OstroHoopy

On Saturday, July 3, 2004, my Magmic team won the Ottawa edition of Verizon’s Urban Challenge!

It was actually pretty easy to solve the clues since our back-end support team was pretty savvy with Ottawa geography and Google use. Our two official team members, Dave and Kevin, are quite accomplished runners, Kevin being quite the marathoner. I was on bicycle support, trying to scope out the checkpoints before the runners could get there and taking their pictures just before they headed off to the next.

In the end, it was great fun, and we finished in a remarkable time of 1 hour 59 minutes! Our first place status guarantees us a spot in the Championship challenge in Miami on November 20 where there is $50000 up for grabs!

We’d better start training now! And getting some contacts in Miami who know the city well wouldn’t hurt either.

Yesterday Sarah, Evan and I participated in the 2004 Boomerang Kids Strollerthon and helped to set a record in the Guinness Book of World Records for gathering the most strollers ever for a strollerthon! We also raised over $25000 for the Children’s Wish Foundation and helped Annie Underhill, a 5-year-old leukemia patient from Ottawa, go to Hawaii.

I haven’t heard the statistics yet, but there sure were many strollers filling the streets!