By Robert Emslie
On a long drive, say down California’s Central Valley on I5, or the vast wasteland that is I70 across the mid-west, you can find yourself getting bored. Sometimes you have a traveling companion, but even then there’s only so much you can talk about. And that’s when you can start playing games. Not like that movie Duel kind of games, but games like license plate bingo or scavenger hunt. It can make the hours and miles pass by a little quicker, and helps keep you from nodding off and doing some unintended off-roading.
As the driver, you’re kind of limited in the games you can play, Auto Bingo boards aren’t too much of a distraction, but it’s probably best if someone else slides the covers for you. Plus, that’s one of the games that’s a whole lot less fun playing in solitary .
License plate bingo, or if you’re a philatelist, state cataloging, is good whether you’re going solo or in a group. Of course there’s tons of other games that aren’t specifically auto-related but can be played while on a trip- you might remember Dan Aykroyd and Albert Brooks playing Name that Tune from the opening of the Twilight Zone movie a few years back-
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCMMZQFVf4U&feature=related[/youtube]
Hopefully your road games don’t end that way, but even if they do what are they? What do you do to keep yourself entertained when are we there yet just doesn’t seem funny anymore, and even AM radio can’t keep your attention?
Image source: [primitiveculture.blogspot.com]
Jeff Glucker
my favorite is the immortal "Hey Cow!", in which when passing a field of cows that lies next to the road, the car stops, the windows/doors open and everyone yells "hey cow!". Then you count the number of cows that look at you. Its a sort of an everyone's a winner game, but there's no perfect way to control it enough to make it a reliable competition.
Are you a member of my family and not telling me?
I hate that game, but everyone else (wife, siblings, etc) love it.
You just need to get in the mood.
“Cemetery…… you lose all your cows!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzmoImm0kio
Jump to 3:30.
Here in the midwest, domestic brands are still king. On the drive between Des Moines and KC, which I make a few times each year, I keep a running tally of the number of vehicles, by manufacturer, coming the opposite direction.
Chicken?
When I was a kid, and we used to drive all over the country on yearly (or sometimes more frequent) family vacations, I remember my parents giving me as b-day gift one year a roadkill bingo game. Kind of fun, really, with spaces for deer, cats, squirrels, birds, etc., plus spaces for roadkill smell and "URK" – unidentified roadkill.
On one trip from KC to Williamsburg VA, back around 2002 or so, my wife and I nailed plates from every state. Yes, all 50, Hawaii and Alaska included. We haven't played the game since; it would just be anticlimactic now.
2 games (there are more, but not nearly as fun).
One, find a better radio station.
Two, don't get killed by the chick in the Cayenne watching YouTube on her phone.
My teenage daughter and I play "Make up stories about the people in other cars."
…although this usually devolves into a creepy game of "Watch to see how many voyeuristic truckers will jockey for a leering look into our car."
Which is the creepy part, Jules? That truckers leer? Or that you make a game out of voyeuring the voyeurs?
-On family trips me and my dad would try to be the first one to figure out the make and model of an oncoming vehicle. And if it was actually a Silverado with a topper instead of a Suburban, it didn't count.
-On South Dakota license plates you can figure out in which county a car is registered by what the first 1-2 numbers are, so I try to figure out where a car is from if I don't already know the county code. (easy example: if I know 42 is Kingsbury and 44 is Lincoln, a 43 plate must be Lake.)
-On longer trips I'll try to keep track of the 'most foreign' plates I see, especially unexpected vehicles (example: Ontario-registered Smart on I-29 near Sisseton, SD.)
Florida license plates used to be the same way. The first one or two digits on the license plate was a county code. Once while driving deep in Mexico, we and another car noted that we both had the same code on our Florida plates. We ended up stopping and chatting by the side of the road. Turned out we were all from the same smallish town.
Idaho and Kansas also indicate the county.
Me and my brother are usually good for a game of Dingle. For the uninformed, in Dingle you observe the oncoming vehicles and those that have a burnt out head light are "Dingles", declared by fistbumping the headliner and declaring "dingle".
Another favourite of mine is Brake Light Bingo. Basically you get something remotely close to a radar gun and you carefully point it at different vehicles. If the brake lights light up, BINGO!
The game is also known as Padiddle in other parts of the country
I've yet to have a drive long enough to tax my attention span, including 14 hours from Toronto to Boston (we accidentally had the GPS set to shortest distance instead of shortest time), although I had some of the twistier bits through Vermont and New Hampshire to keep me entertained.
The wife and I count the Subaru's we come across. Deduct one point for every incorrect sighting.
Also play SlugBug (1998-newer excluded)
We also load up the MP3 players with Podcasts to get some education.
When I was a kid on family trips, Mom told us we had to hold our breath whenever we passed by a graveyard, otherwise we risked breathing in a dead spirit. A bit creepy for a child, isn't it? Large cemeteries were a challenge. What were you thinking, Mom?
I find myself trying to avoid hitting the raised reflective dots when changing lanes at speed on the highway. Must resist the urge to play slalom…
Sounds like a shorter, but creepier and more intense version of my parents' "quiet game" where me and my sister were the only contestants, and the winner was the one who stayed quiet longer.
I play the "at what speed does the Porsche sunroof start to flap open from the back?" game when in the 924. The answer is around 65 MPH. When driving the Caravan, I play "top speed challenge". My high score at that game is 97 MPH, which is just keeping up with traffic on I-275. This is when it's just me in the car. When I have a friend in the car, we normally just talk and/or listen to the radio.