OREGON TRL is a virtual foot race on the Oregon Trail. It starts Wednesday, July 1st at the stroke of the previous midnight (that is to say, July 1st at 12:00am). Like any good parasite, this race piggybacks on all existing races and training. To compeat you need not do any additional running (unless you want to win!) Just record your daily mileage in the Log Book and then view the Trail Map to see your game piece advance along the trail. The race ends Friday, July 31st at midnight, whether or not you've reached the final destination of Oregon City. The winner is the individual that arrives first, or advances the furthest.

INDIVIDUAL COMPETITION: All individuals start at the beginning of the trail in Independence, Missouri, 2,170 miles to Oregon City. A 10x multiplier is applied to all miles logged. Therefore, you will need to run/walk 217 miles during July to reach the finish.

TRIVIA TRAPS: Time permitting, Trivia Traps will be added to check points along the trail. And a note of caution, if you're offered performance enhancing drugs, they will increase your speed (mileage multiplier), but if you're caught down trail during a random drug check, you will be assessed a mileage penalty and earn an asterisk on the leaderboard.

RAFFLE PRIZES: Each participant earns a virtual raffle ticket for each mile that they record. At the end of the event a virtual raffle will be held. There currently aren't any actual prizes. :( However, we are accepting contributions, if you know of anything with prize potential. :)

DISCLAIMER: the OREGON TRL application is buggy and still under development. You can let me know if you have any problems, requests, ideas, etc. (David Hatfield: colridge01@yahoo.com) Also, especially in light of protests around the country, basing this competition on the Oregon Trail, which opened the West to settlers--not so good for Native Americans, may be offensive to some people. Yodel, if you think we should use a different model.

VOLUNTEERS: If anyone wants to collaborate on this application or any other like projects, let me know.

THE BACK STORY: The idea for this game came while brainstorming ideas for ways to increase turnout at club runs and events. Have a year-long competition to traverse the 2,170 miles of the Oregon Trail. Earn bonus miles when you participate in a group event, even informal runs or social gatherings, so long as you advertise them on the Calendar ahead of time. Earn virtual "get out of jail" cards each time you go to official club activities, such as a "speed" card from Tuesday/Friday track, a "food" card from Wednesday Buffalo Gap, a "navigation" card from Thursday Goose, an "anti-dysentery" card from Sunday Starbucks, and a "social" card from First Fridays. These cards would be played along the trail to avoid random pit falls, such as stampeding buffalo, starvation, getting lost, dysentery, and unfriendly characters. Penalty miles would be assessed when you don't have the appropriate card. There would be end-of-the-year prizes and a raffle, as well as "primes" along the way. What ya think?

Instructions: Click [Add] to add an event. Events are where you log your miles. Once created, Click the name of the event to edit it.

Click on a red cube to get a trivia question. Answer correctly, and advance 5 miles down the trail. No penalty is assessed for an incorrect answer.

The first trivia question is an easy one designed to familarize you with the trivia system.

Trivia questions will be crowdsourced. Anyone can create questions for use during the OREGON TRL race. "Trivia" is a misnomer. "Brain Twister" is a better fit, because the types of mental challenges that can be submitted are more broad. You can submit anything that has a clue in the form of an image and/or text and has a text answer. Things related to the Oregon Trail or TRL are preferable but not required. The challenge can be easy or hard, but shouldn't be too hard and should be answerable within 15 minutes. All challenges are open book, unless you state otherwise in the text. During the race, each competitor will select trivia at random when they pass a checkpoint. Obviously you will be prevented from selecting one of your own trivia questions, but anyone else might, so don't share your trivia until after the race.

When solving a clue, competitors can type on top of the image. Therefore, the clue can be in the form of a crossword, wordsearch, or anything you would ordinarily write on in order to solve. Competitors' answers are not case sensitive, but otherwise require an exact match. Therefore, you might choose to indicate in the clue text how many words are in the answer, or go with a multiple choice question.

You have 15 minutes to correctly solve the brain twister below. And the clock is ticking!!

If the challenge comes with an image, you can "write" on the image if that helps. (Click on the image, position the mouse and type a letter/number.)

Be careful entering your answer. Only exact matches are accepted, with one exceptions: case doesn't matter.

The challenge is open book. If you leave this page, just click on [Leaderboard] again and then click on any red question box, and you will be returned to this page--clock still ticking.

Even if time expires, you must submit an answer to close out this trivia question.

Clue image:

Clue text:

Instructions: All you need to fill in are the Name: and the Your mileage: fields. **NOTE** If this event is occurring in the future, once you've completed the activity, return to this event form and [Save] again so that your mileage will be counted as completed.