3 13 30 31 - Winning Lottery Number ?

I wish it was, but it isn't. 3 is for March the beginning of NER 4th Treasure Hunt being run by Todd this year. We have been given 13 words which are; daylight, ice, lamb, lion, march, patrick's practice, sand, savings,snow, spring, sunshine, and vernal. Our objective if we choose to accept it, is to find 30 places that use the 13words and there are 31 days in March. At the end of the month the RB will use one suit from a deck of cards, each card will represent a point value from 1 to 13, Ace is 1 point and King is 13 points. Randomly he will select a card for each word and that will be the value of that word. The accepted photos of places you have ridden to then get assigned the point value and summed up for a month total. The one that has the most points wins for the month. There will be a monthly list of words starting in March and ending in November. I am not sure how the overall Treasure Hunt winner is going to be decided, the most monthly wins, the most points or some hybrid.

Sounds easy, but there are limitations on what the RB will accept. On March 6th I headed out to capture some of the bonii, which is the first day I have been out on the bike since November 2009. I had one place in mind, trying to capture what I believe to be the least frequent word on the list, Vernal. Made my way down to Foxboro and snapped the following photo.

When I got home, I got to thinking (not always a good thing) and reread the rules. Couple this with the RB commenting on another participant's picture of their bike in front of an frozen water (ICE) on rocks along side the road, and said it did not meet the requirements for ICE. The RB stated that even thou it is ICE and ICE is one of the words it was not one of the acceptable locations and referenced us back to the rally rules. I was shocked that this picture did not qualify. I reviewed the list and did not see a road as a valid location. I then question RB and he said pictures of road signs were NO GOOD. To make sure I had interpreted him, I requested a ruling on this picture and the verdict was NO GOOD.

Oh you see the orange bandana with the NER on it . The requirements for the photo is A> the object representing one of the 13 words you are taking B> the orange bandana must appear in the photo and C> a substantial portion of your bike must be in the photo for the submission to be valid. You get to submit up to 30 photos and only 30. Once you post the photo, you can not withdraw the photo with a substitution of another photo. If any of the photos fail one of the criteria, you simply do not get any points for that photo. Hence, you must be very selective when putting your photo's up. This is where the Bastard in Rally Bastard comes from.

March being the kick off month, the RB has said he will be lenient on some of the rules, such as the the substitution rule, but only this month. Next month, once posted it can not be withdrawn.


One of the acceptable categories is artwork such as statues, that clearly depict the word. I grabbed this in Burrillville Rhode Island for SNOW. I figure if it is sculptued, painted, or some other media that remotely is connected to art, then it should be good to go. It will be pretty hard to disallow a posting based on a definition of art being so subjective.


The CHASE is starting all over again.