Pooks in Cahoots

Today my best friend Ashley and I participated in the Cahoots Duo Challenge at Soldier Hollow (a 2002 Olympic site). I very much like that it was called a challenge and not a race because we felt less pressure and walked most of the way. As part of the challenge we had to come up with a team name and team flag. After thinking for about 5 minutes of ridiculous names that we could use we decided on Pooks. You're probably wondering what Pooks means so I'll tell you.

Once upon a time Ashley and I lived together in Maryland and also worked together so subsequently carpooled to work together. Our office was in Virginia and was about an 18 mile drive...which took us about 45 minutes to an hour one-way! You're thinking, "fun," I know.  Belief me when I say I don't miss DC traffic and this puny Utah "traffic" that people complain about is nothing. Anyways, after a long day at work we really hated getting into the car to face the traffic, but we did it because we very much wanted to be at home and not at work. Here's where Pooks comes in. After an hour into the drive we'd get to our exit and then only 3-4 lights separated us from the pains of traffic to the ease of home. The most prominent light we would almost ALWAYS get stopped at was called Pooks Hill Drive and everytime we got to that light we would say, "Oh Pooks" because it was a long light. Then we just started saying "Oh Pooks" instead of "Dang it" for example. We felt that having to overcome obstacles during this challenge would produce a few "Oh Pooks" moments. And interestingly, when I googled Pooks I found out that in the Urban Dictionary it means inseparable best friends...how fitting. There is also a lodge in Belize called Pooks Hill Lodge (and if you know me, you know that I really want to go to Belize).  When we checked in this morning and they asked for our team name and we said Pooks, the man chuckled and repeated the word Pooks and then chuckled again.

Before you see all of the notch above awesome pictures from the Cahoots Duo Challenge, I want to thank my dad for taking all of these pictures. Ok, here we go.

Last night we had to put our flag and shirts together. It was fun making them, but took so much longer than we expected.

Almost done. Doesn't it look great?!

There's our little beauty

Team Pooks shirt

Check-in line (took us a while to get through)

Mini-photo shoot just moments before the challenge began

Don't you just love our flag?! Ashley's creative mind worked this one out.

Team Pooks Good To Go

They had this mini-cam on a remote control helicopter. It was recording our group before the race. 

We were walking along having fun singing "You'll Never Walk Alone"

There we go up the muddy hill. See us on the far right..in last place. That was intentional for sure.

the first obstacle...

mud pit - and guess who slipped right in, what a surprise!

Ashley almost lost her shoe!

Pooks doing what we do best, help eachother.

 Eek!

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart.



Soggy shoes. Over the course of the challenge we laughed at the noises our soggy shoes were making.



Time for another mini-photo shoot

Strategizing for the next obstacle

This was so much harder than it looks. It was even difficult just getting up.

 

 

I couldn't hold on any longer, I felt like I was about to fall forward.

Ta-da!

 

This happened so often - us standing in the wrong order

so exhausted...

NOT!

Shock Attack!

Doing so well.

Hmm, I wasn't really thinking that there was an actual charge, well I was wrong. Just after this picture I lost concentration and we touched the wire. Result: both of us jumped back from the shock running through our bodies. We couldn't stop laughing in disbelief afterwards.

Adrienne: Ok, you climb on my back and then I'll try to pull myself over.

Ashley: But if I step on your back then I'll get the flag dirty.

Ashley: Turn it around like this.



 Ok, here we go.

Way to go Ashley! 

Adrienne: Oh Pooks, how in the heck am I going to get myself over this?

I ended up swinging my leg up on the top ledge and then pulling myself up. It was pretty painful.

Wall number 2.

I totally know how to do this...like a boss.

Honestly, after just being shocked and then having to get over this wall, we were pretty spent, but we DID it. That was one of the biggest victories for us.

Walk on, walk on with hope in your heart, and you'll never walk alone. (If you're wondering why I keep quoting the song, "Never Walk Alone," it's because it was the theme song for the event. Yes, they really did have a theme song and it was so fitting and I thought about it several times during the race). I'm so glad that I did not have to walk alone, but that I had Ashley with me. And truly she has walked with me in so many ways in my life, I love her for it.

After the wall we went to a crazy net climbing apparatus, which we do not have picture documentation of, but really it was a little anti-climatic anyway. Here we are jogging (the only time that happened all day thankfully) and Team Lost Boys are checking out our AMAZING flag. They had a flag similar to ours where each team member wore part of the flag.

 They can't get their eyes off of our flag. I think they were jealous of how awesome it was. In fact, at the end of the race Ashley overheard them talking about a flag that was similar to theirs but much more intricate with lots of different fabrics. That made us feel good, thanks Team Lost Boys.

The next obstacle was so much fun, despite the fact that we had to wait in line for at least 20 minutes. In that time we became friends with Team Collective Bargaining Agreement, a husband and wife team, that helped us on this challenge.

We had to crawl through these tubes that were halfway submerged in muddy water. The people in front of us helped by steadying the other end of the tube and keeping it somewhat afloat. Here's Ashley waiting in anticipation.

And here I'm chanting, Pooks Pooks Pooks!

It became popular to just throw yourself through rather than crawl through, so we decided to try it. Ashley ended up getting some mud in her mouth I think. 

I got mud in my mouth and all over my face!

Do you like my new 'stache?

I love this picture! I think Ashley is spitting out mud. 

After the first one, we had to go through 2 more. The teams in front of us helped by connecting the tubes together, so that's what we did as well.

Hey Sneaky Peeky, I see you!

I really don't know what is going through my head right here. Maybe it was the bats...ok there were no bats.

Helping our friends

Getting a helping hand from Ash

I kept falling down because the ground was so uneven and muddy

Having fun

Muddy Mudderson

Still smiling - that was fun!

We knew this would be slippery so Ashley suggested that we get a running start to help us out.

We did it in one try!

The back to back. We were really looking forward to this one because we had "practiced" beforehand.

Encouraging eachother

Laughing the whole way through.

splash-down

slipping on some mud

don't worry, I'm ok

WE

WERE

FEELING

SO

SOGGY!

BUT...

(Team Pooks Is Good To Go)

Next was the zipline. Since dad had to leave and the line we were waiting in was a half-hour long, we didn't get any more pictures of us at obstacles.

 And this is what we looked like when we went on the zipline.

Ok, so it wasn't so graceful.



And here are some pictures of some of the other obstacles (which we happened to skip because our energy and drive was depleted after waiting in the zipline line for so long).

We were more than happy to skip the large wall!

Happy to skip this one as well.

Was just fine skipping the wheelbarrow in the mud obstacle.

Final photo shoot and we're still smiling!

POOKS!

And here's were we laid our flag to rest (after crawling through a mud pit). Unfortunately the water had effected the velcro on our flag so we had to remove the safety pins from our bibs to pin our flag together. I really was so beautiful hanging up there. We'll miss our Pooks flag. We don't feel the same without it's soft velvety protection that it provided the entire challenge.

And here we are. It's all over!

We won! Well we didn't, at least we got these cool medals. (It really did feel wrong not having our flag/capes on).



Thank you, Ashley for being crazy enough to be in Cahoots with me and for making the Team Pooks experience the best it could ever be!