The Incredible Trek

Have you ever had one of those days where you look back on it and think, “what on earth just happened?”

When midnight came and Saturday started, my roommates and I were eagerly scheming how we could prank the interns when they came to wake us up at an atrocious hour… We unscrewed the light bulbs outside of our door to ensure some darkness, taped the light switches down so you couldn’t turn them on, put squares of tin foil covered in honey just inside of our door, and then strung yarn from Lisa’s bunk-bed to a towel rack. We knew we were going to get woken up so we thought we’d make things a little more interesting. Darlene, one of the girls next door, also joined us for this adventure. We pushed the two twin beds together and all four of us slept there hoping that when one of interns came to wake us up they wouldn’t be able to get the lights on, step in honey and then clothesline herself instead of jumping on our bed… we purposefully left our door unlocked.

After less than four hours of sleep I heard a car door in the parking lot and I knew everything was about to start. 5am strikes and Amy is pounding on our door telling us that it was time to rise and shine. When no one moved from our room she came in and firmly announced “Girls, it is 5am, The Fest has started! You have 7 minutes to be dressed and downstairs!” Of course she said this between chuckles as she was trying not to laugh out loud at our creativity.

I end up downstairs with my teeth hardly brushed, shoes and sweatshirt still in my hands and of course, it’s raining. We did a memory game, Japan team won and got a ten minute head start. Our first challenge was to find six bandanas (in the dark and rain) that had been placed around mark Centre property. Peru team came back to win this one, then we blasted through the 6am brain-teasers only to be told that we needed to count the number of squares in a roll of toilet paper and then tear each square in half. When we realized that we somehow had too many triangles, Breanne took one for the team and ate a couple. We later found out that our toilet paper challenge was only because we were so quick on everything and our van drivers hadn’t arrived yet.

We were sent to places to get a cup a chai, and then to the airport for our next clue and then it was breakfast time. We followed the clue to the apartment of someone on Trek staff. For breakfast they served us white rice, a can of sardines, and a two-liter of coke. We had to eat everything before we could go on and if anyone threw up there would be time penalty. Our team choked it all down and before we left we were told this had been an actual breakfast that a Trek team had been served.

We got more clues that led us to find a needle in a hay stack (literally), go on a photo scavenger hunt, find a car in the mall parking lot (all we were given was the license plate number) and at this point our driver left us. We had no warning that we were going to be on foot from here so when we had found our next clue some of us were frantically looking for the van. A man who say us running around started lecturing Sarah on needing to remember where she had parked. We ran and walked through the rain until we got to the fire station and from there we played a game of bocce ball (Lisa and I dominated).

Our next clue was a string of numbers. We tried calling it but it didn’t work. Then Roxy figured out that the phone number was backwards. We called it and got a recording that said something to the effect of “Mathew, Mark, Luke, or John, go to Rotary Stadium and go fishing for something other than men”. We take off running because at this point we’re about 15 minutes behind the Japan team. We get there, we find Mark, a bowl of pudding and a bowl of rice krispys. We had to fish in the bowl of pudding for a gummy worm and then fish in the rice krispy bowl. My team looked lovely! I was exempt because of the chocolate.

From there we sprinted to Luke and Greg’s apartment so we could wait. We got there, changed into dry clothes and waited. We had somehow gotten almost 45 minutes ahead of the other team so we waited for them before we got the next clue. When they got there we still waited some more until Luke pulls dried squids from his oven… gross! None of us wanted to eat anything we still weren’t feeling well from breakfast. We all downed the squid and the Peru team ended up 5 minutes behind the Japan team.

We sprint into the college library and find the book we need only to be lectured by the librarian about being quiet. We had been quiet but the Japan team had already ticked her off. We talked about the librarian during debrief and realized she was probably the only Christian woman we met all day and she was also the rudest person that we had encountered. But the clue we found in the library was in a foreign language that none of us regognized. After feeling stuck and hopeless we were told it was Punjab and we asked someone at an Indian market if they would translate for us. The clue sent us to the Seik temple for lunch… great, more food. So we covered our heads and took off our shoes and ate the Indian food, some people slower than others.

After our meal our next clue led us to break a block of ice, then play skee ball to get tickets to by candy for our driver, then we had to make up a love song and sing it to a “mysterious woman on a balcony”. She turned out to be a he who did Trek last year. When he handed us the next clue, none of us were exactly excited. We were told we had to go to a town called Surrey (it’s about half an hour away) and catch the Sky Train (it’s an above ground subway kind of thing). Our hearts sank when we saw this because we knew the day was far from over because if they were sending us to Surrey they were going to send us to Vancouver.

We hop on the train and Breanne navigates like a pro! The only thing was that both teams went to the wrong station. If we had made it to the right station a lady would have asked for our help and if we helped her we would have gotten a “good Samaritan clue” that would have fast tracked us to the end. But we made it to Vancouver, met Luke at a gelato shop, and then sprinted back to the station to get on a Sea Bus. The Japan team had made the boat right before us so we knew they had made it first but we thought we still had the advantage from waiting at Luke and Greg’s. We decided that we were going to finish strong and hard. So we all sprinted to our final destination and the Japan team and all the staff were cheering the entire time. We felt like we were ending a marathon. We finished but we didn’t win. Apparently the game started over at the squid and the Japan team crossed the finish line about ten minutes before us.

The entire game took about 15 hours and we were beat. Everyone was sore, exhausted and a bit queasy from the amount of unfamiliar food in our stomachs. We did it, as a team. We had no tears, no arguments, and we got to see everyone rise up and lead out of their giftings.