Your challenge, should you choose to acecpt it....

June 5, 2009 2:15 PM

Help me come up with some fun/outrageous birthday relay race stations...

Since many of you were a great help this time last year, I thought I'd tap in to your collective genius again...

I'm planning a relay race around Prospect Park for my partner's bday - she's an avid runner (mostly over the past year) and as a result she's encouraged me and a number of our other friends to get off our butts and start running too - so I thought no better way to celebrate her and her bday than with a "race" of sorts - t-shirts will, of course, be created.

The thought is that we'd have 4-6 stations along the loop of the park and each station will have an activity somehow related to her that they have to complete before moving on to the next station. In the end all will have completed the activities and a 3.2ish mile run - then off to the bar.

So, here's some general info about her to help with any ideas - but generic, fun ideas that could be customized are also welcomed...

She is...
turning 32
a graphic designer who works in advertising and does logo design freelance
she's got a few tattoos
wears funky glasses
plays trumpet
throws pottery
born and raised in New England
loves running, softball and rugby
has a terrible sweet tooth
loves sci fi (battlestar is the favorite) and historical fiction.

I guess that's a good start. We are looking for things that can be done on the cheap, take a little effort, and can be documented in some way.

Some of the potential ideas we've come up with so far are:

buying cheap play glasses and having people decorate a new fashion forward pair for her,

creating puzzles from some photos of her (I think snapfish does this) and having people complete them,

Creating a short quiz about her and requiring some form of shot (jello perhaps) for wrong answers

Anyway, any ideas really appreciated!

posted by jasbet07 to sports, hobbies, & recreation (9 comments total)

Obviously that's meant to be... "Your challenge, should you choose to accept it..." but I don't know how to edit my post.
posted by jasbet07 at 2:17 PM on June 5

"has a terrible sweet tooth"

Ice and decorate a pre-baked cupcake?
posted by Juliet Banana at 2:21 PM on June 5

she's got a few tattoos
Have players draw Sharpie tattoos on themselves, the person in front of/behind/next to them, or maybe on a brave volunteer who will get all the tattoos? (Maybe have them recreate your friend's tattoos to the best of their ability, or design what they think her next one should be.)

throws pottery
Probably too much effort to set up a pottery wheel in the park, but maybe do a station where players just mold something out of clay (or Play-Doh).

has a terrible sweet tooth
Candy eating contest? Or a "how many marshmallows can you fit in your mouth" kind of thing?
posted by LolaGeek at 2:22 PM on June 5

I was also going to suggest making people decorate a cupcake. What about one big cake and have everyone add one thing to it?

An exquisite corpse game on a large piece of butcher paper that gets rotated

Have them choose a junk gift out of a bunch you got at the dollar store, and then wrap it up in a box as nicely and fast as they can.
posted by amethysts at 2:27 PM on June 5

I like a bunch of the ideaas here. I think this should be a homage to her. You could provide pipe cleaners and other low-grade craft stuffs, and act people to create [and then wear] glasses like hers. And expanding on the sharpie-tattoo idea, I think you should make everyone recreate her tattoos, and judge on accuracy. You could also have a station where they sculpt her out of play-doh. And a station where everyone designs a logo for her, also judged. And I second decorating the pre-baked cupcake.
posted by shesaysgo at 2:53 PM on June 5

Is she from one of the woodsier NE states? You could have everyone consume a shot of straight maple syrup, satisfying both the New England and sweet-tooth parts. And the glasses could all be arranged on a tray shaped like the outline of her home-state.
posted by Greg Nog at 3:42 PM on June 5 [1 favorite]

You've got to do something with the trumpet! Fanfares?

I LOVE the maple syrup shot idea. If she likes maple syrup you should definitely do that, but do the best you can to get the syrup from her home state.

You're an awesome boyfriend--this is such a great idea.
posted by min at 5:12 PM on June 5

She likes rugby? Give her a rugby ball with balloon legs and arms attached with whatever you attach stuff with in your town and tell her its Jonah Lomu. She'll never know the difference.

Also write on the rugby ball, "Jonah Lomu says you are officially sexy"

Feel free to riff on the concept according to her unnatural rugby predilictions.
posted by Sparx at 6:37 PM on June 5

I've done things such as this at messenger races and seen them done at a hash run. You can stick to theme with these, or just mix it up. To give you some references, some of the "drop tasks" we've had at messenger races (tasks you need to complete prior to getting back on the bike and continuing to the next "drop" have included things like:

- playing twister until a pre-specified arrangement of colours is reached
- completing a (simple) sudoku puzzle, the one I did the drop master gave us extra points for creativity if we sucked at sudoku.
- riding a teeny tiny tricycle thru a maze
- hula hooping (drop master was a bit of a dick on this one, he made us do 10 clean revs even the ones who were hula hoop impaired :P )
- go to a pre-determined bar/pub/joint (who were obviously in on the deal) and play a round of Pac Man, darts or shuffleboard (yes, really!) against the person who preceded you - whoever wins that round gets to continue on, etc... this is surprisingly easy to set up if the bar is a cool neighbourhood place who won't mind the extra afternoon traffic.

being messenger races, many if not all of these tasks were preceded by "do a shot and..." but that's bike messengers and you may not want to go that route :)

I know these aren't specifically themic but I hope they help get the creative juice flowing.
posted by lonefrontranger at 8:13 PM on June 5