Scavenger Hunt

In the prologue at the beginning of the race, racers picked up special instructions. Here are the contents of said instructions:

The Atomic Adventure Race presented by Fuji Bikes would like competitors to help rid Dawson Forest of some items for fun and profit!

As a side challenge, you may turn in these items at the next manned CP for additional raffle tickets at the post-race gear drawing.

Be sure to have Course Staff take note of the items and tally their ticket reward on their clipboards.

These will be tallied before the post-race ceremony and additional tickets handed out.

The more tickets, the better odds of getting first pick. You get the drift. If it's on this list, we've seen it out there.

• 3 Firearm Shell Casing - 1 ticket
• 2 Plastic utensil - 1 ticket
  
• Aluminum Can/Plastic bottle - 1 ticket
  
• Plastic Garbage Bags - 1 ticket
  
• Rusty pliers - 1 ticket
  
• 10 gel packs/energy bar packages/food wrappers - 1 ticket
  
• Full size potato chip bag - 1 ticket
• Discarded cicada skin - 1 ticket, but must be intact
• Glass bottle - 2 tickets
  
• Hiking boot - 2 tickets
• Bike tire - 2 tickets
• Cardboard box - 2 tickets
  
• Snake skin (molted, minus the snake) - 5 tickets, and finders keepers!
  
• Old rusty Bike - 20 tickets
• Car tire - 20 tickets
• Drum Barrels - 20 tickets
• Plastic Yard Swan - 100 tickets
• Box mattress with rusty springs - 200 tickets
• Lock of Joanna's hair - 1 ticket

Now, we had to do the prologue to thin out the teams, but we hated the notion of doing it just for that. So we came up with this environment-friendly way of making worthwhile. We have a lot of gear, and if you want first pick, you can certainly up your odds. Everybody received one raffle ticket at check-in (note this is different from the raffle for the bike frame--this is for the $3000 of stuff in the gear raffle--from tire sets, Reality Bikes/Spike's Running Company/Road ID/TheElleStudio gift cards, night riding light systems, Numa Sports Optics glasses, Inov-8 packs and shoes, Axis Gear Nav-360 map boards, and High Gear Altimeters from ROC Gear.

I was unsure of how many teams would participate, but the results are clear. The stuff that was removed from the forest:

• 8 shotgun shells
• 92 plastic wrappers
• 34 soda cans
• 1 piece of plastic
• 29 plastic bottles
• 3 pieces of paper
• 16 plastic bags
• 1 glass bottle
• 1 shoe
• 1 fishing pole (Kickapoo Scouts gave up on their plans microwave a 5-pounder when they weren't biting in the Etowah)
  
• 1 piece of a mirror
• 1 soft ball
• 1 wine bottle
• 1 coffee cup
• 1 piece of rope
• 1 wrench
• 1 cigarette pack (Tim Buchholz from Shake-A-Leg Miami apparently is a smoker)
  
• 1 paper cup
• 1 pair of rusty pliers (FOUND MY PLIERS by Team Florida Xtreme/Masters)
  
• 4 car tires (3 returned by People's Temple Agricultural Project at canoe put-in/TA6, 1 returned by This Is Gonna Hurt at Lindsey Ford/TA4)
  
• and some withdrawn blisters from Rhino Militia (EEEEWWWWW!!! I think I should have taken away some raffle tickets for this one).

Guys, thanks a bunch. As you can see, it was a huge success, and it paid off for the People's Temple Agricultural Project, whose tire-carrying efforts earned them some early picks in the raffle drawing.