The Scavenger Hunt from Hell

As part of our on-site training, we are required to complete a 32 item scavenger hunt, which is meant to familiarize us with Austin and all of its attractions. The idea sounded fun at first; they gave me and Z (co-worker) $60 each and set us loose with a list of interesting places to go and take pictures. The problem is, there are only two options for seeing most downtown Austin attractions: one, you can park somewhere and walk around in a heat that drains the very life out of you (Z: “My boobs are sweating.”), or two, you can try to drive to places, but there’s never anywhere to park. There are further complications, of course. Neither Z nor I knows where we’re going, we both burn easily in the sun, my car is nearing death, we couldn’t figure out how to work the camera our boss gave us, and we never know whether or not something is going to be open. I’ll keep you updated on the things we check off, starting with today’s disasters. Let me list them:

1. The statue of Stevie Ray Vaughn. That’s right, Austin has erected a memorial to Stevie, complete with cape, hat, and guitar, standing proudly in front of Town Lake. There’s a catch, though—we had to get a picture with us, Stevie, and an “elderly walker.” So we had to a) walk forever to find this stupid statue along a walking trail, b) wait in the blistering heat for an old person to walk by, c) also make sure that there was someone else with the old person to take the picture of all of us together, and d) think of a way to make it seem like we weren’t waiting for an old person (we thought it might hurt someone’s feelings). We finally found an old woman in a pink shirt following her family down the trail, and so we told her we needed to get a picture with someone who was wearing a pink shirt. She looked down at her shirt, and back at us, and said, “You’re pullin’ me leg.” Apparently we had some visitors from Ireland in Texas, and they all thought we were nuts. Her family finally convinced her to pose with Stevie, but she was very bewildered and couldn’t understand what her shirt had to do with anything. As soon as we finished the picture, her son said, “Do you get any extra points for getting an elderly person, too?”

2. The University of Texas Tower. Back in the 60s, this was the place where Charles Whitman camped out and started shooting people down all over campus. Our instructions were to take a picture from the top, but we found out we had to pay five dollars each to get the “tour.” What the “tour” consisted of was a dorky student named Jesus telling us a few uninteresting facts about the tower, a chaperoned elevator ride to the top, and about thirty minutes on top of the tower looking at the view. Now, I like views as much as the next person, but I don’t want to look at one for thirty minutes, and I certainly don’t want to pay five dollars for it. They also had a handy rule where you couldn’t take any bags up in the tower. When I asked if I could leave my bags at the desk, they smiled politely and told me they had lockers available for a dollar each. Pure evil. That guy on top of the tower isn’t looking so crazy now, is he?

3. Bring back a fortune from a Chinese restaurant. There are no Chinese food restaurants anywhere near the downtown area; there is Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, and simple pan-Asian cuisine, but no Chinese. We finally settled for pan-Asian with a fortune cookie, but at that point I knew my fortune: Your car will die soon. Lights were coming on all over the dashboard and the rattling kept growing worse. I put some water in the engine to cool it down, but I think it has a leak. What a nightmare.

4. Get a picture with the giant Texas star. I have no problem with Texas, but I felt pretty silly as an Oklahoma girl asking a complete stranger to take my picture standing next to a 50 foot star of Texas. I think this is their way of trying to inculcate me into the Texas Cult, but I won’t be taken in!

5. Visit Austin Community College. In reality, the instructions should have been, “Visit the most run-down, depressing building you’ve ever seen with unhappy, destitute people sitting out front, and then have the creepy janitors stare at you and refuse to let you in the doors to look around.” My job down here is to help high school students get into college, so perhaps my boss was trying to show me what happens to people who don’t apply to four-year universities. If so, the lesson worked.

6. Buy a postcard from an overpriced store named Cadeau’s. This one was especially ironic. They bring me to Austin to work and live at the poverty level of the people I’m helping, and then they send me to look in a store where one plate costs $75. I saw a cute dress, then checked out the price tag: $290. The lesson here might have been: “During your time as a VISTA, you will often feel pain as you walk around and see everything that you can’t afford.” I learned this one well.
 
I won’t go on about the other horrors we encountered today, the numerous times we got lost, the hours of walking around downtown in the hot sun, the countless complications that kept us from completing even a third of our tasks. Suffice it to say, the scavenger hunt was a disaster from start to finish. Whoever leaves the best comment can receive the postcard in the mail.