Lake County Fun Run!!!!
June 6, 2021

Mardee hates anything called a “First Annual…,” but we had such a good time planning this event that we might do it again next year. People ask, how long does it take to plan an event like this? We put in 10 to 14 hours of driving around and writing things up. We also argued – I mean “discussed” different routes, which questions to add and drop, and so forth. It got us out of the house, discovering nice roads not too far from home. There are more..

Sunday morning dawned glorious, although the temperature was predicted to hit 90 degrees later. Cars began to arrive at 9:30 and by 9:45 we had 17 teams, including one MGA (Barney Gaylord), a bunch of TDs, a couple of TFs, the Brooks’ TD replica which we have seen before, and many MGBs. It was great to see old friends we had not laid physical eyes on for 16 months. The route was just short of 61 miles, and Mardee and I clocked 2 hours and 8 minutes on our last run. We figured nobody could do it faster than that, and we were right. Many of the 39 questions were easy, such as “What’s the flavor of the day"?

Most teams got that right, whereas almost nobody got all five of the high schools on the route. Two groups missed only two questions, with the first-place trophy going to Glen and Barb Grossklags in their TD. There were two teams with three wrong answers who received 2nd and 3rd place trophies from the Rick Rausch trophy stash. They were Bill Kalafut and Phil Wydra. The tie breaker was whose car was older.

The run ended at the Adeline Jay Geo-Karis Illinois Beach State Park South Unit (phew!) Jerry and Gerry bailed on the run when their instructions flew away, so they arrived early and anchored a double table in the shade. The rest of us set up our own tables or camping chairs and picnicked. It was at least ten degrees cooler by the lake, and we all enjoyed the get together.

Mardee and I learned a few things we could have done better, such as to list the mileage from point to point rather than give a cumulative mileage for each instruction. We also had too many questions too close together in some places, and not enough in others. We are not too old to learn from experience (or so we think). People seemed to have a good time, and that’s what counts.

~~ Ray Costa