Cipher

We were handcuffed and thrown into the jail cell of a madman. Our wits were all we had to help us.   We knew that we only had an hour to escape the room or we would die, a fact heightened by the fact that there was a digital clock counting down the seconds until our impending deaths.  

Luckily, our capture wasn’t the smartest, because we were able to free ourselves from the handcuffs fairly quickly, and we would have been much better off at picking the locks if one of us hadn’t dropped the mirror on the other side of the bars just beyond reach. 

As we tried to rescue our fallen comrade and tool, the old telephone rang with a shrill ring. The voice on the other end seemed to be taking joy in our misery instead of coming to our aid. 

Sadly, although we were able to escape the small cell in which we started, we were not able to escape the mad man’s room. Luckily however, we didn’t really die. It was all just for fun. 

For my birthday this year, Nova surprised me by taking me to an escape room called Cipher, and then surprised me even more by inviting a group of friends to try to help us escape.  We all failed. 

we died

Upon arriving at Cipher, the place was very unassuming. In fact, I had been blindfolded on our way there and when it was revealed, I still wasn’t really sure where I was. There was a sign out front that read: Cipher, but there wasn’t much else. We headed down a really cute little alley way, that was lit with lights strung across it and adorned with outdoor patio furniture, and entered through a door on the side of the building.

Inside the building there was a waiting room with some comforable chairs, a couple of chalkboards with team names and times written on them (these were leaderboads), and a counter. The workers were very friendly and excited, and offerd us bottles of water. We started trying to think of team name, but they warned us not to come up with a name because they said its bad luck, which turned out to be true. 

Everyone had to sign a waiver which I’m pretty sure had more to do with us getting hurt than anything, but as they tell you before you start the game, nothing should hurt you, you shouldn’t have to pick up anything heavy or move anything. We waited for everyone in the group to arrive, then they brought us back to lock up our phones because they don’t want anyone using their phones to solve puzzles nor take pictures to let out spoilers. 

Our room guide also told us the back story to our room. The room we did was called Captive.  We were told that we were kidnapped by a serial killer and he had locked us up and would be back in an hour. He even starts a count down clock to mentally torture us. Our room leader was very animated and liked to joke around, but also tried to keep the mood tense. He did a good job I feel like. As he finished setting the scene and telling us the rules, he had one last little surprise in store for us: handcuffs. 

These were real, honest to God, metal and heavy handcuffs. Once we were all locked in he sent us into the room. The room was just as creepy as it could be. I can’t go into detail, again because of spoilers but it kept the mood intacted the entire time. The stress started before we even got to the puzzles. 

I don’t want to say too much about the puzzles because if you go, I don’t want you to be spoiled, but the puzzles were very tough. There wasn’t a whole lot of direction here, which I think was a good way to start. You should really have a blank canvas, however as you moved through the puzzles, it would have been nice to have some type of direction. Some of the puzzles connected, but if you didn’t see the one before it, or if you didn’t solve it, it would make things tougher. I also think that we had too many people.  I would like to try it with less people because I think it would be easier to form groups for tasks. We also could have been more organized as a group, which would have helped.  I think we had some people try a puzzle that would have helped us out if we had figured it out, but they got stuck with it and refused to give up. 

The puzzles really made you think and search though, and I really liked that aspect of it. It was defintely a mental challenge  and as we found out later there was a variety of puzzles, but mostly it was find the combination to a lock.  They could have found a way to change that up a bit.  Maybe if they had like fake panels in the walls, or clues that would only appear under black light, etc.

If we did ever get stumped for a while, or if we weren’t making progress, the room leader would call on an old corded telephone, whose ring was loud and shrill. It scared us a couple of times. Sometimes the calls would waste  time as caller chit chatted with whomever answered the call, but ultimately he would try to lead you in the right direction. 

Once the time was up and we failed, our room leader came in and showed us where we went wrong and how we should have proceeded further. At the time I rather liked it because it was eye opening, but now I can’t go back and try again unless they change things up. And I would like to go back and try another room. It was fun, but with less people and more of an idea of what to do, I think I could do much better. 

After the puzzles were uncovered and we were allowed to wallow in our pity, we were taken back to our phones, and they had us  take a group picture. There were signs we could hold, some for escaping and some for not escaping, and they posted the picture to Facebook. 

All in all, I had a great time doing an escape room. I would definitely like to try another one, maybe even at Cipher since they have 2 other rooms to try.  But Houston is a big place, and escape rooms are blowing up these days it seems. It’s a fun time in a group, and a great way to challenge your mind. 

Have you tried an escape room? Was it a good one? Would you like more freedom to solve at your own pace or would you like direction? Leave a comment below, and let me know. 

Buffalo bayou bike ride

One of my goals with this site is to write about my travels and experiences.  When sitting down to figure out what to write, I realized that I don’t travel enough to sustain something like this. Even though this is Jarrva World Wide, I could write about some of the fun stuff I do at home as well.  I know that after living somewhere, even somewhere as big as Houston, we fall into a rut and never really branch out, so I hope this will encourage people and myself to get out there and try new things. 

So we found ourselves in the situation Saturday. We had both been out in the morning and had reconvened at Nova’s apartment and struggling to find something to do besides sit there and watch Netflix. The weather outside was almost perfect and we wanted to be outdoors. We thought about going and doing a picnic, but we had both already eaten. We thought about taking Kimber the dog for a walk, but I had already done that during my morning stroll. So we decided to go riding bikes at Buffalo Bayou Park. 

I haven’t really ridden a bike in a while (unless you count the bike ride on our last vacation) and i thought it’d be something fun and different. 

Luckily, to ride a bike in Houston, you don’t even have to own one if you live downtown. There’s a bike share system called bcycle. We had never used it before and we were excited to try it out. We drove over to Buffalo Bayou park just by the skate park because we knew there was a kiosk there for the bikes. There is also a shop there where you can rent bikes from as well. We checked out the shop to see how much it was a rent a bike there. The shop had bikes for $9/hour with a minimum of 2 hours. We felt like that was too expensive so we went over to check out the bcycle kiosk. 

The only problem with the kiosk and the system is that renting a bike is very dependent on there being bikes there. There were four bikes there, but there were three people in front of us so we weren’t going to be able to check out a bike for both of us. If there had been bikes though, it would have only cost us $5 a person for a 24 hour pass. With the pass, you can check out a bike for free for an hour as much as you wanted. But if you had the bike out for longer than an hour, you’d be charged an extra $2 per 30 minutes. However if you returned the bike within an hour and checked it out again, you’d get a new hour. It was slightly confusing, but ultimately it was cheaper than renting from the store. 
We were waiting on some friends to show up too.  One of our friends was in the process of buying a new bike and we weren’t sure how long it was going to take to get there so we went and checked out the goings on at the area by the skate park. There had been some live music playing since we left the car and there was a stage just above the bike shop. So we walked up there and saw that was a bayou bash crawfish festival. They had some tents from a couple of breweries and eateries around Houston, and a live band playing. They also had some games of corn hole and a cool giant pool table that you played with soccer balls. It was a pretty happening place, and we decided to hangout in the shade for a while and watch. As we made it over to the shade though, I noticed that the bike kiosk had two bikes now. We didn’t want to lose the chance to get a bike out so we hustled down and rented us some bikes! 

The process was pretty simple, just buy a day pass and pick your bike.  The system unlocks the bike and away you go. With our bikes freed, we jumped on and pedaled around the park. 

I’ve been to Buffalo Bayou a few times now. It’s a really fun park in the middle of downtown Houston. It’s like our own little Central Park, not that I’ve been there before or anything.  There are grassy areas, and paved trails for walking and biking, a skate park, a bayou for kayaking, volleyball pits, dog parks, and art. If you’ve never been, you should check it out for sure. It’s worth the trip. 

We biked around, getting the hang of it and making our way to where we were going to meet our friends. It really sucked trying to pedal uphill, but getting some speed on the downhills made it worth it. We made it to the spot where we would wait for our friends. So creative genius had designed some Poet Trees here. The author had left some tags and some pens for people to create their own poems and then they were to stick them on the tree. I thought it was a really cool idea. 

beautiful view

We finally heard from our friends that they were taking longer than they thought, so we decided to ride around while we waited.  We rode around the park, traveling next to where the dog parks used to be. Because of the recent flooding we’ve been having in Houston, the dog park was shut down. Usually there is a pond the dogs can swim in, and some grassy areas for them to run in.  After the flood though, the water from the pond was running over, and all the grass was gone. It was shocking to see just how high the water had traveled in the storms. The bayous in general were higher than normal, and the damage done was unbelievable. 

We rode around the park some more making it to one of the cooler fountains and waited for our friends whom were finally here. 

With our group finally together, we headed out to make a lap around the entire park. All together the lap around was about 6 miles according to my Apple Watch. The views were awesome, the bike paths were really nice, with some uphill a that made your legs burn and some downhills that keep the wind in your face. 

If you’re looking for some fun activity to do outside, I’d highly recommend getting a bike and riding around the park. I look forward to going back and exploring some of the areas that were closed because of the flooding. Consider checking it out.