Miracles on West 74th Street: The Hamburger and the Hamburglar

One of the reasons I love being back on the east coast is that I am closer to my college roommate, Sara, who lives in good ol' Connecticut. Actually, let me clarify - the first time I lived here on the east coast, I did not love it. In fact, I hated it. I lived in New Haven, CT and we nicknamed Connecticut "the state that is close to everything else." I am happy to be back on the east coast living in NYC...I think I would slit my wrists if I had to live in Connecticut again.

My friend, Jenny, sent me and Nathan a link to the Great Urban Race (GRU - http://www.greaturbanrace.com/) Her and John signed up for it and said it looked like a lot of fun. It indeed looked like a lot of fun. I talked Sara into doing it with me. Basically the GUR is teams of 2 running around a city on a scavenger hunt. They have this "race" in cities all over the US. If one is near you, I highly recommend it. There is also this other city race called "City Chase". Nathan and Bryon did the City Chase in Chicago. They LOVED it and had all these great stories about stuff they did - strip bowling, swimming laps in a pool, eating gross foods and figuring out puzzles to take you to your next challenge. I thought I was signing up for this and not the scavenger hunt. Fail.

I noticed on the website that you can win prizes for best costume. The winning costume in San Fran was a couple dressed up as Ketchup and Mustard. Weak. I knew I could top that easily. I was racking my brain on something creative and thought of the hamburger and hambuglar (I have no idea where it came from by the way). I did a quick search on hamburger costumes and found that Old Navy carried hamburger costumes for children. At that point, it was on - I didn't have a lot of time to make a hamburger costume, but I knew I could get creative with this child's costume. I ran the idea by Sara and she loved it. Mind you, Sara is a vegetarian so it was a bit humorous that she was supposed to be the one chasing after meat.

What should have been the winning costume

I went to the Old Navy here and found my little gem. The only thing was that the largest size they had was a toddlers 2T/3T. I know what you're thinking - how the hell does a 28 year old adult fit into a costume made for a 2 yr old. Great question - I had no idea how I was going to make it work when I bought it either, but somehow, I would get it to work. I got it home and cut off the sleeves and silt the sides all the way down and made it a shirt (it's supposed to fit head to toe on a child...on me, it barely covered my boobs). I had a brown tank and bought some green shorts and tada - it worked. Sara did a great job pulling off the Hambuglar as well. She got a stripped shirt, the mask, red tie and she found a hat to fit her head (this is an amazing find - she has big brains)! I thought we looked awesome and we had this in the bag.

We made our way to the Boat Basin for the starting line. Along the way, I saw some people dressed up so I knew we had competition. Again, I still thought we had this...

The place we wasted an hour trying to find

The race started at noon and we were handed our clues. You got 13 clues and you had to take pictures of places. I am not going to lie - I am competitive, so I told Sara that we needed to beat Jenny and John. That was the worst idea ever - they are way smarter than me. We were able to figure most of everything out except this clue. We had to take a picture of this clock and I had no clue where it was and neither did the strangers on the streets. It took us over an hour to find this damn clock. Finally, some homeless looking woman told us it was The Fuller Building. Even then, I led us in the wrong direction. We were able to map everything else out and knew we would finish in the 4 hour time limit. The night before, we thought we had a fighting chance on winning the thing, ha. On our 10th clue, we ran into Jenny and John sitting at the bar drinking beer and eating burgers. They were done. My plan completely back fired. And looking back, why the hell did I want to beat them? What was I going to get for it? Nothing. We finished and made it back to the finish line. However, all along the way, I kept thinking to myself "this is way different than what Nathan did - where are all the challenges and clues to the next place."

Bananas in Pajamas

Upon our arrival back at the boat basin, we entered the costume contest, but I knew we had some stiff competition. There were bananas in pajamas. Peanut Butter Jelly Time. The Mario Kart Gang. Yeah, it wasn't looking good at this point. You had to parade on the stage and then when it came your turn, you had to talk to everyone and "sell" your costume. I hate talking in front of crowds so needless to say, I didn't sell it. We didn't even make the top 10 - but we should have! Afterwards, we had to book it home because Nathan and I were meeting Jenny and John for a boat cruise.

Lady Liberty

Sara caught the train back to CT and Nathan & I went to meet Jenny & John. The best part was that Jenny's college friend was there with one of her gay guy friends from Chicago. Nathan knew him, of course. Haha - still makes me laugh. I went to the bar with Nathan and that's when he said he knew him from Chicago and he tried to make out with him last Pride but the guy had a boyfriend. The table was talking about the same thing as soon as we got up. Small freaking world! The boat cruise ended up being fantastic! There was an Irish Band but we didn't listen to them too much. The boat went out to The Statue of Liberty and then back to the pier. It was great views of Ms. Liberty and the city. After the boat cruise, we came back to our place and hung out on the roof and drank with our neighbors who are all 21. Overall - great weekend!