Game time for bikers
Wellopoly, which embraces the unusual combination of cycling and Monopoly, takes place within a two hour window. Competitors race around the city following individualised paths that their dice toss dictates. At checkpoints around the city, bikers earn game cash by performing challenges like wheelies and skids.
Bike enthusiast Jordon Roy successfully organised the first Wellopoly with 12 eager participants in July. Now he’s doing it again and numbers are up.
“Depending on how you roll the dice your checkpoints may be far or close,” explains Roy, a Canadian who used to live in Seoul, Korea, but who has been in Wellington for more than a year. He spent his first year in town working as a bike courier and now he manages Bike Barn, balancing his job with his interests in BMX, track and fixed gear riding.
“In Seoul I was involved in alleycat races, which are informal, quasi-legal street races mainly involving bike messengers or local fixed gear riders,” says Roy, “They have a kind of no-holds barred reputation and you’ve got to get from one point to another as quickly as possible by any means necessary.”
Roy says the idea of Wellopoly is to encourage a safer kind of game that’s not so much about head to head racing.
“In this one there’s not 25 to 30 people all going the same way at once. This way you just pass each other in the city and you think, ‘…that guy looks like he’s moving quickly, I’d better get going!”
Wellopoly Too, Civic Square, 7pm, November 18.









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