyone else, but was really redeemed when:

we ran to the women's basketball hall of fame and i scored one of the two free throws we had to make. my arms were so dead tired that i almost couldn't open the bottle of water jenny gave me when i got off the rock wall. i'm shocked i had enough strength to make a basket!

dribble it! *clap clap* pass it! *clap clap* dribble it, pass it, put it in the basket!

Matt got the other free throw and the two lay-ups you had to make as well. We all had to go through a dribble course then we're off again!

Next we go to the signing of the Holston Treaty monument at Volunteer Landing. We had to take five clues (one was "find a word that is a color and a fruit"), make a rubbing of it on paper with a crayon, take it to our judge and shout a sentence with them as a group. Ours was "LILY is YELLING HO HO HO while eating a PEACH on a SUNDAY." Uproarious!

Then we run further down Volunteer Landing (a regular run through for me after work on nice days) and were told to trace the outline of a team member including fingers (I flopped down immediately to be traced - I was still shaky from the rock wall honestly and was happy to lie down for a smidge), go fish for two duckies in the fountain, then come back, write our team name on the outline and draw an article of patterned clothing on the outline.

i tried to self photo while getting outlined but was yelled at by everyone to put my hands down and spread my fingers out so this is the shot i got

matt fishing for duckies

me wearing blue plaid shorts

Next, we ran solid from Volunteer Landing, across the pedestrian bridge, UP WALNUT (I swear that is a 45 degree angle) down past the jail to Blount Mansion! We played an old-timey dice game and the judge in charge told Matt he looked like Drew Carey HAHAHAHA that really made me laugh.

Then we went to Riverview Towers where we (SERIOUSLY???!!) did four rounds of Operation Boot Camp. You had to do so many reps of a physical activity, then you were asked a question. If you got the question wrong, you had to do more reps. 25 tricep dips, answered the question wrong, 10 more. 30 jump ropes, answered the question right and moved on. 25 pushups, question right; 15 cranes on each leg, question right; GO!!!

Next was the East Tennessee Historical Museum. We had to fill out a crossword puzzle from items and objects in the museum.

i have never been so sweaty and gross in a museum

looking for clues

Correct on the first try - some things we knew without having to find the display! My, but we're an intelligent lot!

Aside: the streets weren't closed and there was no police escort for this event. You just ran. I had the race bib so it was obvious I was racing, but... it was very surreal to be running around downtown, dodging people and huffing and puffing going places. We were, to say the least, quite conspicuous...

Next, Regal Cinemas. We had about six photos and six current movie titles face down on the floor in a messy puzzle that you could only flip up two at a time to see who and what. You had to memorize who was where and match them up with the correct move title. The Mowrers DOMINATED. We (they) finished this challenge in about one minute.

these two read a lot of entertainment weekly

Lastly - we had to run out all the way to the Knoxville Museum of Art. Once there you were given a choice of three sculptures you had to recreate using either pipe cleaners or play-doh. We chose play-doh, each team member took a quadrant of the sculpture and....

final punch in the team bib!

Off to Market Square!

I have to hand it to the Mowrers. A team passed us in this leg headed to Market Square but I saw them take a wrong turn, and Matt showed us an alley short cut and....

We finished in 12th place out of 72 teams. Um. I'm really proud of us.

the winners

I knew this race was going to be fun and I knew it was going to be challenging. It was way more physical and challenging than I thought it would be, but then - it was way way way more fun than I thought it would be. Team Sterling Cooper Mowrer Smith is IN for next year!!!

And, I am not kidding when I say all of us took the race preparation very seriously. My job was Knoxville history, Tommy was downtown buildings, Jenny and Matt were streets and maps. As it turns out, all we really needed to know were streets and maps. Thanks, Mowrers! Ya'll came through! (Smiths stink.) We also talked to people who participated the year before and I automatically eliminated all the places they went to and tried to think of likely locations for this year. I came up with a couple of 'for sure' locations they would include as being the new KAT terminal, James White Fort, Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, and Blount Mansion. I was 75% correct!

Next, Tommy and I clean up and head to the 4th Annual Hearing and Speech Foundation Away Game Tailgate Party in the East Club of Neyland Stadium!

We played:

lsu

Halftime presentation starring HSF exec director, Amanda Womac

And John Berry had everyone's rapt attention as always

it was a very moving halftime presentation, no joke

After the half, the game got GOING. A joke got started that I was a good luck charm, and if you wanted to see the Vols make good plays you had to rub my head. Zack got into the concept:

go vols go

So this started a whole conversation about superstition. He'd one a door prize shirt and had it folded this whacky way:

the collar is in there somewhere all crinkled up

So I told him that if I was his good luck charm, perhaps the Vols would fare even BETTER if he let me fold his shirt up Megan-style.

collar out and crisp

The Vols make a few bad plays and before you know it....

jody refolds the shirt jody-style

And the Vols rebound! Hence:

a reluctant jody replaces me as rabbit's foot

zack and his two rabbit's feet

The Vols score a touchdown and WIN!!!!!

me really happy along with everyone else in the east club

But then... penalty. The touchdown recalled and... The Vols go on to lose. I am, needless to say:

sad

But Mr. John Berry buys everyone a round!

and the night picks back up!

We head out after the game to our stylist, Cindy Lou's, new salon! The Chop Shop! It was a fun opening night!!

me, cindy and karen callis smile pretty in the new salon

Tommy gets Excalibur and tries to take some pics.

um...

ok, this isn't much better...

ok got it! my new album cover! how arty...

a couple of cuties

What a fun weekend. And what a way to start off mine and Excalibur's time together. I'm looking forward to an exciting and long relationship with my new pal! Have a great week everyone!