One not terribly fun thing was all the work that went into preparing for the event. Last year I was just a spare dude running around with improvised viking constumes consisting of random fur pieces and a cart where the only decoration was a papier-mache dragon head. By opting to be in charge and choosing to go with a bit more decorum this year, the required work input ended up being much greater. But we still had a decent, if back-breaking, time.
Here we have the design schematic for our cart. It's an interesting prospect to measure a shopping cart while its stowed in the back of a CRV. BUT the measurements were spot-on.
An artistic shot including the schmatic, Dan and the Splendorous Brigitte, and some paper towels. Also, we drank beer that night.
The finished uniforms. Our team was 2016 Or Bust, and each person had a different means of corruption by which Chicago might (or will) attempt to secure the upcoming Olympic bid. All the slogans but the yellow one pertain to some extent to recent Chicago news items. Slogans and commentary follow the picture...
Yellow- "Ensure fairness by giving steroids to all athletes." No specific tie-in.Blue- "Drain Tokyo Bay to get water for marathoners." Two years ago during an unseasonably warm run in October, the Chicago marathon had to be shut down because of major health concerns, in part due to the water stations running out.
Black- "Increase security by hiring 14 year old cops." True story: In February of this year a 14 year old boy worked a 5 hour shift at a south side precinct. He wrote tickets and even drove the squad car. His partner had no idea. Good times.
Green- "Cash considerations to friends of Blago IOC Pres." Think that one is pretty self-evident, no? On the shirt Blago was crossed out.
Red- "Frank 'The Breeze' Calabrese visits Rio mayor." One of many local mobsters who have recently been put on trial, Frank had some rather unpleasant tendencies. Also, he owns race horses.
And now, the finished product of the cart. I made a huge find of a GIANT cardboard box by my trash, that was turned into two large briefcase sides (thank you black spray paint and chrome duct tape), on which we put various travel stickers, i.e. painted and printed Olympic pictures. This side also shows the To: IOC President From: Chicago 2016 Committee. There were bills sticking out of the top of the case.
Here's a nice picture of the inside of our cart. It was FULL of food which we pushed around for the whole race (most teams have someone drop it off at the end, but I decided we should be heroes and just push it the whole way. Ugh, that was like 200# of food to schlep around.). A great collection of food, big thanks to all who donated. Also visible: a tarp which would come in handy later when it quasi-poured on us, and the ropes we used to pull the cart.
And a nice picture of the team (minus the left half of the Tremendous Brigitte's face, sadly), well into the race when we were all pretty damn well soaked. We did a pretty nice job of covering up the waterproofish inner layers we had on, but wet pants and shoes still made for a rather cold experience. The beer helped fight against that.
And now we reach the 'other teams' section. Seeing how the other teams get made up is one of the most entertaining parts of Chiditarod. This team was dressed as pigs, more important was that they chopped the heck out of their cart and mounted a working charcoal grill into it. They then cooked and dispensed bacon throughout the race. They really made the most of it, as they were the ones who showed up in "Dead Fucking Last" halfway through the concluding awards ceremony.
This team was the best. They did monster work chopping their cart up into the phone booth from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. Their costumes were also top-notch. These guys call themselves Action Squad, and their Top Gun cart last year was really really good also. Not visible here: they did have an antenna apparatus for the top of the booth.
Below was one group that I really enjoyed: they were the Tamale Man, a middle aged latino guy who roams around Chicago bars selling fresh and warm tamales. Their cart was a big cooler. Not visible here was the actual Man, but two of the Tamales are watching the cart. 
Kind of a general shot here, but in particular wanted to capture the Bluth Company Staircar from Arrested Development, which did have fully functional stairs in it. They also had a blue Tobias.
These undead housemaids decided that Chiditarod was a good reason to smoke pot outside of the bar. Alrighty then!
A personal favorite here: the Mad Max Revolution crew. They even had a guy with the funny goggles with the little antennas. I suppose that details is lost on most people out there.
Another group did a pretty sweet Pee Wee Herman theme, including one of the most bizarre characters ever to grace TV, Chairy! And hye, take note of that cart with the flag on it, you'll see that again soon.
One of the most fun parts of the race itself is the rampant sabotage that goes down, which can get pretty creative. I'm not sure what the prize-winning act of sabotage was, but here's the fun I had outside of one of the bars, and the not-as-much fun the victims had undoing it... I put a good 60 feet of rope around three carts that were left alone.
Hey! This cart looks familiar! And it looks oddly out of place, unless you think the proper place of a shopping cart is serving the community of roof-dwellers.
And here is the cart being taken down, sadly NOT by the ladies whose cart it was, but by one of the Chiditarod organizers. Apparently the local community isn't big fans of carts on rooves messing up the eaves of the building. For future reference, the local community is also not big on fifty people clogging up an alley so people can't get to their garages.
And here, the improvised trophies. Sadly, 2016 Or Bust did NOT garner any awards, despite pushing around all that food all day. We did have the most food when we unloaded our cart, however a group five carts behind us unloaded a car full of food, probable 300# worth, and after that a group came in with 2300 pounds of food. Good heavens. I'm okay with losing out to a group that does such a great job as that.
All in all, it was one wet, but very good, time.
