Survivor Tale #5

I hope former team Orange doesn't hate me because of constantly mentioning their losing streak... which by the way continued nicely over the course of last saturday's afternoon.

If I remember correctly we did three things at the eastern beach that day: the blindfolded puzzling, the throwing and the bucket-ing.

The game-master had prepared 2x16 tiles (half orange, half purple), which were scattered all over the beach by his helpers. The goal was to collect all the tiles, turn them around - they were actually puzzle-pieces - and solve the puzzle. Each team had 5 collectors.
The twist: The collectors were blindfolded. They could move, but they couldn't see.
That's where the caller came in: 1 person of each team had to remain stationary, but could direct and "steer" the blindfolded ones to the right spots. By shouting.

On Team Purple the caller was me.

I would scream the persons name and then add words from a pool of commands: Go forward/backward! Turn left/right! PICK UP THE TILE! (that was my favourite)
It didn't help that I still had not memorized the names properly. So there's me yelling like a madman: ROB! ROB! TURN RIGHT! But the guy just keeps standing there, grinning stupidly. WHAT THE FUCK! ROB! TURN FUCKING RIGHT!
From somewhere I heard: "His name is Dave." So I went: DAVE! TURN THE FUCK RIGHT! MOVE FORWARD! STOP! PICK UP THE TILE!
That worked better; he went, and fell to his knees, combing the sand in front of him with his fingers until he found the wooden puzzle piece. It was very hectic, with purple and orange people all over the place. Imagine 10 persons running about like crazy chickens while two dictators scream random commands. RUN FORWARD! KEEP RUNNING! STOP! PICK UP THE TILE!
Behind me the spectators (helpers and voted-off ones) were making fun of me because of my accent. Nazi-joke time. They were waiting for "SCHNELL! SCHNELL!", or so they told me afterwards. But I didn't notice any of that, I was busy controlling my blindfolded team members. I didn't even follow the progress of team orange, there was no time for that.
It was also my job to keep an eye out on everybody for safety, and prevent them from colliding with each other. I didn't really succeed in that part, though. Didn't seem too important to me at the time. All I wanted was to have all the tiles in a nice neat pile at my feet.
Whenever somebody had picked up the tile, they would just run back to me, guided by me voice. When we had all 16 pieces we launched ourselves at them like hungry wolves at a bunch of goats. Everybody ripped off their blindfolds, moved tiles back and forth until the image made sense: It was the Survivor Logo.
Then we heard the game-master's voice: "Purple Team wins!"

By a hair, or so Orange told us later. A likely story.

puzzle pieces

10 minutes later the team Orange-you-sorry-that-you're-orange gathered in a half circle around the game-master for "tribal council": they had to vote one off.

The throwing was all about... yes, throwing. Each team had 6 poles with bottle-shaped targets on top of them, the goal of the challenge was to hit the bottles off the poles with tied-together tennis balls. The whole thing turn based: 2 purple players throw, then 2 orange players throw, and so on. In the beginning there were also keepers involved, but after 20 minutes of endless throwing and hardly any hitting the keepers were outcommissioned. They were keeping too well.
It took another 20 minutes to hit all of Orange's targets, and once again they had to vote one person off their team.

throwing and catching

So they were down to 4 for the bucket challenge, which went like this: 4 players of each team got small buckets. They lined up in two rows: the first player in the water, the next player 3 meters up the beach, player 3 another 3 meters further away, and yet another 3 meters further the fourth player, who also had a big empty bucket sitting next to him in the sand.
The challenge: Player 1 fills his bucket with water, then throws the water (not the bucket) to player 2, who catches it with his bucket, and throws it to 3, who throws it to 4, who empties it into the big bucket. Whoever team's big bucket flows over first, wins.
A guarantee to get wet.
Luckily Purple Team had Sugar, the super-Kung-Fu-dude from Asia. He was not only in an extraordinary physical shape, he also worked some kind of awesome Kung-Fu magic with the water - he seemed to be able to control it. It shaped and bended after his will, out of the bucket and into another bucket in long perfect arches, hardly ever spilling one single drop. The other 3 Purples quickly mimicked this, to the effect of relatively quickly filling the big bucket. And while Orange was still drenching themselves in ocean water and tears over their two inch bucket-water-level, Purple's bucket flowed over.
Another win for us, another one to vote off for them.

Final count: 7 to 3.