Jamey and I had the incredible chance to raise money for a foundation so close to our hearts. When we had some friends last year run Savannah's Race, we knew it was something we wanted to be part of. Savannah is a 3 year old little girl who was born with Down Syndrome. Her mother and a close friend put together a non-profit organization to raise money for families to educate and help with therapy for their children with Down Syndrome. Jamey's little brother has Down Syndrome, so if we can do anything to help families with these blessed children we were in 100%. To enter into the race each team had to raise $2,000. In total there were 10 teams so we all together raised $20,000! Laurie and Leah work some unbelievable magic coordinating the impossible- a race around the Denver area. It is formulated after the 'Amazing Race' with all kinds of different tasks. We had the time of our lives! Thank you to those of you who donated to the race- we couldn't have done it without you! If you are interested in reading our 'novel' we have included our journal of the day, each stop and what we were required to do.
To start the race we were handed this envelope with our first clue.
All the teams, families and volunteers.
Jamey and I with the beautiful little Savannah.
Race report for Team Stanworth in Savannah’s Race, a race to raise money for a charity that deals with Down Syndrome.
We started the race at a flooded park in Aurora. We got some pictures and instructions, at about 8:30 they let us go. We raced to Dave and Busters in Denver just off I-25 and Evans. All the other teams went to I-225 and around on I-25, we went straight west on Iliff, which got us there just a few minutes ahead. And we needed every second. The first challenge was playing pool. We each had to sink enough balls to add up to 21. Erica doesn’t think she has ever played pool before. So it took us a while to sink the balls to add up to 21. However we tied with another team finishing first.
After that we grabbed our clue and ran to the car. We started driving before we read the clue so when we read the clue we realized that it was another game in Dave and Busters, so we had to turn around and park again. We ran to the super shot (basketball) where we were now the 2nd team. The first team was having some problems scoring over 21 points. Erica showed off her basketball skills by passing 21 on her first attempt, so we grabbed the clue and headed off.
The next challenge was still at Dave and Busters (we learned to read the clue before running off) we were to blow a bubble with a piece of gum that was hard as a rock, and bigger than a golf ball. We had to have the entire piece of gum in our mouth before we could blow the bubble. But once again we were in the lead as we raced off to the car. We got out of the parking lot and headed down the street when Erica realized we had left our camera. Some of the challenges required a camera, so we had to go back to get it just in case. Jamey ran in and retrieved the camera, and ran back to the car. As we got to the car and pulled out, the 2nd team was on our tail.
The 3rd stop was right in our backyard in Dacono. IMI Powersports where we were going to race go karts. But we got there, because of the rain, we couldn’t race the cars. So the replacement challenge was to eat an entire watermelon, not a small one either. While eating it we had to spit 3 seeds into a bucket from a few feet away. Since we love watermelon so much, this one was no problem. But the 2nd team smashed their watermelon more than we did, so they finished just ahead of us. We pulled out right behind them.
We were heading back to Aurora to DJ Music Studios. As we cruised south on I-25 Jamey thought it would be faster to take the toll road than deal with the slow downs on the more used but shorter route. We were wrong, when we got to the next stop we had went from 2nd to 5th. At this stop we had to choose a song and sing it, while being recorded. We chose to sing YMCA, as that was about the only song on the list Jamey knew. After a terrible job of singing, we grabbed our recording and our clue and headed to Elitch’s.
As we were right near Jamey’s first Denver apartment we took a trip down memory lane and drove to Elitch’s via his old drive to work. We had to ride 2 rides. It was supposed to be the mind eraser, and the rip curl (water slide), but due to the rain they were both closed. So we instead had to ride the tower of doom and the sea dragon. We started with the tower of doom and politely started at the end of the line and asked people if we could go in front of them, because we were in a race. Nice people let us go in front of them, all the way to the front. When we were about 6 people from the front, the worker yelled at us and told us we’d have to go to the end of the line because line jumping is not allowed. We explained that we asked every person in line before we went ahead. She pulled us out of the line and told us the best she could do was to let us wait as single riders. Then she turned around and was ready to let the ride go with 2 empty seats! Lucky for us, another worker wasn’t so stubborn; she could see the crowd chanting “let them ride”. So she let us on, as we buckled in the crowd cheered. It was really cool.
After being yelled at and threatened to be kicked out of the park Erica didn’t have the heart to ask to move to the front of the line anymore, so we stood in line for the second ride, the sea dragon. While we waited other teams cut in at the front of the line without asking, they just ducked under the rail and cut right in; one team a bit in front us. A guy standing close to us talked to us for a while about what we were racing for. When we saw the other team cut in line, without asking, we complained to the man we were talking to. He tried very hard for us to get the teams all sent to the back of the line, but the worker just let them on. We thanked him for trying for us and we missed our chance to make up any ground on our earlier mistake.
After we left the park our next clue was to find a specific license plate in the parking lot and return to report the make and model. After some searching we found it.
The next clue said walk to tattered cover book store on the 16th street mall. So we headed off, without any of our gear, which we left in the car. At the book store we had to search through thousands of books to find our next clue. After some searching Erica found it. Next was to head to the other end of the 16th street mall, we could ride the free mall bus. So we took advantage of that and took a little breather while we looked for the volunteers off the bus. We found them and the next clue had us paint a canvas to auction off next year.
After we finished the art work we were instructed to run one block farther and up the stairs to a grove of trees. Next the clue card had a monetary value for different colors of beads. We had to count the beads and tell the volunteer the value of the beads. Here there were only 3 jars of beads, and there were already teams counting, so we had to wait for someone to be done. We had to wait 30 minutes for a team to get it right. Again we sat and watched time tick away with no way to make up our spot in the race. Finally it was our turn and we counted them up in a hurry and were off.
Then we had to get back to our car, so we rode the bus back to the end of the 16th street mall, then ran/walked back to Elitch’s. Our next stop was Bass Pro Shop. When we got to Bass Pro, we had to go to the shooting gallery and shoot 20 targets from a list. After that they handed us 4 pages of pictures with 8 pictures on each page. We had to find all the animals in the picture and take a picture of them with our camera. That took a while, especially since we walked past one of them about 5 times before we finally saw it. Before we left, we had to smash a penny back by the shooting gallery, and then we were off to the Seven Hills Park in Aurora. We were supposed to play softball, but due to the field being under water, instead we had to throw a ball, from a pitcher’s mound they had setup, and hit home plate 21 times.
To conclude an exhausting day we headed to the pit stop at the Aurora Sports Complex. We finished in 7th place. Everyone won a prize and got a little goodie bag. Our prize was 2 gift certificates to IMI Motorsports to race the go karts! We agreed it was the ‘perfect’ gift for us; even though the experience of the day and the race itself was gift enough for us.
