Fresno Famous

This was a Creative Fresno heavy weekend for me.

* First off: Hit up the group's monthly Blender at Belana in Fig Garden Village. Never been there before (Belana, not the Village).
I must say, I had a good time. Mostly milled around the bar, met some new people. I felt like I was always in the way (waiters and bus boys passing by) and maybe I was. The food (pizzas and lots of it) was good and the staff were gracious hosts.

* In second place: Competed in Fresno's first Urban Dare with Travis Sheridan. We entered as Team CF (Creative Fresno) ironically, the least creative name ever.
The Amazing-race style game puts contestants knowledge of Fresno (and/or their use of Google-friendly friends) to the test, so we should have killed it, right? And we did.
I'd like to say we won.
Nope.
It was through no fault of our own, though. We ran a hard, clean race. We had each of the 12 clues roughly answered and a route drawn out within the first five minutes (less). Our tech team was standing by to Google-answer any questions we had. For instance, where exactly in courthouse park was the memorial donated by the people of Cannes, France? The answer? Not where we thought.
The phyical challenges, while demanding (20-push-ups, a wheel barrow carry), were quickly overcome.
We stumbled with the Tower District clue, but everyone did.
For those who'd like to try:

Bruce Lee said, show me your ----. Get a picture with two Tower District establishments with this in the name.

Hint: It's not legs, nipple, spirit or tattoo.
What the race came down to (at least for us) was phyical endurance. We walked/ran/jogged the whole way (we would have taken a bus had we seen one). But the guys who won were a long-and-lean marathon-running dream team, who sprinted right through the whole thing. Also, they just happened to live downtown AND probably knew as much, or more, about Fresno than we did.
In the end, they beat us by 40 minutes. No joke. By the time we arrived at Mezcal (the final stop), they were looking rested and sipping beer (not really).
We beat the third place team by another 30 minutes, if that gives you an idea of how far ahead they were.
For more info and some fun pictures, The Fresno Bee covered the race, and also ran a team.

* And finally: Spent Sunday afternoon putting together the last details for the FUSE Festival. Look for a complete schedule (who plays when, where), along with maps/info on parking/etc. in the next couple of days.