Hi everyone!

Can you believe that the Apple-Azing Race is just a few days away?! I’m super excited for it. Two weekends ago my cousin’s did a ‘dry run’ of the challenges for me to test my clues, supplies, times, etc and it looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun! I just wanted to send you an email to clarify a few things and get you all as excited as I am about it!

For the day of the race, please arrive at the orchard at 9am to register. You’ll check in at this time, get your t-shirts and your race folder. If you want to ‘add’ to your t-shirts a sort of costume to go with your team name that would be awesome! (if not – no worries). (Let me know if you have decided on a team name…I would like to post these for reporting ‘ranking’ instead of everyone’s names in post-event blogs).

We will be starting the race at 9:30am. I’ll be sending some teams to start at different ‘stations’ of the race. You will be timed during each challenge – not a race to the finish. Your race folder will contain your time sheet that you’ll have the volunteers at each station write your final time on before getting the clue to next challenge. Each of these challenges are for FUN. If you don’t complete everything or do it correctly there will be a penalty (in the form of seconds) that the volunteers will be instructed to add. At the end of the day when I have all the sheets are turned in I’ll be awarding points to each team determined by how their time at that particular challenge fell compared to the other teams. Let me know if you want further clarification of this!

Clues to the challenges will give you hints at the location of the challenge as well as what you may be doing in the challenge. Before you leave to find the challenge you need to decide which of your team members will be completing it. Each clue will indicate how many team members (max 2) will be needed for each challenge. To help you prep for the locations of the challenge please study our orchard map (one will be provided the day of as well): http://www.lapaceksorchard.blogspot.com/2012/09/2012-map-of-orchard.html and look over my blog posts…particularly September blog posts… www.lapaceksorchard.blogspot.com. Also – since this event is to help raise money for the Poynette Area Library each challenge is named after a book title just to add to the fun!

You should plan on being at the orchard for at least 4.5 hours to complete the race (no longer than 6). It will not be a strenuous day but there are a few challenges that only one team will be able to do at a time. They will be limited to 15 minutes for each team, but with 17 teams, that’s a minimum of 4.25 hours. I plan on having some ‘fun’ side games to play in case you’re waiting at one of these stations. At this point I would say to pack a lunch, drinks and snacks. There’s a chance the boy scouts will be selling brats/hot dogs but I won’t find that out until Wednesday. We have soda/water for sale in the orchard and you are all welcome to grab an apple or two from the shop to snack on before/during your journey.

Michelle Cross Photography will be taking photo’s of the challenges throughout the day.

Did you all get a chance to see the prize package?  http://www.lapaceksorchard.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-apple-azing-race-prize-package.html

That’s all I can think of to update you all on now. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns or if I forgot to include anything I should have…

I’m excited for Saturday – I hope you are too!

~Kim Lapacek

www.lapaceksorchard.com