The Addictively High Stakes Of Plover Kart

Any and all childish “cart racing” style video games are forever forbidden in my home because I too quickly become addicted to them. Just one lap around the track, and later I become aware that the whole house is dark. Everyone has gone to bed. I have no idea how many hours have passed, and I’m legally blind and can barely stand up. 

My brain simply finds them that satisfying. The simpler, more childish, and more cartoony, the better. If the game spells cart with a “K,” I’m all in.

Mostly, I favor games where the probability dynamics are predictable and throttled, so you never get an early lead. Instead, you spend most of the game chugging away in obscurity, stuck in the middle of the pack in fourth or fifth place, just doing your best. But then suddenly, in those final stretches, all of the errors made by the pack leaders compound, as does all of my skilled driving. I suddenly begin rising through the ranks… I’m third! I’m second! And then, just as the race finishes, I realize I actually won in a photo finish. The victory is astonishing and sweet.

I see it as an obscure metaphor for my life. A fantasy that after all of this toiling away in below-average obscurity, everyone will wake up one day, right at the end, to appreciate just how awesome I am.

There is an excellent chance this is exactly what’s about to happen to Little Jimin as Barnegat Light enters the final stretch in the great race to the 2023 Piping Plover hatch!

Early in the spring, Giantsbane & Jennifer Jason Leigh snagged the coveted title of “Pair 1” of Barnegat Light (and debatably Pair 1 of the entire state of New Jersey). Shortly after, their arch-enemies, Captain Phillips and Myrtle, took the silver and officially became Pair 2. Finally, underdogs Jimin and Maya became Pair 3.

But Jimin & Maya’s nest was discovered relatively late. When it was found, it already had three eggs, and everyone expected a fourth egg would come soon after. 

But that fourth egg never came.

This means Jimin & Maya’s hatch date is potentially a total power-up wildcard. There is a chance they laid earlier than anyone ever imagined, or at least early enough to take the crown and hatch the first nest of the season in Barnegat Light and even the whole state. It would be a total upset, especially since the current leaders, Giantsbane & Jennifer Jason Leigh, are Jimin’s mom & dad!

Tonight, we enter the final stretch. After that, Jimin & Maya will officially be on hatch watch. And the stakes couldn’t be higher.

Will Jimin steal the crown from his own father, Giantsbane, and Maya from her mother-in-law? We shall see. But I tell you this: if Jimin succeeds, I propose that New Jersey be forced to renumber all of their nests in NestStory (we call this resequencing) to put Jimin & Maya at the top where they would rightly belong: Pair #1.

Best of luck to all of the pairs. But mostly Jimin & Maya!