Pajamas

Team Pajamas was also Team Overslept as, for some unknown reason, my alarm didn’t go off for when I set it at 4:11.

I woke up and turned over to look at my clock: 4:47!

Shit.

Figuring immediately that the organizers of this year’s “Nine 2 Five All Night Bicycle Scavenger Hunt,” Greg HXC and JSMG couldn’t possibly be completely inflexible about the 5:11am meet-up, especially since I’d be arriving with a bottle of vodka for 5 points on my manifest, I flung myself into some clothes and grabbed my most forgiving bike for the barely pre-dawn ride over to Gasworks.

And it all worked out, since points of the winning team—repeating their success of last year—were still being tallied and there even remained zucchini bread and coffee to go with Bloody Maries and Screwdrivers while we waited in the quicksilver morn for the inevitable results to be announced.

Besides, it would have been particularly unfortunate to have disqualified since this time around, I actually managed more of the course than in 2010, when I pretty much went straight to bed.

I hit two of the “dive” spots, anyway, before pedaling home where—instead of retiring immediately—I enlisted Jen in the effort and we rode the tandem over to the Twilight Exit where the bartender, Kylie, who, of course, like everyone, knows Hardcore Greg, gave me my race quota of Rainier puzzle bottlecaps, fished from her opener waste.

We also got a photobooth picture, adding 7 points to my total.

I was proudest of two of my scavenged items: first, for the 2-point “medals or trophies no lower than 3rd place,” I dug out my UW Excellence in Teaching Award” (first place grad student!) for 1999 and second, for the “Any Go Means Go or Bike Bloc event spoke card” I was able to pull together six different events from previous races, for 18 points, plus, reflexively, this year’s, for a total of 21.