On Saturday, April 26, Cincinnati will play host to an “adventure race” throughout the city called
Quest for the Queen. The event, the brainchild of proud Cincinnatians Matt Feldhaus and John Klingler, promises to lead participants through several of the city’s 52 neighborhoods while engaging them with Cincinnati’s past, present and future.
Quest for the Queen will run throughout the day. Participants will divide into teams of two and will be given a list of riddles, each one directing teams towards checkpoints around the city. The checkpoints will provide opportunities for participants to engage with the community, discover new neighborhoods and businesses, and learn about the history and character of the city.
Participants will be asked to take a photo at each checkpoint, and the first team to get through all the locations will be declared the winner.
“We both love Cincinnati for different reasons, and we wanted to provide a way to show people some of those things and give them a chance to make new discoveries of their own,” Feldhaus says.
An interesting twist to the race is that participants won’t be allowed to use cars or GPS devices (like cell phones) to help them get from place to place.
“The reason for the rules is that we don’t want people to rely on technology—we want them to get familiar with the neighborhoods and the different things going on in them,” Klingler says. “We’ve got a lot of local businesses on board as well; in the end we just want to engage Cincinnatians with their local communities.”
Feldhaus and Klingler are recommending that participants make their way through the quest by bike and public transportation. To that end, the two have secured a partnership with
Metro to guarantee all participants a free day pass to ride the buses throughout the course of the race.
“We got Metro involved because we wanted to show that Cincinnati does have viable and efficient public transit options,” Klingler says. “This provides an easy and fun way for people to try out our city’s bus system.”
Registration for the race is open now. To learn more about Quest for the Queen or to sign up, visit
http://questforthequeen.webs.com.
By Mike Sarason
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