Pink Panda and the General Public

I just got back (and showered) from the 2nd annual Eco-Games, hosted by the Northwest Service Academy and Americorps. It was my first time, since last year it wasn't open to the public, and it was fun! And it completely wore me out. Basically, the idea is a bike race in teams, stopping along the way to do ecological restoration projects. That's all I knew when I signed up. I had no idea of the distance, nor the number of stops. It turns out that we did an almost 20-mile loop, with a total of 8 stops along the way. We got 15 minutes at each stop to complete the assigned task; the tasks included:

2 Ivy Pulls
1 Blackberry Hack (thank goodness it was only 1!)
1 Weeding around Natives (with points taken out for pulling the natives)
1 Nightshade Yank
1 Identifying Natives (and spelling their scientific names correctly)
1 Teambuilding "Group Ski" activity
1 "Schulty Pull", a very silly activity where one person gets crowned "King" and gets in a porta-potty on wheels, and the rest of the team pull it around an obstacle course. Guess who got to be king because she was lightest?

My team didn't win (we were also short one person, who got sick and couldn't come), but we had fun anyway. And one of our team members got the prize for best costume (well, okay, she was the only one in costume) -- she had painted her face like a panda, attached panda ears to her helmet, and wrapped bamboo pieces around her bike. It was very cool. Our team was also "Team Pink" because we had to wear pink ribbons to identify ourselves. So, our team name started out as Pink Panda. But then we realized that we were the mismatched team consisting of the only people who weren't current (or never had been, in my case) Americorps/NWSA members. In other words, we were the general public. So by the end, our team name was Pink Panda and the General Public. Sounds a bit like an indy band name, but we weren't clever enough to come up with a theme song.

And now I am exhuasted. I don't want to do anything for the rest of the day, and it's only 4:00! But I have to go to the store to buy ingredients and make a key lime pie, because my manager is leaving next week and I promised I would bring a dessert to her going-away dinner. I think I'm going to wait until my legs have un-jelly-fied a bit before trying to walk to the store, though! :)