Cave'mon Finale

When last joined our heroes, they were tied for first place against the evil Team B on the way to Mike's ranch house. And for this final installment, we bring you the magic of ....color photos! Yes, thanks to some tremendous advancements of science, for the first time you will be able to read AND SEE our heroes as they compete for glory!

Our heroes after winning the first event. As it was in ancient times, fake fur vests are worn by the team who won the last event.

4:15pm - We arrive at the house, unpack, then head back outside for some more fun in the quickly waning sun.

4:30pm - First event: Ring Toss. Mike has a rather large steel jungle gym outside in front of the house. He has hung an 18" tire so that the center is about 4 feet off the ground. Each teammate is given 2 frisbees, 2 footballs, and 2 softballs to throw through the tire from about 10 yards away. I managed to get a football and softball through and my boss managed to get one softball through, which tied us for third place with four other teams. As a tie breaker, each team threw one softball through until your team missed. I threw 4 through in a row to win us third and to knock team B out of points for the round! The one point is enough to push us into 1st place.

5:00pm - Next event - Ranch Olympics - A multi-stage timed event of sorts. I'll just list out steps: 1) One teammate carries 10 gallons of water 40 yards while another carries a bale of hay about 40 yards in the other direction. 2) Each runs to the basketball court and shots one basket. 3) when both have made a basket, one teammate slaloms through the swings, walks up a ladder, crawls over the top of one set of monkey bars, then swings at least 3 times on a second set. First to touch the end wins.

I'm sad to say I lost this event for us. We were in the lead for time, but I fell while swinging from the last set of monkey bars, which cost us a few seconds while I jumped for it again. We were awarded no points, but luckily neither did team B.

5:20pm - Final event. 3 teams are still in the running for first place. We are only one point ahead, so no matter what we need to beat team B to win it. With daylight falling, Mike pulls out his most dastardly event of all: THE CHAIR!!!! MUWHAHAH...No wait...That was a show on Fox. Sorry, the actual event was THE HANGMAN. For this event, Mike had attached a pulley to the top of the jungle gym. On one end of the pulley rope was a water ski handle (can you tell the dude likes to water ski yet?). On the other end was a six inch diameter pipe. One teammate hangs from the pipe while the other has to hold them in the air. Lets cut to a picture:

The pipe is large enough so that you cannot wrap your hands all the way around, and as an added difficultly you had to wrap your hands around it as shown in the picture: one hand on each side.

Through a lost coin toss, Steve and I went first in this event. Since I was obviously not going to be able to hold Steve up any length of time, I was going to hang from the pipe.

I step off the platform. Steve has about 70 lbs on me, so for him this event is a cakewalk. Mike is calling out time: 30 seconds (still pretty easy)....45 seconds(ok, starting to feel a little burn)...1 minutes (fuck me, it's only been a minute?!?!)...1:10 (arms are starting to shake uncontrollably)....1:20(hands are slipping)...1:30(come on...just get those extra few seconds)...1:35 (fingers finally slip off the bar). Steve is in shock I think. Last year the longest anyone but one person lasted was under 40 seconds.

Team B went next. Mike is calling out the times again: 30 seconds (no change from either of them)...45 seconds (still no change, I'm starting to worry)...1 minute (the guy holding the rope is really sweating. He is starting to lose it)..1:15 (Guy with the rope jerks. Guy hanging starts to slip)...1:27 (Guy hanging finally loses his grip and falls to the ground!)

In the end Steve and I had the best time on this event by about 5 seconds, which means:

VICTORY!