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About the Organizers

The Pretty Darn Good Race is the brainchild of father-daughter team “Racemeisters” Rich and Leslie Gallaher.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          Rich is 57, and is kind of a Great Adventurer wannabee.  He pilots a hot air balloon, enjoys the exploration sport of geocaching, and sailed on a tall ship, the Lady Washington, as the cook.  He has also flown a powered parachute and a one-man balloon with the propane tank strapped to his back.  In real life, he is a family and juvenile law court commissioner.  He and wife Janie have been married for 37 years.

          Leslie is 30.  She is also an Adventurer wannabee.  Her adventures include bungee jumping, hot air ballooning, and planning this race.  Leslie has been a professional massage therapist for almost 4 years. Event planning seems to have become a hobby for Leslie, as she has served as  the Convention Chairperson for the American Massage Therapy Association-Washington Chapter for the past 2 years.  She really wants to sky dive, paraglide and start a shuffleboard league.  

          Janie is also 57.  While she is not such an adventurer, she has great ideas for the race.  For the first race, she had a limited role in the planning, contributing some ideas and helping with the arrangements.  She was also the first (and only) monitor during the 1st race.  For the 2nd race, Janie got more involved in planning, but started later in the process.  Still, she contributed valuable ideas and we all agreed she should become a full-fledged Racemeister for the 2006 race.

          All are fans of the Amazing Race.  Rich and Leslie independently had ideas about how they might develop a local race based on the Amazing Race.  Rich’s original idea involved a race spanning several weekends and covering several counties in Western Washington.  Leslie’s thoughts were on a more realistic scale.   Although at times they discussed ideas of setting up a business or promoting fund-raising races, they eventually agreed that they really just wanted to do the Race for the fun of it.

          Leslie came up with the name for the Pretty Darn Good Race.  Together with Janie, Leslie and Rich developed the plans for the Race in 2003.  They came up with a general plan for the race, and developed the original route.  However, Rich and Leslie were also applying as contestants on the Amazing Race 5, and the time requirements for that process made it difficult to schedule the race with enough time for potential contestants to plan for it.  They scheduled the race in October 2003 but did not get enough contestants, and the plans were put on hold.

          After The Amazing Race “overlooked” them, the Racemeisters revived their plans for the Pretty Darn Good Race.  The planning involved several trips to check out possible destination sites and several trips around the eventual course in order to work out logistics and timing.  Although Janie provided advice that went into the planning, she also contributed a great deal of patience.  Leslie and Rich could not talk to anyone but each other and Janie about the race, because friends and other family members were potential contestants!

          In the final weeks leading up to the Race, the Racemeisters made additional trips around the course, worked out the clues, printed up clues and envelopes, developed a logo, worked out a budget, created t-shirt decals and saw to many other details.  Janie ironed decals on two sides of 20 t-shirts, created money sacks for the cash prizes and took care of other details (that she had not signed on for).

          On the day of the first Race, Rich, Leslie and Janie served as race monitors, racing around the course trying (not always successfully) to stay one step ahead of the racers.

          Each year, we have learned a little more about putting on the race.  We plan to continue putting on the race as long as we have the imagination to come up with new challenges and as long as people are interested in racing.