Soggy Bottom 2012

Writen by Tamir



Team Calleva ventured out into the swamplands of Virginia on the third annual Soggy Bottom Boys Rogaine and Adventure Race Challenge. The team, composed of Vlad, Nick, Steph and Tamir, headed out strong and finished strong. This was the first time several of the team members had raced together but all members clicked, with well placed insults, puns, songs and bad jokes fueling progress. Vlad was asked questions about Russia, how to say things in Russian, what he liked about Russia...until all realized that he is from the Ukraine. (Stupid Americans...we don't even know the name of the King of Canada!) Anyway...Vlad was well humored and was the core strength of our team. As holder of the Passport he made all the final treks to the checkpoints while the rest of us napped. We lost Nick for about 45 minutes when he decided to "check out" something. (We are now all assigned periods of time to watch him and make sure he doesn't wander away.) He redeemed himself though with stellar night orienteering...("just follow the moon"). Steph won the eagle eye award for spotting checkpoints when all of the men were searching in completely the wrong direction. Tamir decided to be a hero and venture into the swamp (inevitably for little to no reason but to ruin several pairs of socks and taunt water mocassins.) Actually, the only snake seen was tiny and cute. Couldn't say the same for the competition though...tiny...some, cute...hardly. Steph had to be held back from throttling several ill tempered competitors (unnamed for now) when they exhibited a lack of humor. In his excitement to see Dima at the transition area Vlad performed a full frontal flip (on his bike) in some form of eastern European braggadoccio - to which Dima showed great delight. Vlad promises to teach all of us how to do the trick. (Nick tried it earlier in the day but it was a disgraceful attempt- no flair.)



All in all a great race day. The team did reasonably well (for a first effort) and finished as the second place coed team and in the top 4 or 5 teams overall. (Depending on the color of your glasses.) Thankfully we all avoided cracked heads...which Tamir's 2000 Jeep Cherokee unfortunately did not. At least we know what a cracked head sounds like now. The Jeep is only $1400 and a return trip to the swamplands away from getting home. The $1400 is probably worth the price though for the introduction of Steph, Nick and Tamir to an incredible southern VA tow truck/repair shop owner, Chase, of Butler's Towing and Recovery. Chase came to our rescue at 10:30 at night, had the Jeep towed to his shop, took us to a hotel 45 minutes away and got one of his mechanics into the shop early on Sunday morning to try to fix the Jeep so we could get home for family commitments. His stories were incredible, mostly not repeatable online for fear of his being arrested, and almost worth the money spent. A full team of N. VA parents, wives, boyfriends, and children were called into action to perform Team Calleva (yellow submarine unit) extraction. Nick's wife ventured into the swamp in the dead of day and rescued us from the Virginia Diner where we spent 5 hours in wait. (And unfortunately drank our 2 beer limit within the first 30 minutes.) Kudos to Nick and Steph for not strangling Tamir.

On to the next adventure!...