Chiditarod 2010, The Team Burt Reynolds Story
Hello Adoring Fans & Followers
As some of you know, this past Saturday was the 5th annual Chiditarod. If you do not know what this is, you can go here and check it out. But in short, it’s a 4 mile race with 5 team members who push a shopping cart full of 40lbs of food to 5 checkpoints where participants are asked to do fun/strange/embarrassing things such as write a Haiku or pole dance; everyone dresses up in fantastically outrageous constumes and participants are encouraged to cheat and sabotage other teams carts.
I participated in this gloriously unorganized event with Adam Valentine, Brent Jones, Marcus Tranburg, and Mike Thompson. You may recognize a few of these names from previous posts and events in which I have partaken as they are regular partners in crime.
Pictures of our adventure can be seen here: http://bit.ly/dk94gn
So, I will now tell our story of the Chiditarod. Also, if anyone saw my FB page that day, I apologize for the ridiculous amount of tweets, there was a contest for the most tweets posted about the Chiditarod…I did not win…
Our adventure begins the Friday before the Chiditarod. Team Burt Reynolds (us) have failed to do any real planning up until now. We are cartless, foodless, and do not have costumes. Brent comes through with a cart found straggling outside of Walgreens and contacts us to come help him barrow said cart. Ashley and I hop into her car, find Brent, procure our food transporting unit, and drive off swiftly. We now have a cart.
After this, we meet at my apartment to discuss our costumes and if we should obtain our own food or try to steal 40lbs of canned items out of other people’s shopping carts during the race. We decide on the former and head to Jewel to buy
40lbs of just Pinto Beans, two bags of marshmellows, and a Globe (like the Enquirer, but much trashier) that has a picture of Burt Reynolds on the cover discussing how he is fighting for his life after quintuple bypass surgery. This immediately becomes our carts main decorative piece.
We return to my apt., store the food, and decide that we don’t have any good costume ideas and to just look ridiculous for the next day. For me, this includes shorts, a mustache, aviators, a knit cap, and a black long sleeve shirt. I end up looking like the Unabomber in training.
The next day, Ashley drives Adam, myself, and our cart to the starting location (north-west side of the city) to meet Brent, Marcus, and Mike. We find a parking space and proceed to take out the cart, put our food in the cart, and prepare for battle by putting copious amounts of black duct tape all over the cart along with rope with which to pull the cart as though we were dogs mushing a sled.
As soon as the cart touches the pavement we notice a problem; something I have never encountered. The cart had a “boot” wheel. What this means is that the front right wheel of the cart has an electronic sensor. This sensor detects the carts location relative to its home (Walgreens). If the wheel leaves the parking lot, this sensor is tripped and the wheel locks up completely and will not spin. This presents a problem for a team that is looking to push a cart as fast as possible.
We try desperately to break the sensor (inside the wheel) in order to allow it to spin again, however, we are completely and hopelessly unsuccessful. Our last resort is to remove said wheel to make our beloved cart a three wheeled cripple. 
This will make turning the cart difficult at best (at least when turning left, which seemed to be most of the turns we made).
Next comes the team registration. There is a line around the block full of costumed shopping cart racers undoubtedly confusing almost every local in the area. We get to the back of the line and steadily make our way to the registration. We are given our carts bib number, our route, and any other supplies we need.
The team is the corralled into a parking lot that could only resemble a 70’s
psychedelic acid trip gone horribly awry. People are dressed up as old people, Olympic athletes, Scooby Doo, mad scientists, characters from many different movies and tv shows, all with their own shopping carts and supplies.
Eventually, the race begins and we are in the back of the pack. Through the athletic prowess of Brent, Marcus, Mike, and sometimes Adam (though almost never myself), we manage to break into 1st place before our first check-in location. This puts us in or around first place overall which is really our only saving grace considering EVERY other team has a significantly better costume than we do. Our only hope to save face is to actually win this event, so we’re doing all we can to come in first.
At the first checkpoint, we hand in our time card and then wait. The rules state that you must be at each location (they’re all bars) for 20 minutes before your time card will be handed back to you by the judges. However, we buy the judges a drink and get ours back in 18 minutes (bribing is encouraged). The first, and possibly best, form of sabotage we saw that day was someone with a hammer, two nails, and a small wooden block that said “Chiditarod Boot” nailed quickly into someone’s back tire. Good job saboteurs.
Our card is eventually handed back to us and we sprint to the next bar. Mind you we look like complete ass-holes and we’re pushing a shopping cart down the middle of the street as fast as we can between each location, which is about .8 miles each. After getting to the second location, we have the bright idea to send 4 people with the cart 3 minutes before we obtain our time card and then have the 5th person sprint to the next location. This worked out quite well as we made even better time.
That is, until the 4th/5th location. At the fourth location, the judge would not hand back our time card unless we bought him a drink. This is not how bribing is supposed to work. Judges are not allowed to hold time cards ransom for a drink, but only give time cards back before 20 minutes for drinks. This presented a problem as our 5th person runner did not have any cash, but the cart, already at the next location by this point, had all of our belongings.
Marcus (our runner) had to go to the 5th location to get money, go back to the 4th location, buy the satan-worshiping judge a beverage, get the time card, and run back to the 5th location. This completely took us out of contention for 1st place or even top 10. Needless to say we were quite livid, nevermind the face we were bending the rules slightly to save time.
I am currently mentally brainstorming a complaint for this infraction by said judge that I will be sending to the organizing party. Also, it is worth noting that almost every judge and organizer was a Hipster. These are people who wear skinny jeans, roll their own cigarettes, only listen to indi music on vinal, and despise anything mainstream and anyone who likes anything mainstream. I have never cared for Hipsters and this now means I completely despise them as well as have a personal vendetta against them as a people.
By the time we get to the finish line, we’re all quite upset and could care less for the results, who won the contests at some of the bars, the tweeting contest, ect. We just want to get the hell away from Hispters.
Ashley picks up Adam, me, and our battered and bruised shopping cart and we all head to 5 Guys for a delicious and emotion-filled burger.
Overall, the event was really quite fun. Had we not gotten completely screwed over by the Satanic Hipster judge, we had a very strong chance of winning or at least placing top 5. We’ll probably participate next year, despite our incident, and will be out for glory, blood, victory, and a 4 wheeled, non-handicapped cart.
We are Team Burt Reynolds, and that is our story.
