Idiotarod

DC is finally officially cool, having hosted the first DC Idiotarod. The Idiotarod is a race in the tradition of the famous Alaskan Iditarod, except that instead of sleds, there are shopping carts, instead of dogs, there are drunken DC denizens, and instead of a musher, there is Penelope, our slightly misogynistic masthead (for the record, it was the only woman on the team's idea to take off Penelope's clothes and have snakes coming out of her, so don't call the guys on that one... By the way, I was the only woman on the team). Oh, and there's lots of drinking. I imagine that's a similarity to the Iditarod, though- if I were riding through thousands of miles of tundra with only some dogs, you'd better believe I'd be drinking. Heavily.

Friday night involved our team bonding and cart prep. I met up with the other Columbia Cobras- Ben, our fearles captain, Palmer, Chris, Kevin, The Object****, and me. First, we worked out the team's philosophy, and then summed it up through our motto: blind, then kill. We then worked out team rules: 1. Blind. 2. Kill. After spending several hot, gluey minutes around our cart, we prepared her for the test run. One of Palmer's lame-o Mt. Pleasant neighbors came out and told us we were being too loud and inconsiderate. Granted, we were racing a shopping cart down the street, blowing horns and screaming "blind and kill!" at the top of our lungs, but C'MON! It wasn't even 11 pm yet! Still, when we plead our case for twenty more seconds, we received a Very Stern Glare. Mollified, we went back inside to prepare for the actual race, namely, by drinking.

I can't quite remember why we didn't blind and/or kill him.

The next morning, I donned my bikini and grass skirt (almost 80 degrees out! In March!) and went to Ben's house to meet up with the team.We put the finishing touches on our finished out preparations by making the coolest t-shirts EVER, (how much do I love iron-on printer paper!) regluing snakes to Penelope, applying glitter liberally, working on our cheers ("do you think I yelled 'blind and kill' menacingly enough?") and drinking some more. We also affixed our trophy to our cart. That's right: we knew we were the winners already, so we brought our own trophy. We won this thing back in '55, before we were even born.

Upon our triumphant entrance into Dupont Circle, most of the other teams wet their pants/leopard print underwear. Passersby stopped to participate in the blinding and killing revelry, and oh, people took notice of the terror that strikes in the eyes (and ears)of all DCists... The Columbia Cobras.

At the stroke of 2, the race began! (Ugh, drinking and running)

First we got ambiguous clues, which I thought meant we were supposed to take our shopping cart to Camalot, the strip club across the street from my office on 19th St. When we got there, a very angry looking bouncer was unamused and told us to get away from him before he called the cops. It turns out we were supposed to go to The Palace, the strip club three blocks from my office, on Connecticut Ave. We raced over there and received our race itinerary: we had to go to Rumors, Adam's Mill and Fox and Hounds, spend twenty minutes at each bar (where we got $2 shots an $2 beers!) and then end up at Tom Toms on 18th St.

There were rules of war: sabotage was encouraged, however, if you locked up another team's carts, you had to leave them a way out. Unfortunately, no one informed the Mario Bros. team of this rule, and we had to buy a hacksaw to unchain our cart. While the men of Columbia Cobras were busy scraping through metal, I sprinted up the 18th Street hill to Adams Mill, only to find out that at this bar, the rules had changed, and now your whole team had to be present in order to start counting the twenty minutes. I almost threw up on the judges, which made sucking up to them later a little difficult, to say the least. In the end, Penelope won them over, and we got a few time credits.

Yes, that's The Object and me beating the crap out of some guy who is trying to get in front of us. I don't understand how sabotage was encouraged but violence was out.

The party afterwards was insane. Technically, according to the blinkered view of winning set forth by the race organizers and adhered to by most of the racers, we didn't win anything, but we were definitely remembered as the team that was the most obnoxious. And that's what really matters. Because this was for the children.

By the way, I was not aware my mouth opened that wide.

****For those of you keeping track, the Object is loosely back to being objectified.