Every year, the McKee family attracts adventurers from far and wide with its 12-acre navigational behemoth-a massive corn maze dotted with eight disconnected markers. Some come for everlasting glory, most to seek the grand prize: one hundred bucks in cash-money to the person who can collect all markers in the shortest time-and make it out alive.
Thinking that this week's issue needed more legume-related record-breaking, recess decided to send a crack contingent of corn connoisseurs to challenge the best and brightest of Rougemont, N.C. to a simple game of "find the ill-marked, weathered sign only barely discernible from the surrounding vegetation."
1:07 p.m.: Our heroes set out in Lexi's pimped-out, country road-ready Audi, with special gravel resistant suspension.
1:38 p.m.: We realize it has taken us roughly 31 minutes to travel 15 miles at an average velocity of not bloody fast enough.
1:43 p.m.: The Audi turns onto crappy gravel road No. 1
1:44 p.m.: The underbelly of the car and gravel road discover their mutual love of muted clanking noises and become friends... with benefits.
1:50 p.m.: We enter the maze. Spirits are high, so are blood-alcohol levels.
1:59 p.m.: We opt to tackle the "grown-ups'" section of the maze-our first major mistake of the day.
2:00 p.m.: The team is lost.
2:12 p.m.: Alex calms everyone and decides that keeping one hand on the left wall will eventually let us navigate the maze. Christine promptly hangs a right.
2:28 p.m.: Three illegal cuts through the wall later and we come across a corn sprite cunningly disguised as a random kid who directs us to marker one-huzzah!
2:36 p.m.: DGraham, suffering mild heatstroke, begins an earnest debate about the pros and cons of the Reagan administration.
2:49 p.m.: Subsequent attempts to locate markers prove fruitless. Our illusions of completing the maze turn to desperate hopes of making it to the exit before heat-blindness sets in.
2:50 p.m.: Heat-blindness overtakes Lauren.
3:06 p.m.: Ragged and bleeding, the team drags themselves from the exit.
3:10 p.m: Alex treats the recess team to ice cream and pumpkins. All rejoice!
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