Road Rage, I mean Road Rally
A month before we were married, we participated in our first road rally. This was a driving contest where you were given clues and had to find various landmarks in a certain order and time.
Now keep in mind that this was a time before cell phones and even local internet. Because each team started at different intervals, it wasn't who got there first that won. It was who kept the correct speed limit, went to the correct places, wrote down the right answers and finished with the closest correct mileage. From the start we were scratching our heads. The instructions told us to go so many kilometers. Ugh. We didn't know the accurate calculation to convert miles to kilometers.
There was not a lot of time to stop and calculate and then to figure out where the clues were leading you. You had to fill in the blanks on the form with answers of what you thought they led you to. It was fun, challenging and exasperating all at once. Because of the anxiety we ended up being short with each other and there was arguing in tense moments, so much so that we briefly wondered if we would go through with our wedding the next month!
We didn't win. But this was a pre-cursor to our road trips (pre-map quest days), when I was the navigator and he was the driver. Those who navigate know how hard it is to read a map and road signs at the same time. The driver just expects the directions to be fed to them immediately. The driver is anxious because of traffic and paying attention to lane changes. My driver throws a fit should he take a wrong turn and have to detour. I think a good percentage of our disagreements have been trying to get somewhere. (Though isn't that life--traveling together seeing where life takes us).
And yet...we have since done other road rallies and have sought them out. I guess we like the thrill of the hunt and trying to work together. They are kind of like a treasure hunt. There really aren't many around.
Later we were introduced to a similar treasure hunt hobby called Letter Boxing. I started to write about that here, but I was getting so wordy, that I will save that for tomorrow.
Our last scavenger hunt was a contest run by the Norfolk Historical Society. You were given a couple of weeks to discover certain landmarks in Norfolk, CT. Since George grew up there, he was intrigued by this challenge. Armed with the clues, we set about different parts of Norfolk trying to decipher where the clues would take us. Some were very easy, however two eluded us. One was right under our noses on the town green! What was most aggravating for one clue was we assumed the answer was up Haystack Mountain. We had been up there a few times before with kids, but now we were older and I was so out of shape. I was truly afraid I was going to have a heart attack (note: that may not have been far from the truth as a few years later, I did). The part that was most aggravating is that was not where the answer was and we went there for nothing!
When I turned 70, my son gave me a clue which took me on a scavenger hunt to more and more clues until I got the prize. He gets me!
One little irritant I have about our road trips, if we are going past something that looks interesting and I don't see it soon enough, George will rarely turn around to check it out. Of course, if we had a schedule to meet, that would be one thing, but even in a leisurely ride, there is something in his DNA that makes him abhor going back.
Somehow, we have stayed married almost 50 years despite the road "rage" which goes on in the car at times. People think road rage only happens with other drivers--not always the case.
"Pray that the Lord your God will tell us where we should go and what we should do." Jeremiah 42:3
For my 70th birthday, my son made me a scavenger hunt where I had to drive places to find clues to get to the prize.
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