#scav2003

30.  SHAT.  Where "SHAT" is short for "ScavHunt Authority for Transit."  Your public rickshaw service has two lines: The 1, which runs between 3h75 and 6h25 from Cobb to Kent and the 2, which runs during the same hours from BioMall to Harper.  Runs should be at least semi-hourly during weekdays.  [171 points.  35 bonus points if you notice that the acronym should be "SHAfT", and, as such, deck out your 'shaw accordingly.  10 bonus points if, on top of that, you have a Rick James shaw.  10 bonus points if your 'shaw also doubles as a Thurn und Taxi]

thanks to this item, the first two days of my 2003 Scav Hunt involved a lot of walking and pushing.  they were clearly some ad hoc rickshaws...Palevsky apparently had a vaguely classy ride, but Shoreland's were made out of whatever we had on hand.  i remember at least some were made of shopping cards; i think others were made of luggage carts as well.  i was one of the rickshaw drivers (pushers?!) running the 2.

you know what's a haul?  the BSLC to Harper, when you're pushing random students around.

however, i really wish i had gotten the "Thurn und Taxi" reference back then.  Thurn und Taxis is one of my favourite board games nowadays, and it's all about mail routes -- a reference to the Thurn und Taxis family who was so involved in European postal services several centuries ago.  doing a clandestine mail service would have been great.

63.  one teammember must Come Show Me what you are made of at 5h42 on the 21st.  [111 points]

this was a real stumper.  they were using the French Revolutionary time system for all items that year, but that wasn't the stumper; we had figured out the right time, and if i remember correctly it was 1pm on the Saturday of Scav.  the stumper was what they actually wanted us to do.

as 1pm approached, i came up to the quad with a sheet of rap lyrics.  i forget what song i had, but it was something with a bunch of bloviation about "come and show me what you're made of".  my plan was to wander the quad until we found a judge, and start rapping.  i had one or two other Shoreland scavvies with me at the time, just to help search for a judge, or help out if necessary.

in our search for a judge, we ran into a contingent from Max Palevsky, who was also looking for a judge -- and just as confused as we were about what the judges actually wanted.  we joined up in our quest.

at one point, just around 1 [maybe a moment or two after], though, one of the others in the Shoreland contingent got a brilliant idea.  we were passing by a campus map, and he noticed that there were building abbreviations on it.  he looked at the item, noticed that the only words that were capitalized were "Come Show Me", and wondered if there was a building whose abbreviation was "CSM".

BINGO. 

there was a building called Charles Stewart Mott -- abbreviated CSM -- on the south side of the Midway.  we broke out into a run, across the quad and across the midway, desperately hoping to get there in some semblance of "on-time".

lucky us: a few judges were still there, with bags of baguettes.  no other scavvies were there, just the merry bands from Shoreland and Palevsky.  that was all we needed to score the points -- crack the code and actually show up for the event.  the event itself was fencing against the judges with the baguette loaves -- for a particular judge's entertainment, but no points for winning or losing.

we were the only two teams to show up; no one else correctly deciphered the item.  there was so much bread left that after the little fencing tournament in front of Mott, we all walked to Hutch, and ate the unused baguettes with some cheese that the judges had brought along.

58.  We want to play SearsTris Tower (or, alternatively, HanTrisCock).  Make Alexei Pajitnov proud.  [222 points.  25 bonus points if it is set to appropriate music]

this is one of the most awesome items from the 2003 list.  since it was on the page i captained, i remember it quite well.  we realised relatively quickly that we weren't ever going to get permission to control the lights on the Hancock or the Sears Tower (yes, this was a good six years before it became the Wesley Willis Tower...), but we had an alternate plan.  this was my first year scavving for the Shoreland, a thirteen-story building along the lakefront that was once a luxury hotel -- and then, a UChicago dorm.  unlike many dorms, we had enough floors to play a somewhat cromulent game of Tetris, and someone got the bright idea to recruit a ton of people in the building to operate the shades.  we had shade operators in all the lounges, floor captains to tell the shade people whether to keep their shades up or down to make the pieces look right, and someone downstairs to call directions to all the shade captains.  it was a seriously complicated item to put together, but i'm sure it was the one item that got the largest possible group of Shorelanders together for the greater good of Scav.

115.  A whistle-tip parade.  [15 points per whistle-tipped car.  No Limit, bitches.  25 bonus points if Bubb Rubb comes by to explain the whistles]

135.  A guitar with a functioning exhaust pipe correlated to the hardness of the rock engine (may or may not be Bubb Rubb-certified). [189 points]

i completely missed these items in 2003.  that's one of the drawbacks of the page captain system...when i was a page captain, i'd get so focused on doing items that were on my assigned page that i'd miss out on a lot of the awesome items on other pages, leaving me to discover gems like this for the first time ten years later.

i don't think i was actually exposed to the Whistle Tips meme until at least 2007, maybe even later than that.  however, old Bubb Rubb is an Internet classic: a guy who really, really likes his whistle tips, and is not afraid to make a complete fool of himself while explaining their virtues.

69.  Get a penis spaceship to dock with the Vagina Building.  [34 points.  25 bonus points if you get the Essex Inn to declare itself as the "sex-in," alternatively, but, for 10 fewer points, you may get the "Borg Warner" sign to say "BorgWar"]

this was one of the items on the page i page-captained in 2003, and one i had a fabulous time with.  i thought of it because i was out last night, and somehow it came up in conversation.  i'm not exactly sure how the Vagina Building came up, but it did, and i cannot help but bring up this item when it does.

someone on a team made a penis costume -- it was so jerry-rigged, but it worked.  the "shaft" was a large piece of pale-flesh-coloured carpet that i duct-taped around me; i think it had shoulder straps made out of either duct tape or rope duct-taped to the inside of the carpet.  the "head" was a hard-hat, painted a pale-flesh tone, with an obligatory splotch of white paint right at the top. 

a few of us went downtown, and i put on the costume.  across the street from the Vagina Building, we took some footage of me walking north toward Randolph St. through Millennium Park, beeping, with my arms to my sides and my hands pointed outward, trying to look like spaceship fins.  i then crossed the street, continuing my spaceship schtick, and "docked" with the building.

"docking" involved walking into the revolving door, spinning around in it a few revolutions for effect, and proceeding into the lobby.  as this was a Saturday, the lobby was deserted except for two security guards.  they took one completely baffled look at me, asked me what in the world i was doing, and promptly ejected me from the premises.