Just about finished with the washer pits in the alley behind my warehouse. While most of you are familiar with the standard 18" x 18" box with the PVC pipe washers game, the actual original washers game was designed with a small coffee can embedded in a flat 3' x 5' section of earth. The box game was just a more portable, less anger the wife by digging holes in the ground version of the original.

We've taken some variations on the official game (there's a million different variations, here's another for example) setup due to our location and personal preferences though. Since we've got old railroad tracks in the alley, we've used them as the side borders of our pits and increased the overall size (since we're not going to attempt to move the rails) to about 4.5' x 7'. We also set the hole about 1" lower than the rest of the pit surface and gently sloped the surface to create a sort of dish so that washers tend to run towards the hole. Since our alley has no sort of drainage and is always moist, plus the added annoyance of a hundred years of train oil in the soil, we added a thin layer of sand on top of the dirt to make the washers slide better. Before the sand they were just hitting the dirt and stopping dead.

We've also modified the rules a bit. For instance we're using three washers instead of 2. We've also adjusted the scoring so that it's 3 points in the cup, 2 points if an edge of the washer is hanging over the cup, and one point if the washer is within "a washers distance" from the hole (meaning that if you set another washer between the hole and washer in question, they would overlap slightly).

It's actually a really nice pit and it plays well too. We're still making minor adjustments to the pits and the area around it, but soon it shall be done. Maybe we'll start a tourney early this fall. Watch out though, I'm 7-0 in singles play and 3-1 in team games. Better start practicing.

- these thoughts flowed through Jeff's fingers @ 1:35 PM