It's that time of year again: GISHWHES, aka The Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen.
This mouthful of an event is one week of utter madness, hosted by Misha Collins (best known as the angel Castiel on the tv show Supernatural).
It seems like an appropriate time to start off a series I'll call That Time I..., a way to document and share some older memories. For episode 1, I'm going to flash back to my first year participating in GISHWHES, three years ago when the hybrid animal mascot was Elopus and I rode the ferry dressed like this:
I'm a jeans-and-a-t-shirt type of girl, so let's just say this was not my usual. I was terrified.
In 2014, the winning team won a trip to sail around Croatia with Misha on a pirate ship, but for most of the participants, it was more about the thrill of the hunt.
The scavenger hunt list contained 197 items, to be collected in the form of photos and videos.
These ranged from the outright bizarre: Item 53: Shave a recognizable corporate logo onto a hirsute man’s back or chest hair
To acts of kindness: Item 79: Visit an orphanage, a children’s hospital or a juvenile detention center dressed as Cookie Monster and distribute cookies to the children living there
To the mostly impossible: Item 142: Develop a parallel algorithm for efficiently inverting a trillion-by-trillion matrix.
My team, which we called Empire Burton from a "Random article" result on Wikipedia, included coworkers at a games shop in Edinburgh, a singer-songwriter in Stockholm, a mother of two in San Francisco, and a die-hard Supernatural fan in Montreal.
I found myself doing things like driving an invisible car through a fast food drive-through:
And filming "tweed porn" with a sleazy kazoo soundtrack:
But Item 165 was the most memorable. The cryptic instructions were as follows:
You should arrive Sunday, August 3rd, between 12:00 and 12:30 PST, at the Miller Community Center – 330 19th Ave E, Seattle, WA 98112. You will not be allowed into the event if you do not adhere to all of the following:
1. You look like a French maid
2. You have a "still life" hat with you
3. You are comfortable holding hands with another Gisher
I was the only team member who lived in the Pacific Northwest, so my team counted on me to attend. But the designated date was in the middle of my Olympic peninsula vacation with my family. What would normally have been a 30-minute bus ride turned into a 3-hour journey over land and sea.
My stomach turned over with nerves as I walked into the ferry terminal and tugged on the hem of my too-short dress. Were people looking at me? Well, even if they were, cowering wouldn't help. I threw back my shoulders and stood up tall. I was going to own this and be the best damn French maid in a cornu-cap-ia hat that the SS Tacoma had ever seen.
It turned out I would be far from alone on my journey. Even before boarding the boat, another Gisher came up to give me a gift. I unwrapped a pair of purple underpants emblazoned with a Wooster, the previous year's half-wolf half-rooster mascot.
On board the ferry, I spotted a table of other maids and introduced myself. They included a self-published romance author, her two teen daughters, and a neighbor boy (who was NOT happy about wearing a dress).
Once in Seattle, we hopped on the bus to Cap Hill. At each stop, the number of passengers in black dresses and bizarre hats grew.
The normal commuters were mostly curious, with the exception of one bitter woman.
"Are you some kind of cult?" she spat at us. "I won't tolerate Satanists. You need to get off this bus right now."
One of the younger girls grew visibly upset at the accusation, and when an explanation of GISHWHES fell on deaf ears, someone stood up to lead the bus in a rousing chorus of "Over the River and Through the Woods" (Item 21).
The woman complained to the bus driver about our lack of respect, demanding that he shut us up or kick us off. Fortunately, the confused driver stayed the course and dropped us off at the community center, where a line of French maids wound through the parking lot.
The line fed into a stuffy gymnasium, which eventually filled with 695 people. I tamped down on the crowd anxiety that leaked out my palms in a sweaty mess.
When Misha Collins appeared and slipped his own French maid costume over his clothes, the zealous screams made me think maybe the crazy bus lady wasn't so off about the cult thing after all.
It turned out that the goal of the day was to break a number of ridiculous Guinness world records.
For "Most People in a Decorated Hat Competition", we put on our "Still Life" hats while judges came by and picked out the best for us to vote on.
For "Largest Gathering of People Dressed as French Maids", we swapped the elaborate hats for our lacy caps and stood again.
Then, the coordinators ushered us outside to attempt "Longest Human Chain to Pass Through a Hula Hoop". To qualify, the chain had to remain unbroken for the duration. It was a long time to hold a stranger's hand on a hot summer day, but my neighbors kept me entertained as we swapped jokes and stories.
There was a moment of excitement as the hula hoop passed through our section. I shrugged the hoop over my head and stepped through, then slid it onto the next person's arm. Then, it was back to sitting and waiting. Misha came around to chat and pour water in our mouths, but despite his best efforts, several people passed out from heat stroke. :o
Then it was the long trip back on the ferry, spent in the company of some new friends. At this point, my costume was old hat, and I no longer felt nervous about others' reactions.
That's the beauty of GISHWHES. In one week, you will meet people from around the world, help the community, break out of your comfort zone, and do things you never imagined. At the end of it, your definition of "normal" will be changed forever, and you just might find yourself doing all these things on your own. Though I'm not sure the world will be seeing much more of me in a French maid costume...
Thanks for reading! All words and photos are mine, with the exception of screenshots from the Gishwhes and Guiness World Records sites. Feel free to follow along for more silly memories alongside the usual book-and-travel-obsessed ramblings.
-Katie, @therovingreader