Escaping to an Escape Room

Ever been to an escape room?
If not, I encourage you to do so. It is one of many recent crazes to amuse our small minds but I must admit this one has got me. After hearing about it, from my son and his partner, we decided to surprise Daryl with a belated birthday trip to a 'Clockwork themed' Escape Room in Oakleigh, a short time ago. Armed with only our individual problem-solving skills, friends Zac and Carol joined Daryl and I on our adventure. In the beginning, Daryl was indeed skeptical but by the end he was a converted fan. According to a Google search an Escape Room is a real-life team-based puzzle game, where you are locked in a room and have to solve puzzles together to get out. The escape rooms are team based, and we found four an excellent number of people due to the limiting size of the room, but also allowing enough diversity in problem-solving skills to enable us to work together. Escape rooms have a clear objective which is to "escape" the room, which will involve finding a key, a key combo, or activating some sort of mechanism that will unlock the final door. Escape rooms are usually themed under some kind of "story". Some of these themes are stories, where you play some sort of character who was trapped in X and need to find themselves out. We chose clockworks, which was about travelling back in time, given Daryl's attraction to old clocks. The rooms were decorated from this theme and I have to say the designers are very clever. The puzzles involve finding hidden objects around the room, using tools to find clues,  pattern matching and recognition, ciphers, visual and spatial reasoning, putting together related physical objects and so much more. The puzzles aren't really the "logic puzzle" type - usually these puzzles are highly biased towards ones that require mostly creativity and a little bit of "thinking outside of the box". Our escape room had two rooms and we had to find a number of keys and codes, allowing us to progress to the next step. It is time limited, so there is a little pressure, especially if you want to succeed. We found the organisers very helpful and only had to ask for help twice. As we endeavoured to unravel each clue, there were moments of small tensions and frustration but mostly it brought the best out in all of us. We worked well as a team and we were determined to solve it. And we did, after they gave us an extra ten minutes. What conversation it created when we finally escaped, what fun it was to re-visit the scenes and scenarios. So if you looking for something different then why not find an escape room near you! 

The escape room was one of a number of activities we took on as part of Daryl's surprise weekend. Taking him away from the farm, can be a challenge, finding someone to mind the animals and ensure they are all ok, is not always simple and I know he worries while we are gone. But taking him away is important not just for his physical health ( he needs to rest even if he doesn't think so!) but also for our relationship and the relationships we build with our friends. Farming is not everyone's cup of tea and it's nice to play in someone else's backyard on occasion. 

So the escape weekend consisted of dodgy accommodation (thanks to it being grand prix weekend); shopping at DFO (sorry Zac we know you hated it); fabulous food at a variety of locations, of particular note souvlaki at Stalactites Restaurant (go there, its just divine);  club style tenpin bowling, (or disco dancing Carol style with encouragement from tequila shots and cocktails); Go-Kart racing; food truck festival and lots of coffee and other liquid refreshments. We didn't realise that when we organised the trip it would be the Greek Independence Day and therefore found ourselves among thousands of Greek descendants as they celebrated their day in Oakleigh. Lots of noise and colour and barely a space to walk between the crowds we managed to miraculously find a table in a restaurant and enjoyed the delectable delights of Greek cuisine. The weekend was busy and terribly indulgent but if you can't indulge now and again, then life is simply hard work and where is the joy in that?

Speaking about hard work, the hole from my previous blog is still not big enough so Daryl spent a few hours this morning digging some more. At least he got some reprieve after escaping the hole and enjoying the delights of the Tinamba Food and Wine Festival. The hole will wait another day. Will keep you posted.

Until next time,
N