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Friday 14 August 2009

Counting Yellow Cars

It seems the consensus is to add bits of my waffling to my stitchy blog, after all, istn't that what I'm reading on everybody else's blog.
Of course I love to watch the stitchy progress, but I'm learning more about my new friends as I read along.

My first offering is something that I do on regular drives.
I was a courier for 15 years, driving the same run morning and afternoon. It was a great way to look after the boys, never having to put them into child care, and I was able to work around their school times. In the afternoon, I devised this counting game, to try to pry them away from their game-boys and get them to take an interest in what was outside the car window.
I love maths - I calculate fuel/speed/time/distance in my head for fun. I didn't realise that was such an unusual thing or that it was a skill. I often stun people by calculating expected change in a transaction before the cash register does.
Anyway... I picked YELLOW as a colour to count. There are too many white and red cars. Blue and Green can be difficult to differentiate. But there is no mistaking a YELLOW car. The points are as follows:

1 point for a yellow car
2 points for a taxi
3 points for a yellow van (like a Hi-Ace)
6 -8-10 -12 points for a truck. There are all sorts of sizes of trucks - a cement mixer is a 10 pointer - a Semi is a 12 pointer
15 points for an emergency vehicle - police/fire/ambulance
unless of course it has it's lights on... then they count for a whopping 40 points!!! (woo-hoo!)
No points for police helicopter - you are supposed to be watching the road, not scanning the air while driving!

Of course sometimes you get desperate, but a cream car does not count - even when you try to justify it by calling it buttermilk (butter is yellow right??? ...therefore a buttermilk/cream car is yellow????) Orange cars do not count either.

At the moment, my average trip to work is 137 points. I drive 37km to work and in the morning it takes about 50 minutes. The lowest morning was 41 points, the best was 288 points (3 police cars at an accident with flashing lights and I drive past a firestation that had it's doors open and 2 trucks flashing their lights) I drive past a car yard that up to last weekend, had 3 yellow cars. You get to know where a yellow car should be parked.

So tell me, am I totally nuts? Or do you want to try this game?

5 comments:

Marie said...

lololol, no way are you nuts. I have done similar. Plus we have spotto, jazzo and now biko. I will explain more on my blog over the weekend :-) I find myself even doing it when I'm on my own as well!!

I also agree Bronny, I love learning about more than just the stitchy stuff, although I don't always comment, I always catch up on the reading!

Shebafudge said...

Hi Bronny

We play a version of this too. My son loves minis and so we score on whether it is old style or new, convertible, estate etc. If you see a mini van (common in 1970's lol) you score 100 points. So far there has only ever been one spotted! Keeps the kids amused forever.

Siobhán said...

Well, let's put it this way... My usual reaction to math is to lie down and get into a fetal position and wait for somebody else--or a calculator--to come up with the answer. The closest I come to any sort of game while driving is playing the alphabet game... you know, the "I see an A, A is for Assawoman Bay", that sort of thing.

Aussie Stitcher said...

That is a cool game. Working with money I am generally quick to work out change etc, except for when my brain malfunctions!!!

Yoyo said...

This is too funny! Boy when you decide to drop bits of 'life' into your stitchy blog you really go all the way! And I love it too. We always played some kind of game like this when our kids were little, and Dh and I still do if we're on a long trip -- sort of makes us feel young (LOL).

Even though it's not in this post, you've got some great stitching going on, love to see that, and the bits 'o life too!