games

I love cycling. The repetitive pedal turning is very soothing and it’s great to see different scenery. There are times when the scenery doesn’t change as quickly or as often as you would like. Particularly on bike trails or quiet roads where traffic doesn’t require lots of attention, this gives plenty of opportunity to play some on the road games. Please note that these high paced dynamic activities are not suitable for your daily commute (unless you live in Eastern Colorado) or any trafficked route. We accept no responsibility if you choose to play these in an inappropriate environment. Unless you are a touring cyclist, it might be best to view them as hiking not biking games. This list is not comprehensive, it includes some newer inventions and some old favourites.

‘Stick or Snake’

This recent addition to our standard selection was inspired by the snake running over incident on the Katy trail. ‘Stick or Snake’ is pretty self explanatory, as you approach the ‘Stick or Snake’ call out which you think it is. This is really an individual game, but feel free to discuss your selections with your riding buddy if you have one. Admittedly this game is not so good for UK hikes and bike rides unless you have a very overactive imagination. Some of the offshoot games might be more appropriate to a wider international audience. These included, but were not limited, to ‘foliage or frog’, ‘shadow or squirrel’, and the alliteration failures ‘rock or turtle’ and ‘leaf or butterfly’. Jo performed particularly poorly in ‘deer or dog’. Feel free to come up with your own variations. We are not looking forward to ‘bear or boulder’.

‘Kansas‘

Kansas cycling brought out Jo’s creative side. As you begin a new whole km or mile on your bike computer, change the display away from a distance setting. In Jo’s qualitative world, you don’t use your clock/speedo, just try to guess when you have completed that km or mile. Change it back and see how you did. Don’t be tempted (as I am to try to work out distance between telegraph poles and calculate. Just go on feeling. Again, more of an individual game, but you can see who is closest percentage wise. We were usually between 10-20% off. You will have time to work this out. Classic.

‘Kansas 2′

Who says academics have no imagination. Another Jo invention. Try to cycle along the white line for as long as you can without either tyre leaving it. Current record 0.37 miles. This did not hold our attention for very long and should not be played in wet conditions.

‘As many as you can…’

As previously covered in our Portugal post, this is where one person chooses a category and you take it turns to name something from it until someone runs out.

We favour songs, eg. Beatles songs (Jo won), Take That songs (I won), songs with a colour/day/name in, etc. Feel free to share your own categories below to help entertain us. Pretty sure we are now onto repeats.

How far is…..?

Particularly good in open spaces, this multi-player game requires each competitor to guess how far away a landmark is. Examples include grain stores. In our recent experience that is all.

‘Horse‘

A true classic never dies. If you have ever been on a car/minibus/bus journey with me you have probably played this already (unlucky sports teams of Loughborough and Birstall). I learned this game in Canada from an inspirational teacher. I have since discovered that this is a North America wide game, though not everyone knows the extension tasks. Here’s the game.

If you see one horse, say ‘horse’. Whoever says it first gets one on their total.

If you see two horses, say ‘horse, horse’. Whoever says it first gets two on their total.

If you see three horses, same thing.

For four or more, the game changes. You say ‘horse ranch.’ If you say it first you get all the horses in that group. Should you be in the area, the 105 from Colorado Springs towards Denver is the best road I have been on for this.

Winner is the person with the most at the end of the journey.

*Phil’s extension activity: if you see a church with graveyard or cemetery say ‘Bury your horses!’ If you are first to say this, you keep all your horses and everyone else goes back to zero, unlucky!*

The Number Plate Game

Our current ‘licence plate’ game is to try to see one from every state. We have three to go. As we like to live on the edge, we have made this more competitive by trying to name the ‘last seen’ states and awarding points for this. In case you are interested, if we see Delware next, I win, if we see North Dakota next, we tie. Jo wins in the unlikely event that we see both North Dakota and Hawaii before Delaware. Got it?!

Please share your own road games below. Note that due to the high paced nature of our journey, eye spy is not a go.

If all else fails to entertain us, we do enjoy a good monkey bars/slide stop…