The Amazing Graze 2011 Part 1

I've got a great bunch of friends, every once in a while we'd plan some outing or fun event.....always with food in mind. Earlier in the year, PeterL and I started talking about doing something with the trolley. Some in our group had never ridden the trolley and we thought it would be great fun and folks would get to parts of San Diego they usually wouldn't. Still, I couldn't quite figure out how to tie in the food thing. One one weekend, JohnL and I spent a good part of our Saturday riding the trolley and an idea started to form. Why not do something along the lines of a scavenger hunt? Instead of gathering items, folks could gather food? And so the Amazing Graze 2011 was conceptualized and the call went out:

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Still, how would we involve food in this? Then it came to me, there are places we've been to, and a few I know of close to trolley stops. We decided that about 2 blocks would be tha max for places. I took John to a few locations, dealt with the "how the heck did you know about this place?" And came up with five sets of food items.

1.  Pho     

2. Sesos, Buche, Suadero Tacos  

3. Spam Musubi    

4. Fish & Camaron Tacos  

5. Braised Oxtails, Beef Pattie, Jerk 

We decided to remove the known and determined that as part of the rules all stops were to be found on either the Orange line East of 25 & Commercial or South of the Barrio Logan stop on the Blue line. Aaah, we had a plan! A week later, I spent an afternoon on the torlley determining a timeframe. We didn't want anyone to die of exhaustion, this had to be fun. And then I came across this as well.

 
Lemon is food, right? I really wanted to integrate this in the whole thing and our bonus round was born!

We started sending out clues; I sent out 4 music samples, of course no one knew what we had planned so the "grazers" just had to know the songs. Each had something to do with a stop, location, or line. But none of them knew that at the time. I had to think of a location to start and one to end.....I thought America Plaza would be great since it is one of the areas where the Orange and Blue lines cross.

 

A few folks in the group just aren't human without their Starbucks and there's one of those at that stop.

 

On the day of the "graze" everyone (minus one, more on that later) met at Starbucks and JohnL handed out his masterpiece:

 

 
 Boy was I impressed at his work. Within this pamphlet was all the rules and clues of the Amazing Graze. John had integrated the MTS trolley map as well.

The buy in was $10, with the winner getting everything. Loser bought the first round of beer at our final destination. John and I would referee. Using a deck of cards, teams of two were selected. Because there was an odd number, the person who drew the joker could pick which team they wanted to be on. YY picked the joker and selected her team. TammyC was stuck in traffic, there was a terrible accident on the I-15 on that day so she was assigned the last card and ended up with PeterL. YY decided to join PeterL and the absent Tammy's team.

All else can be read.......

 

We'd even found out how to put the "lemon into play".

 
Take a photo in front of the lemon and you'd get an hour taken off your total time.

The divisions were interesting, sister against sister, husband against wives, cat-lovers against dog-lovers, peanut butter versus chocolate...... We were good friends all, but as soon as the clock got ticking it was every team for themselves as you can see by the spacing at the trolley stop!

 

The first problem was buying trolley tickets since a few of these folks had never ridden the trolley before! And then there was TammyC who eventually caught up with her team on the Orange line....once she had gotten off the trolley at a stop, only to see YY and Peter get on the trolley and leave! Actually, I had my money on the team of XiangJiao and Trang......

So using the list of food items above, can you figure out what the places were?

Remember:

All of the places listed can be found on either the Orange line East of 25 & Commercial or South of the Barrio Logan stop on the Blue line.

The list is not in any specific order.

All the places indicated are within 0.2 miles of a MTS trolley stop.

No Rubio's allowed

More to come.........

Update: You can read part 2 here.

Comments

[Sandy]

What a fun idea! I think I know the place for #2 on your list - I was there on Sunday for the first time, and noticed the nearby trolley stop.

So were smart phones allowed to find these places?

[kat]

sounds like a fun & delicious day!

[Yummieyummy]

Lol can't wait for our next adventure :)

[Cathy]

I know where the Pho is -by the Lemon Grove stop- you could get the fish and camaron tacos on the other side of the tracks at that same stop. (I kind of know the Orange Line intimately since downtown Jury Duty). The Blue Line would be an interesting bunch of stops...and the SPAM has me curious...I can't think of a trolley stop where it would be, unless some obscure place downtown. Can't wait for Part 2!

[Kirk]

Hi Sandy - It was a lot of fun! #2 is probably the easiest....I think many people have been there, but we just think of it in terms of a trolley stop. And yes, much of this was done with smartphones in mind.

Hi Kat - It was great fun!

Hi YY - LOL! We're working on it!

Hi Cathy - I did notice the Mexican Restaurant when I stopped there, but those are both incorrect. Teams could stop anywhere, but would just have to prove that the place served that food. They couldn't choose anywhere downtown because it had to be East of 25th and Commercial and South of Barrio Logan. That made things a bit harder!

[Alyssa]

Wow, what an awesome idea! I love riding the trolley, but being in North County SD, I don't get that chance very often. I'm really looking forward to hearing how the race turned out.

[Lynnea]

so much fun! i'm looking forward to the next post!

[santos.]

oh man, what a great idea! i totally want to set up one of these in los angeles, using the subway

[Kirk]

Hi Alyssa - It was a lot of fun to do.

Hi Lynnea - This was fun!

Hey Santos - That would be fun! I think the hours we spent planning really paid off.