The Cleveland Plain Dealer
(Original article online)

Riddle me this: Why do they run?

Grant Segall, Plain Dealer Reporter

Dave Gatian and Jim Tierney sprinted up Main Avenue yesterday morning, trading names of pop singers and local businesses between huffs and puffs. "Southside Johnny?" said Gatian.

"Johnny's only one word," replied Tierney.

Gatian whipped a cell phone from his backpack and quizzed a friend: "You know anything that begins with Oz down here? Or Huey?"

"Osborn Engineering?" ventured Tierney.

The Clevelanders were competing in the Urban Challenge, a race blending track, transit and trivia. Pairs of contestants had to decipher clues to identify local landmarks and trek to them in order, by foot or aboard public transportation, in a bid to be first to photograph each one.

But Tierney and Gatian were struggling over their first clue: a Warehouse District company that shares the first word of its two-word name with a singer who slumped after a haircut.

Then a friend pulled up at the curb in a Honda Civic. Gatian seized a phone book from the Civic and looked up Osborn Engineering, at 1300 East Ninth St.

Tierney sighed. "That's out of the Warehouse District."

The contestants thought next of Steve Perry and dashed to the Perry-Payne Building on West Superior Avenue. Trouble was, Perry's career was never particularly shorn. Precious minutes ticked away before they finally hit on Michael Bolton and the Bolton-Pratt Co.

Bolton also stumped the contest's eventual winners, Jeff Faunce of Cleveland and Dave Landreth of Hudson, until they decided to follow another team that happened to head the right way.

Maybe Clevelanders have slow feet or slow brains. Or maybe our heritage is too rich to sort quickly. But the local field was smaller and slower than most of the nation's nine previous Urban Challenges so far, with 11 more to come. Landreth and Faunce, leading about 26 pairs of rivals, took three hours and five minutes to sweat and sleuth their way by foot and public transportation - no private vehicles allowed - from Dick's Last Resort in the Flats through downtown to Shaker Square, University Circle, the West Flats and back to Dick's.

Urban Challenge was conceived by Kevin McCarthy, an Arizona lawyer and manufacturer, who likes to encourage both sorts of swiftness. The winners get a free trip to Las Vegas to compete Nov. 2 in an Urban Challenge there for a grand prize of $50,000.

The amiable McCarthy accepted some alternate answers. One clue said, "Two guys named Jacobs must have had something to do with this one circa 1991." McCarthy was thinking of Richard and David Jacobs' Key Tower at Public Square, opened in 1991. But he accepted the winners' answer: Jacobs Field, opened in 1994 and named for Richard.

So far, 2,000 to 3,000 runners have paid $65 to $75 apiece to enter Urban Challenge. That leaves McCarthy a long way from a profit, after paying his handful of assistants and a lot of hotel bills. But he hopes to draw sponsors and television coverage down the road.

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: gsegall@plaind.com, 216-999-4187