Teriyaki Donut is my son, Omar Barnes (age 6), and me, Greg Barnes. We normally ride bikes in Scrambles, but this Scramble was foot-only, so we walked. Except when we ran. We had previously done this once before, in the September Fremont Street Scramble.
We've been downtown quite a few times. About the only part of the Scramble that was on unfamiliar ground for me was Post Alley near the Market Theater, but I scouted that out in a few minutes after we checked in.
Based on our speed in Fremont (3.88 miles in 90 minutes), I extrapolated to 5.17 miles in two hours. Gmaps says we did around 5.2 miles, so this was nearly dead on. Unfortunately, my reckoning with a marked string must have been way off, as I had our route at around 4 - 4.5 miles. Probably I wasn't being exact enough with my measurements, together with the slop of, for example, the pier behind Anthony's.
It was clear to me that we should pick up everything from Pioneer Square to Olive Street, plus checkpoint 55 (near Anthony's), and that we should ignore the checkpoints on First and Capitol Hills, as hills are not our strong suit. After mapping out a route including the two Belltown checkpoints, I decided we could go a little further, and chose the stadium and Uwajimaya checkpoints instead of Seattle Center, as they were worth ten more points. I punted on 36, since it seemed to require a hill climb. In the end, we ran out of time and couldn't get the Belltown checkpoints or number 28, near the finish line.
We visited 21 checkpoints and should have scored 630 points (580 was announced at the awards ceremony, but perhaps I forgot to mark something). Our route: 46 [Sam Bradley], 14 [Rachel, the Market pig], 47 [Metsker Maps], 25 [Post alley gate], 26 [skybridge sign], 12 [anchor], 55 [Waterfront Park], 37 [Aquarium], 22 [Harbor Steps], 45 [Pioneer Square], 24 [Elliott Bay Cafe], 54 [The Mitt], 31 [Uwajimaya], 53 [City Hall], 33 [Central Library], 56 [Gingerbread House], 13 [ACT Theater], 42 [nutcracker near Paramount], 21 [Santa's House], 44 [Macy's trains], 15 [carousel].
Note that 630 was the announced score of the Family class's winner, but the winners assured me they should have gotten 720, so we wouldn't have won anyway (they guessed it was hard to read their soaked answer sheet --- ours was water-damaged as well, but I thought it was readable. In any event, I can't imagine it was easy to score this Street Scramble).
My wife, Elizabeth, and my other son, Emmett, formed a second family team, Go Little Red. Emmett was supposed to be 'Little Red' (dressed mostly in red), but he refused to wear his red jacket, and refused to move much. He did, however, jump in the fountain near Anthony's and got prematurely soaked. Somehow, they got 210 points, anyway.
From the start, I chose to take the back stairs up to the Market and get the plaque checkpoint first, since I reasoned that Rachel would be crowded. This seemed to work, although the plaque was much further along the passageway than I thought it would be.
On Veteran's Day, the whole family had lunch at the Athenian Inn and tromped around the Market, an exercise that stood us in good stead when trying to find the skybridge to the parking garage (26). But both Omar and I were fooled by the crowds around the eastern sign, until I decided to go look at the western sign. We tried telling the people at the other sign to come read this one, but I don't think anyone heard. We took the Pike Street Hillclimb down, but we probably should have just taken the elevator to the bottom garage floor.
The 'sphere' at 55 looked like a hemisphere to me. I also had trouble deducing what was meant by the slots at 22. Apart from these nitpicks, I really liked the course. The trudge along the waterfront, however, left a lot to be desired in the pouring rain. I even walked under the viaduct for a while to improve our morale.
I knew the answer to 45 [Pioneer Square] before we got there, as well as 54 [The Mitt], 31 [Uwajimaya], and 44 [Macy's trains]. Heck, even Omar knew the answers to 31 and 44. On the other hand, I thought I knew the answers to 24 [Elliott Bay Cafe], 13 [ACT Theater] and 15 [Carousel], but I didn't, so it's a good thing we actually visited all these checkpoints.
After 54 [The Mitt], I should have gone up to the skybridge next to King Street Station, but instead we went west on Royal Brougham, and got stopped by a freight train. Luckily, we only lost a few minutes. At Uwajimaya, we took advantage of their restrooms. Omar seemed to enjoy the hot water faucet on his hands a great deal.
I thought 33 [Central Library] was the most interesting checkpoint (who knew there was a 40,000 gallon storage tank downtown?), and 56 [Gingerbread House] the most beautiful. Omar dourly said that 14 [Rachel] was his favorite, because that was the last one we visited before we got rained on. But I know he liked 33 as well, because it marked the crest of the 5th Avenue Hill, and it was (mostly) all downhill from there. He also likes it a lot better when we visit checkpoints quickly, so downtown was much more to his liking. He even started jogging sporadically.
We try to visit the gingerbread houses every year, so we were able to navigate to the 2nd floor of City Centre pretty easily. And we were lucky that we found the correct house right at the top of escalator. Like many children, Omar was mesmerized by the gingebread house, until I told him we had to get going. Our prior experience also led us to the passageway to 6th and Union. We picked up another shortcut nearby: the street that leads diagonally under the Convention Center from ACT to the Paramount. That was handy.
It was after 11:30 when we got near the Paramount, where a movie shoot had been taking place until 11. When we got there, some large props (Metro buses, what I gather were supposed to be WTO protest puppets) were still there, as well as a fair number of trailers and technical people. But there was no problem walking through.
After the Paramount, we blew by our final three checkpoints, whose answers we could see from across the street. We tried to keep moving to hit the green stoplights, but seemed to get reds at almost every intersection. After the carousel, I asked Omar if he thought we should go for checkpoint 28, which was a block out of the way, and he said no. We arrived with 1:15 to spare, so he was probably right.