Peace Frogs: The Final Wart

© 1998, Iron Butt Association, Chicago, Illinois  Please respect our intellectual property rights. Do not distribute this document, or portions therein, without the written permission of the Iron Butt Association, or the author, Bob Higdon.

Ordinarily I wouldn't even bother to finish this off, but a stupid story deserves a stupid ending.

After 14 days and God-only-knows how many thousands of miles, Bob Ray and Greg McQueen, having led the event at every checkpoint, were told in San Jose, Costa Rica last night (7/24/98) that they'd finished second to Team 406 by some 300 points. Their only remaining competitors apparently made it to Panama and back, picked up 20,000 bonus points for their effort, and thereby overcame a 10,000-point deficit in Cancun. The bonuses in and around San Jose had apparently not been enough for Team Unspellable Name to maintain their lead. Second place was worth nothing. I have no other details. Naturally, the Peace Frogs web site hasn't been updated for more than a week.

It was obvious from the start that the organizers of this event didn't have a clue what they were doing. You might be disposed to put that down to inexperience, were it not for the fact that this is the third year in a row they have engineered this event. The two prior runnings also cracked up on the rocks of bizarre rules (or lack of them), a singular lack of preparation, and every other disease that can befall a rally that isn't fit to be run from one end of town to the other, much less across more than a half-dozen international borders. Ray and McQueen could see it coming before the event had even begun; they believed that they could overcome the problems by pure exercise of will and that sanity would eventually find a home on the lily pond. Those, unfortunately, were idle hopes.

I haven't talked to them but I expect to see Bob next weekend in Dallas. I expect that I'll hear more about this disaster at that point. In the meantime I'm outta here for a couple of weeks. I'm not sure which route I'm taking to Texas, but if I happen to see any frogs . . . well, let's just say that I hope the little bugger's affairs are in order.

Bob Higdon
Washington, D.C.