Our normal venue is E's backyard. She rents a house with a few people and they have an enormous backyard and garden. The backyard is probably nearly an acre. She has a full sized trampoline back there with room to spare. Hence she is often nominated as the hostess for team eats. It's somewhat unfair I guess as some people in the end did not come, though they said they would but E and J did not have that option since they were volunteered to host. K volunteered the venue but he did offer to do it at his house if E was too busy. I was glad that it was at E's since she's a somewhat comfortable biking distance, or so I thought. There was a nasty hill which I'll admit I had to walk my bike up. I don't know how she bikes to and from work everyday. Impressive. K lives about twice the distance and there is more traffic from here to there to here :-(.
I had a big lunch or big in the sense of calories. I went up the road to an Indian take away. It really isn't worth noting. I've been there before and they gave me a piece of charcoal instead of naan bread. This time, the naan was much nicer but I happened to open the container in the restaurant so as to avoid the charcoal naan and noted that they had given me cauliflour instead of lentils. They did not reserve. I could see they they scooped out of the cauliflour and gave me a small container of lentils as it was a bit soupy. I should have stuck with the Gobi Aloo (cauliflour and potato)
Anyhoo, I also munched on crackers after that, so I didn't feel much like a salmon burger as I had planned. So I took the massive container of Babaganoush I have left and some corn chips with me to share. I brought a bottle of Antelope Ridge Chardonnay with me as well. In the end, I had quite a bit of homemade salsa and hummous as well. M brought some fresh guacamole from Wholefoods which was inhaled before I had two bites :-o
J also brought a big pile of fresh corn to BBQ and we all had corn on the cob off the Q as well.
I just munched on the corn and snacks while watching the team play Viking Bowling aka Koop. It is just about the dumbest, made up game I've ever seen, possibly other than cricket.
Viking Bowling aka Koop
Equipment:
4 1 ft sticks
12 1ft x 4"x4" blocks of wood
1 2ft x 4"x4" block of wood
12 1 ft dowling rods (1"-1.5" in diameter", they looked like cut up closet rods)
Field:
Pace out a square. I don't know that there were hard and fast rules about this. We used alot of the free space in the yard. Let's say about 10-15 ft long and wide enough to set up the 6 blocks a foot and half apart stood on end.
Stick the 4 sticks at the corners. They mark the field boundaries.
On each end of the, stand the 6 blocks on their ends evenly spaced along the line.
Place the tall block directly in the centre.
Each team stands behind the 6 blocks and either end with their 6 dowling rods. We played with 3 aside though, again, I don't know if that was just because that's what we had.
Choose a method to decide which team goes first. Going first is an advantage so graciousness is not a good election apparently (it was likened to choosing white in chess, Whatever!)
Objective:
Knock all your blocks on the other side down and then finally the centre block.
Rules:
Take turns throwing their dowling rods at the blocks on the other side. If you knock down the centre block, you lose instantly. It's like the 8 ball in pool.
Now, the team who wins the chance to go first TEAM A, throws ALL six of their rods before the opposing team.
Then opposing team, TEAM B picks up all the blocks the other team knocked down and then tosses them onto the field. They must go past the centre line and land withing bounds. If they do not do both these things, the TEAM A may place them where they like (still with in the required area, past centre line from TEAM B). Strategically, placing them near the centre block is the best place to set them up by TEAM A to risk TEAM B knocking down the centre block and losing. They have to be placed at least 1 rod distance from the centre block. The rest of the blocks that landed legally have to stood up on end by TEAM A. There is some wiggle room here to be strategically tricky.
TEAM B must knock down the blocks placed within the field before going for their 6 on the end line. If they accidentally knock down one on the opposing line down, they're simply set back up. If they knock centre down, they lose.
If TEAM B only knocks down some of the 'in field' blocks, they cannot go for the far ones. Then TEAM A takes those that TEAM B did manage knock down and toss those on the field past the centre line from them within bounds.
Strategically speaking, it is best to toss them as close as possible to each other so they can knock multiple blocks down at once.
TEAM A must knock down those new 'in field' ones down before going for more on the End line. They only need to knock THEIR target ones down. IE. the ones that TEAM B had knocked down and are on the far side of the field from them. If they knock down a block out of turn, they are just stood back up except for the centre one.
Once a team has knocked down all their blocks, they may go for the centre block.
Additional stupid rules:
You can only throw underhand. How random is that??!! You're throwing sticks at blocks but apparently, the vikings were adamant about how you toss. W.
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