Sunday, September 27

Yeah, I had another bagel at Starbucks. This time I charged it.

This morning’s activity was called a “Funkhana”. Yesterday, I chatted with a guy who has done a couple of them. You can’t do it alone; a co-driver is required. One time, he said they blindfolded the driver, and the co-driver had to navigate them through a short course that included parallel parking and backing into a parking spot. Another time, they had to throw Frisbees into baskets.

We did this in the parking lot of the University of Utah football stadium, a few blocks from the hotel. The opening ceremonies for the 2002 Winter Olympics were held here, and they still have the cauldron for the Olympic flame. This cauldron is lit wherever the Winter Olympics are being held, wherever that is. They put it out when the Olympics are done. Today, the cauldron is outside the stadium. It’ll go back in when the 2034 Olympics are held here.

Chad and I teamed up; he was my co-driver, and I was his. First, we had to put dinosaur masks on and drive to three stations. At each, we used grabbers to pick up a small plushy dinosaur. Next, we drove another short course with two stops where we had to toss our dinosaurs through the window and land them in little corrals. We could throw as few or as many as we wanted at each stop.

It was pretty easy to pick up the plushies. I expect everybody got maximum points. For the corralling, Chad said I should pull up as close as possible to the right for one stop and as close as possible to the left for the other. He’d toss his dinos at the first stop, and I’d toss mine at the second. That makes all the tosses as short as possible. So that’s what we did. On my run, I landed 2 in the smaller, higher-scoring corrals. On Chad’s run, I didn’t do so well.

After that, we had a zucchini race. Like Pinewood Derby in Cub Scouts, but with zucchini and squash instead of wood. There were bonus points for the most creatively decorated racer, and each car had to have a dinosaur in the driver’s seat. I’m not very creative, so I didn’t put much effort into it. Instead, I got the bright idea to strap a GoPro onto it. Folks got a kick out of it. On my test run, the camera came off, but another pipe cleaner did the trick.

Our last activity for the whole group was a farewell lunch. Here we thanked all the volunteers who made the event possible. They also gave prizes to the winners of the funkhana. Much to my surprise, I was tied for first. The prize was a larger plush dinosaur. I gave it to Chad. At the end, they gave away some extra T-shirts that were made for the volunteers. They’re a kind of fluorescent green. I snagged one and get more use out of it than I would a blue dinosaur.

For dinner, four of us went to a brewpub to watch the Broncos game. We had tasty wood-fired pizzas and beer. Fun Utah fact: if the beer is more than 5% alcohol, it comes in cans, never on tap. Pretty quickly after finishing, our server wanted us to pay. He wasn’t asking us to leave, but there was a fire a couple of buildings away. They evacuated an apartment complex, and it was possible the restaurant might need to be evacuated as well. That wasn’t necessary. The fire was on the news the next morning.

Somewhere between the restaurant and my hotel room, I managed to lose my sunglasses. I never drive without sunglasses.