The Cake Walk

I'm a bit too tired to recount my talk at leadership camp right now -- been pretty busy lately, but I promise I will tell it soon. To hold you over, here is the story of the now-infamous Cake Walk that used to be an entertainment activity at OHSET (equestrian team)!

It was held on Friday nights, I believe, before Grand Entry. Or something. It was a fund raising event; each team was asked to bring a cake to be auctioned off, and all the money was put into the pot. The total money was split: half to the team that came up with the idea and set it into place, and half to the team that won the event.

Anyway, it went a little like this:

Each team selects a member representative. Generally chosen are the daredevils with really, really fast horses. In the center of the largest arena, they set up a giant circle of cones -- one less cone than there are riders. They play music as everyone lopes around the perimeter of the circle. When the music stops, the riders stop, jump off, and grab a cone, though stopping before jumping is sometimes skipped. One rider is left without a cone, they're out, and so it goes.

Not too bad, though sometimes people trip and fall going after the cones. The center circle gets smaller and smaller as more people are eliminated.

Then there's two people left.

They put one really big cone in the middle. Dead center. They tell the two remaining people to gallop around the whole outside of the arena. When the music stops, they both gallop hell-bent for leather towards the center to leap off and grab the cone.

Two people galloping towards each other on gaming horses, both dead set on grabbing that stupid cone! Yay!

Dangerous? Oh hell yes.
But my goodness, it was exciting to watch!


Needless to say, the Cake Walk was discontinued rather quickly.