Fusion this year was more challenging than last year. Aaron and I teamed up with Tom and Steve to form Team ISPS Sit Down, Shut Up, and Learn This Lesson. Sleepy and anxious for the event, as we’ve found ourselves many a time in the wee hours in Trinidad, we pulled up to Maracas Beach at 3:30 AM.
The organizer drew a line in the sand and told us the first directions: run to the other side of the beach to get a bottle and a cup, run back to the group to drop off the bottle, send a new runner to fill the cup with red liquid (so no one could cheat and use the ocean), then repeat until the bottle was full. Running in sand is tricky, but even trickier with a cup of liquid that you want to keep as full as possible. The other trick was to find your team on the line amidst the other 59 teams’ head lamps that looked just like our team members’. We filled our bottle after three runs and showed it to the judge, who pointed toward an uphill trail in the bush. And for the rest of the day, we never touched flat ground; there were spots where we used ropes to pull ourselves up the steep inclines and other spots where we sat down and slid down the vertical slopes.
Throughout the rest of the day, we had to stop and answer trivia questions about Trinidad (When did T&T get its independence? 1962), decode long phrases, and RUN.
The major challenge this year was the mighty Mount Hololo, a two mile paved road so steep it would violate American road laws (which nearly broke the spirit of our team), followed by a seven mile jungle sprint.
This was our last day touring the bush of Trinidad, and we fought hard, throwing ourselves one last time into its unpredictable, steaming hot abyss. Next year, I’m coming back with a group of women—who’s in??
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