Any Shorter of Ideas I'd be the Dinklage of Ideas

There are times when a bloke just needs to set off in the car for an unspecified amount of time. He knows he just has to be at the helm for as long as it takes.

This is not the romantic wanderlust that will lead to a blog about me getting arrested on the border between Outer Mongolia and Tahiti under suspicion of transporting herring for nefarious means. No, the job is simply to keep the vehicle moving while Darth Baby spends some time in his hyperbaric chamber communicating with the Sith Lords or choking the missing green sheep with his mind… or having a God. Damn. Nap.

Recently, I had to start driving but didn’t have any destination or purpose other than the nap. The Imperial Star Destroyer just had to keep moving, without making the jump to hyperspace. (i.e. Puddle around the suburbs without getting too far from home.)

I can’t imagine the following idea is startlingly original - but I came up with a little game to achieve the above “puddling about” and now I need to iron out the kinks and make it competitive.

I call the game Left Right Out:

Objects of the game (Score weight to be agreed upon with consultation):

1.   Turn alternate left and right turns in your car until you leave the state (I did write earlier that puddling about in your corner of the world was the primary objective, but once you get into it…)

2.   Turn alternating left and rights until you create a repeating circle (to a New Yorker or anyone else living in a planned city, that would make no sense. To a Sydneysider – I accidentally did it in my first two hours.)

3.   Left and rights until you are in the ocean. Playing in Europe? You should be able to go for the open-lay-down-misere. Leave your state, do a circle and end up in the drink all at once. Extra points for committing and actually getting the water above the door sill

4.   Lefts and Rights until you drive by the place that you were born or other significant life event. Again, weights to be determined. If you enjoy and are good at taking your clothes off and cuddling other people with your naughty bits, “I had sex there” is not going to score too well. On the obverse side if you are shy, “I passed out from blushing there” is not that awesome either. Consider swapping. This is where we need to chew over the pooling of goals and then the betting on who can achieve what

5.   Group Goals - Witness Eddy McGuire going through a dumpster, Mark Latham paying a cab fare or Geraldine Doug beating up a nun

To play, you will need:

1 x Car (careful, they’re sharp, so get mummy or daddy to help)

1 x Baby - optional

Rules:

1.   Random generate a number between one and ten by your favourite method

2.   Random generate a direction. All you have to do is not set off in the same direction as last time

3.   Drive in that direction as best you can for the number of minutes or kilometres you generated in step one. Make sure that the next time you play, you stick to time or distance

4.   Once you arrive at point X, mins or km from home, the  Left Right Out begins

5.   Take the first legal and available left turn

6.   Then take the next legal and available right turn

7.   And so on

8.   Do not take “No through Roads” or obvious cul-de-sacs

9.   If you do find yourself in a dead end that was short but not clearly marked, drive back out and continue the journey as though that turn had not been taken

10. If it is a long dead-end and not reasonable labelled, treat it as part of the L/R sequence

11. Remember, only legal or possible –so if you drove back out of your dead-end and the sign at the end of the street says “Left Turn Only”, that is not a choice in the sequence of Left and Rights. Treat it as a straight road

12. Islands, large median strips, diversions such as private roads and any other mid-lane construction are not counted as a left or a right. The question you ask yourself is, “Does this constitute a change from going straight? If it doesn’t involve taking drugs and staying up late, then no.

13.   National Parks, Royal showgrounds and lunatic asylums are quite ok to include in the trip. I spent an hour or so in Callan Park and it was totally worth it.

14. Other semi-public roadways are ok but if the limited and confined nature of the interior-circuit means that you keep being redirected back into the institutions grounds, politely describe your predicament to the guard who has now seen you three times for no good reason and skip a turn in your sequence. Ignore the look on his face. (In fact, print these rules out and hand them to him. Mention my name.)

15. Track your progress. I wanna map this somehow. Go-pro cams on  high speed, geo-stat tracking through your sat-nav and any other fab means to be able illustrate each trip, overlaying each other trip on a map

Sell it as art.

This is a particularly rewarding game to play in a V8 Grand Tourer, where you can also watch your fuel tank level drop at the same rate as the child’s eyelids.