The weekend of August 26, I participated in the crazy thing called Questival with one of my best friends, Emily Barbosa. Have you ever done something and looked back on it and thought “Am I actually cool enough to have done this?” or “That was crazy, did it actually happen?” Questival is one of those things. Most people haven’t heard of Questival, so allow me to explain what it is: a 24-hour adventure race through one of about 10 cities (we obviously did the Chicago race, since that’s where we are) sponsored by this awesome company called Cotopaxi. It is a competition, so you have to do some crazy insane challenges in order to gain points (more on those later), travelling all across the city with your team to do so. While I made some crazy memories over the course of the weekend, I also learned a lot in such a brief 24-hour period.

The first and possibly most obvious thing I learned was about Chicago. Last year, my friends and I went into Chicago several times, but we never really strayed far from the loop. A couple times, I left our little square of Chicago that I was familiar with to go to a concert, but those were brief little ventures. During Questival, we ended biking (yes biking, because neither Emily nor I have a car) 50 miles- if not more. We saw parts of Chicago that I didn’t even know existed. We found a really cool rock gym that I am for sure going back to. We discovered the Lincoln park area, which you really think I would’ve done sooner. We went to the “beach” on Lake Michigan- where I promptly proceeded to walk about chest deep into the freezing water while fully clothed for one of our challenges. We got to see the rock where the Obamas had their first kiss. We biked down to where UChicago is, which was so far away it didn’t feel like it was still in Chicago.

The second thing I learned was about the people of Chicago. We obviously saw lots of different people during our excursion and several of our challenges were people related. We ran into a lady who had not only heard of Wheaton College, but loved going to see the Shakespeare in the Park shows that our actors and actresses put on each year. We met a very solid dude who worked at Subway and filled up our water bottles for us at the facet behind the counter since they didn’t have water in their fountain machine. We met a man who stood outside CVS selling magazines, trying to keep himself and others off the streets. For one of our challenges, we gave a lady working at Dunkin Donuts a cute little origami swan made from a dollar bill. Did our origami swan or protein bars make a huge difference in these people’s lives? No, but our goal was to try to brighten up their day, and I think we accomplished that much. Listening to people so different from us and hearing their stories was a pleasant change for the “Wheaton bubble” we are often in.

I honestly don’t know how much I could write about Questival, but my guess is probably a lot more than I already have. We did everything from acts of kindness to singing a Justin Bieber song while Emily was on the handle bars of the bike I was riding to complimenting a random guy’s shoes to walking on a slackline backwards. Can I also call attention to the fact that we biked 50 miles? We also didn’t really take the time to properly eat or sleep during these 24 hours, so yea, that was crazy. We also had a huge endorphin high, which might contribute to some of it. Did the day after kinda suck? Yes, yes it did. I stayed curled in a ball on my futon, wrapped in several layers while continuously stuffing my face with food as my body attempted to recover. Was it totally worth it? ABSOLUTELY. Emily and I have already decided to do it again next year, and we’re planning on dragging as many people as possible with us- preferably at least one person with a car, so we don't end up biking 50 miles again... If you’re interested in more of the awesome shenanigans we got up to, here’s the link to our team page, The Thunderbirds and the Official Questival Video.