5 Fun Things To Do on a Trampoline

A trampoline, if you're lucky enough to have one, is a fun way to pass the time. However, they are usually not used to their fullest potential. Endless activities that would normally not be very entertaining on their own become far more exciting on a trampoline, as we discovered while growing up with one (before it eventually broke).

1. Attempt to balance on the metal frame and walk around the outside of the trampoline. Only makes sense if your trampoline is large and has such a frame, although this is probably highly dangerous. We usually played this game while perilously perched above menacing patches of "bindiis", adding tension and excitement when passing "bindii corner". Since trampolines these days appear to have safety nets, the game is probably completely unplayable. Your loss!
2. Lay down and spread out to gain as much surface area as possible, and rub your skin against the trampoline surface. Your body will gather static electricity, which you can just discharge by touching another person. For a stronger effect, touch the metal frame. As it gets darker outside, you can quite clearly see the visible spark appear even at a considerable distance from the person / metal.
3. Best suited to a younger audience, there was nothing quite like having the water sprinkler pointed at the trampoline and jumping through / trying to avoid the stream of water it shot. Add someone with a hose and you have a fantastic way to waste water in a very fun way.
4. Throw a large number of small debris-style items onto the trampoline (we used rocks and berries, though the rocks probably did nothing to prolong the lifetime of our trampoline). Jumping then results in an amazing percussion experience; seeing all the particles fly up in the air with the satisfying sound as they hit the fabric is a unique experience.
5. Have someone close their eyes and spin around, while the other player(s) "hide" around the trampoline. The "blind" player then tries to tag another player, who then takes their place. It is essentially the trampoline equivalent of Marco Polo, only with no calling out necessary (attempted evasive manoeuvres on the trampoline are even more obvious than in a pool). Amazingly this game never ended up with any of us plunging off the side of the trampoline, which shouldn't be a problem on a modern trampoline with the safety nets and all anyway. Best played with siblings who will gladly push you into the person trying to find you in order to protect themselves.

Hotel

Hotel is a game for two players played with pen and paper. It entails picking a somewhat unique word, coming up with four interesting properties it has, and having the other player try to guess a word that satisfies all four properties. Such a word gains VIP status, and is granted access to the VIP room of the hotel.

Requirements

• Pens / pencils
• 2 sheets of paper, preferably A4
• 2 players

Each player takes a piece of paper and draws a hotel. The hotel has a VIP room, and four other rooms, each representing the individual rules that must be satisfied. On the reverse side, the player writes down their VIP word, and the four rules. On the front, each of the four "normal" rooms is given an example word that satisfies the rule for that room. The hotel must also be named, and decor is highly encouraged - half the fun is drawing a cool hotel =)

The other player then guesses words, and each guess is placed in one or more rooms that it satisfies the rules for. If it satisfies none of the rules, it is placed in the "street" (not granted access to the hotel at all), often with humorous illustration of neglect and despair.

Here is an example of what a game of hotel might look like after a few guesses:

We'd love to see your hotels, so link us a picture in the comments!

Why are we playing this; This tastes awful

1. The Sunscreen Game

Let's face it "The sunscreen game" sounds like it is bound to be an awful game. The mention of this game is usually said with a cringe, and for good reason. Why did we play a game that involves the consumption of sunscreen? We may never know. Yes we actually did eat sunscreen in this game. Suffice to say if you're somewhat deranged awesome like us this is the excuse you've been looking for to consume that tasty UV blocking substance.

Basically, this involved us playing The Dice Game on a very boring day to determine who had to eat little blots of sunscreen. It was like gambling but instead of money you had to EAT SUNSCREEN. (I emphasise this because I don't think you understand how disgusting this game was and how much more intense it felt than loosing a bit of money).

Here's how to play:

Step 1. Play the dice game

Step 2. Lose

Step 3. Feel the shame of defeat

Step 4. Decide if you want to eat 1 blot of sunscreen or go "double or nothing" (If double or nothing, repeat steps 1- 4)

Step 5. Squirt a blot of sunscreen onto your finger (about the size of a pea)

Step 6. Eat the sunscreen

Step 7. Frantically attempt to wipe off the remains of the sunscreen which seems to have formed a permanent coating over your taste buds

Step 8. Fail

Step 9. Experience intense desire to share this delightful experience with your fellow player

Step 10. Repeat all steps

Step 11. Question sanity*

* Optional. For us it is not a question of if we still possess it, but rather if we ever had it.

Now as a veteran of this horrible horrible excuse of a "game" I can personally vouch for how utterly disgusting sunscreen tastes. Especially when the faded yellowing pump bottle of it sits tormenting you on the table while your 16 blots in debt and wildly yelling "DOUBLE OR NOTHING!" As you throw the dice like a maniac and pray. The pungent aroma of the sunscreen is ever present, reminding you of the bitter punishment awaiting the loser. This game has totally wrecked going to the beach for me. In case you want the experience of the game without the...experience of the game :S here is my description of what copious amounts of sunscreen tastes like. (By the way, blots and blots of sunscreen taste exponentially more over powering than just getting some in your mouth when you put sunscreen on.)

Taste:

Imagine metal.

Imagine metal covered in eggs.

Rotten eggs.

Rotten eggs mixed with sour cream and whipped to a hauntingly creamy consistency.

Now imagine being asked to take a nice big lick of the metal bar.

Yeah. Tasty.

It went back and forth, each of us usually eating between 1-6 blots until I suddenly landed myself in a whopping 32 blot debt. In a legendary roll I managed to scream DOUBLE OR NOTHING and clear my debt after agreeing that that was the max usage of "double or nothing". In which case you had no choice but to eat 64 blots of sunscreen. Well over 2 full tablespoons of sunscreen. In hindsight we probably should have lowered this bar even further since it is probably a really bad idea for anyone to intentionally consume any amount of sunscreen in the first place, let alone play a game encouraging mass consumption. Having said that, if you choose to use the dice game for consumption based games... we're not responsible for it!

2. The Flour game

This was basically The Sunscreen Game but with a spoonfuls of cooking flour instead of blots of sunscreen. Sounds simple, right? Sounds better, right? WRONG! Once that spoon full of flour hits your mouth ALL saliva is GONE and you're left with an uncomfortably full mouth trying to take the best course of action to eat this. Do you try to make it a soggy clump or start mixing it around? It really doesn't matter how well you try to deal with this because all roads lead to this:

1. All saliva gone
2. You eventually need to move your mouth
3. Flour explodes inside mouth
4. Entire mouth and throat caked with flour
5. An explosive Milo cough (except it's over 9000 times worse)
6. Seething hatred for the other player
7. Immediate desire to begin the next round to inflict this upon others

I think the worst part of this version of the game hit when we decided to mix Vegeta vegetable stock salt with the flour. This stuff. tastes. horrendous. It was NEVER meant to be eaten straight from the packet and tastes like salty death. This removed any trace of saliva left in our mouth and filled it with an overpowering sulphur + salt + liquid vegetable taste. This was quite possibly the most potent mix from all of the "Why are we playing this; This tastes awful" rounds. Although...

3. Random concoctions

Here we basically substituted the gambling chip for "Eating one tablespoon of ________" Where "______" was a haunting concoction we created every round where each player collects 3 ingredients that make up the mixture.

Recipe Guide:

Tangy surprise: Soy Sauce, Mustard, Caesar Dressing, Coffee Powder, Olive Oil, Vinegar

Ughhh: Sundried Tomato Oil, Peanut Butter, Fish Sauce, Sugar, Tomato Sauce, Garlic Paste

The soundtrack for this game would bring you classics such as "Ugh there was something solid in that", "YUCK! WHAT IS THAT!" and "* Indecipherable spluttering and coughing*"

Try choking down some of your very own recipes today! Post some of the best recipes you've tried and the best may make it into this recipe log!

Tales of Freezing Nights 2

Tales of Freezing Nights 2: The trip to Melbourne

We had been driving all day as part of our family road trip to Melbourne and it was now around 8pm somewhere in the vastly unpopulated areas of Victoria getting slightly desperate for a place to spend the night. I don't know if you ever happen to have been piled into a car with your parents and two older brothers, squished in the middle seat and used a headrest for both siblings' pillows and subjected to 57 repeated plays of the same Neil Young songs for 8 hours while being faced with no source of dinner and no place to spend the night as you drive down a pitch black road that gradually becomes just a dirt road with no signs of life. When even Dad hit the point of being highly suspicious that the people at the "Stop.Revive.Survive" may have been mistaken in their directions to the nearest motel, we were getting a little worried. But no, a strange farmer who HAPPENED to be out checking his mail (at 8pm) pointed us a little further down the pitch black dirt road, promising that there was indeed a motel where we could rent a room and have dinner at the Tavern. Looking back, I would have had my suspicions that this was in fact some wanted murderer who works in tandem with the Survivor Reviver people to lure innocent families to their doom. But that's just cynical of me, here this lovely weird old man did indeed point us the right way and we ended up having dinner and getting a room.

Now here's when the blanket deprivation begins. I'll remind you that this was the dead of winter in Victoria, where it's freezing even in summer, and even with blankets it was that sort of cold where you feel like straightening your legs is like plunging them into ice water. We had a room with 2 double beds and one single. Mum and Dad took one double and Christian took the single while Nic and I were content to share the double. After the usual chatter we all eventually fell asleep.

It was around 1am when I awoke and felt like my feet were two blocks of ice. There was this incessant flashing light from a neon sign flickering through the curtains on my side of the bed and the air-conditioner unit would every now and again suddenly go

*CLICK!*HUMMMMMMMMMMMM!!!!!!

...making it near impossible to relax. But none of that compared to the cold. I swear this is the coldest I have ever been. It was like the car trip on super arctic blasting air con mode. I was shivering so much but I was so sleepy I couldn't think of anything intelligent to do and my muscles wouldn't work. I couldn't understand why on earth the motel would only provide a flimsy threadbare sheet. Seriously this thing was the flimsiest sheet with a thread count of about 3 and what's more is I didn't even have enough of the sheet to cover my whole body! Most of it was trapped underneath or around Nic so I only had half my body under this god awful sheet. I tried feebly tugging on the sheet but this, no joke, resulted in Nic rolling so that EVEN MORE sheet was ripped away from me. I spent most of the night curled in a ball trying to pull threads of sheet over me shivering to my core with neon lights flashing in my face and the hum of the aircon unit keeping me constantly on the brink of my sanity (WHY would this need to be on?!? It definitely was NOT heating the room and if it was cooling the room I think I will cry). I finally fell asleep and had a horrible nights sleep, freezing cold and uncomfortable.

I woke up freezing in the morning and saw in the light: Nic with the entire sheet AND DOONA wrapped around him. THERE WAS A DOONA THIS WHOLE TIME! And he had so much doona he didn't even need it all! Half the doona was spilling onto the floor next to him completely going to waste and the rest was piled into mountains on top of his stupid warm body. I woke him up with a swift pillow to the head.

Winter Gods: 2 Lisa: 0

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