1. Kick the Can. My house was the ultimate kick the can house. Games would sometimes go on for hours, usually until one person got stuck being "it" for so long that they got mad and quit. The problem with kick the can was that we got too good at it... everybody knew exactly where they could and couldn't be seen, and the "it" person knew exactly how far they could wander from the can without being caught. This eventually led to a long series of stalemates, and the eventual decline of kick the can. 

2. Jackpot (aka 500). Sometimes we would play with a football, other times with a baseball, or better yet an aerobie flying ring. The real danger of this game was the "dead or alive" rule, which often lead to some nasty collisions and dogpiles. The game would end either when somebody got hurt, or when the ball/frisbee/ring got stuck in a tree. It was usually the latter.

3. Quince home-run derby. Question: what is the most useless fruit in the world? Answer: a quince. And every year, the quince tree in my back yard drops several tons of rotten quince onto my lawn that then have to be picked up and disposed of. Solution: pick the quince while they are still small, then compete to see how many in a row each person can hit over the neighbours' hedge with a baseball bat. Sometimes we'd play for total homers, sometimes for farthest distance, or we also had a "three strikes you're out" variation. Regardless of how we played the game, it inevitably degenerated into whacking baby-quince at each other from point blank range. Good times, though...

4. Quince driving range. Replace the baseball bat with a golf club and it becomes a whole new game.

5. Dishsoap on the trampoline. Back in the 90's, when trampolines didn't come with 1-person-at-a-time limitations, a trampoline could be easily transformed into an unpredictable, crazy, bouncing, sliding, face-kicking, tooth-chipping instrument of mayhem!! The game ends when somebody cracks their head open.

6. Dishsoap Driveway. this game originated when we discovered a slippery oil skid at the bottom of my parents' sloped driveway. We would put a variety of obstacles at the bottom of the driveway and try to maneuver through them by skidding around them kneeling on a skateboard. The addition of dishsoap increased the potential for sweet stunts.

7. Wasp hunting. There were a few summers when the wasp population was getting out of hand, so we took it upon ourselves to fight back. The method of choice was to have one kid trap a wasp under a badminton racket, then to have another kid smack the racket and wasp with a croquet mallet. The racket and mallet could then be used to collect the wasp corpse and add it to the pile. We soon learned that wasps are attracted to the scent of their dead, and began using the dead wasps as bait for the live ones. Amazingly, nobody ever got stung. Surely everyone else's neighbourhood played this perfectly-normal game....... right? 

8. Skateboards tied to bikes with skipping ropes. Exactly what it sounds like. 

9. Surge. This was a great game for a hot summer day. Step one: Gather up every shoe in the neighbourhood. Step two: have someone hide the shoes in the back yard while everyone else waits anxiously in the front. Step three: the shoe hider yells "SUUUURRRGE!!!" and everyone stampedes to the back yard to find the shoes. Finally, the most important part of the game: punishing the person who found the least shoes by dumping buckets of ice-water over their head from my parents' deck.

10. Fling 'em. This was the only "indoor" game we ever played (excluding board and card games). Fling 'em was always perfect for a rainy day. It was played in my next-door neighbour's basement, which only had one small window. We would use a big piece of plywood to black out the window, and fill the room with every nerf-ball, koosh-ball, tennis-ball, bouncy-ball and beany-baby we could get our hands on. We would then divide the room into two "bases" by setting up the couches across from each other. Then we would turn off the lights and throw shit at each other. Ah, the simple pleasures of life. 

11. The Game. We never came up with a name for it, but it was something like a cross between capture the flag, treasure-hunting, and cops-and-robbers, only on a gigantic scale. The whole neighbourhood was the playing area, and the "flags" were five 2L pop bottles per team. Unlike capture the flag, the bottles did not have to be visible; they could even be completely buried in the ground! There were two bases on opposite ends of the street. Tagging people wasn't enough, either... they had to be dragged all the way back to the base, and then tied up to keep them from escaping. There were no time-outs in the Game. It was always on, even when the prisoners were allowed to go home for dinner. Games would often last for several days before a team managed to find all the bottles. I'm sure there are lots still buried out there. 

current mood: nostalgic

This Saturday my friend and I are doing the Mitsubishi City Chase in Vancouver!! Basically it's the closest thing there is to Amazing Race if you're Canadian; there will be 15-20 "chase points" set up around Vancouver with a different challenge at each one, and the first team to complete ten of them (either on foot or using public transit) wins! The winner gets to go to a mystery location somewhere in Canada for the national championships, and then that winner gets a car and goes to the world championships in Europe. It's also going to be on CBC in the fall! I'm definitely not expecting to win, but this is just the sort of thing that my competitive personality lives for! I think we'll be a pretty good team... we both know the city really well, she's a great athlete and I might not be the best runner but I'm good at puzzles and things, and willing to eat gross food! We've already got some of our strategy worked out. Win or lose, I'm convinced that this is going to be one of the most fun events I've ever participated in! SO excited! And I'll let you all know how it goes, of course :) 

Arts County Fair (aka ACF, aka the Happiest Day of the Year, aka 15000 Drunks on a Field) was officially cancelled this week. They're saying it's for financial reasons, citing a $50000 debt. This makes me incredibly sad... for 16 years, ACF was one of very few events that brought UBC students together.  I've been to four Arts County Fairs, and each one has been a crazy, memorable experience (except for that one that I can't really remember at all...). 

I'm extremely disappointed in:  
- the neighbouring condo residents who complained fiercely about one day of noise
- the students who never supported the event by buying tickets, even if they did celebrate ACF day.
- the University, for not supporting one of UBC's defining events

and I'm also mildly disappointed with the AUS, who organize the Fair. I know that they put in a huge effort every year, but at the same time I feel like they could have fought harder to keep ACF- if people had known that ACF was in danger of cancellation, surely we could have come up with something (fundraisers, sponsorship, more volunteers, etc.), but instead it felt like it was flat-out cancelled without notice. And yes, the AMS is planning an alternate event for the last day of classes, but it just won't be the same...

Farewell ACF... you were a good'er.