Kayaks and Karoake

Fun weekend. Rock Cut and New Zealand Wendy's birthday party. Birthday first, Rock later.

New Zealand Wendy pulled off quiite a birthday party! She wanted to pattern it after the Amazing Race. We met up at the boat launch at the Skokie Lagoons at 7 pm Friday. Some of us, including me, couldn't get there until later. We each were on a team of three people. Two members of the team had to kayak across the lagoons to find a birdhouse that had a message in it telling us what to do next. She had rounded up enough kayaks and gear to be able to do this! So, once our kayaker came back with the message, we were given the address of a nearby house that we had to find. Luckily one friend, Craig, on my team had grown up around there and knew exactly where the street was. I would have had no idea - and Wendy had told me I didn't need my GPS! Unfortunately we each were in our own car, and we couldn't leave our cars in that lot after dark.

Once there, we had to say a phrase at the front door, at which point the guy came out of the house and took a picture of one of us (me, in this case) with a hula hoop, using our own camera so we would have proof Then he gave us a needle, thread, and button, which we were supposed to sew on the handkerchief or bandanna that we had been told to bring along. I couldn't see well enough in the dim outside light to thread the needle. I dropped it the first time and had to ask for another needle. I wasn't expecting to know the guy who owned the house - it turned out to be a bike shop owner I hadn't seen in years! What a good sport he was to do this. Then he gave us our next clue. It was referred to as the lemon squeezer by the lake... which of course is the Bahai temple. So we went to the temple and had to search around for the hidden clue. The janitor was busy sweeping - I asked him if he had found any clues! He said he had just started. Lucky us, or the clue could have ended up in the trash. I kind of felt like I shouldn't be walking around this magnificent, hushed, house of worship looking for clues... luckily there were only a couple of people sitting in there.

The next clue was to go ask for the movie Great Outdoors at the Video Adventure store. Dan and Craig stopped off at Dan's to drop off his car while I tried to get to the Video Store before Brian and his team. We were all well ahead of him, but he caught up to us at Central Street. I took Chicago and he took Sheridan - I made good time but got tripped up by a light by the Firehouse. Had I been more aggressive about getting through the yellow light, I would have gotten there first. Brian, Kris and Kristen got to the movie first - inside the plastic box was the clue! I got to it as they were reading the clue. I later found out that Brian had called ahead and tried to reserve the movie! The staff said they wouldn't help him cheat....! They headed over to Northwestern ahead of us while I waited for Craig and Dan. Then we headed over to Norris Center at NU to look at the Roommates Wanted board to get the next clue! I was the only one in oour group who knew where that was, so it worked out fine.

The next clue was to go to the Heartland Restaurant and take a team picture in the photo booth. That was our opportunity to drop off my car at my house before going to the restaurant. Finally our team was all together. We saw Brian's car in the lot, so we knew they beat us there. We hadn't seen the third team in quite a while. When we got to the bar at Heartland, some other people met up with us and we had a few drinks before the next stop.

The next stop was a place we only had the address of. I knew what it was going to be, but I don't think most of the others did. It was a Korean Karoake Bar! I have never, ever been to a karoake bar before! I always used to think they were stupid, but for some reason it sounds alot more fun than it used to. Maybe it was being able to do it with a small group of friends instead of a bar full of people?? My only brush with karoake was at the 2005 WORS banquet when some people did karoake after the banquet. I was way too shy to do it at that point, in front of people I didn't know very well.

There were alot of us packed into a private karoake room. I think the whole place is private rooms, which seems like a great idea to me! I think it made even the shyest comfortable enough to belt out a few tunes. Wendy called me tonight and said they (not sure which "they" that would be) decided that I was the karoake queen - apparently I was the biggest surprise. I guess that's good - I never sing in public cuz I don't think I sing very well - I can never tell whether I am staying on pitch... but it was nice to hear that I wasn't terrible! I guess my friends have never seen the closet wanna-be musician/rock star side of me - they only know the bike racer wanna-be side! I have been obsessed with bikes and bike racing culture for so long, I forget that once upon a time I was also obsessed with music.....

Anyway, we stayed for hours and it was really fun. I realized my taste in music is a little different than the group's - some of the songs I picked no one had heard of, but everyone was fairly patient with other people's choices. We never really ended up eating dinner cuz the food options at the karoake place were expensive and fried, fried and more fried. I was so fired up about karoake when I got home, I stayed up way too late going through iTunes on my computer playing songs.... silly, huh?