Kate and I teamed up for the first time! Kate has been super wary of teaming up for me, but we committed to a hiking pace, prioritized fun over competition, and it went great!
Surely, it helped that none of the controls were particularly hard (and thus stressful) or had intense route choice (potential for arguing), but I have to give ourselves credit for sharing the navigation load, requesting high fives, and keeping good spirits.
We frequently thought of our friends who were also out on the course, and recounted the times we had seen them. We had seen Heather gleefully tearing down a hillside, shouting, "I LOVE THIS TERRAIN!" with Tori B. dashing after her and Will galloping casually behind. We bumped into Shara and Dana a few times, who seemed to always be in the middle of cracking a joke while navigating. We saw Mike descending out of a checkpoint, quipping, "Do I get points for selling the sport for 5 minutes?" We even paused to hang out with Terry and Zarina at a checkpoint which none of us found, but we did find it amusing to have a brief photo shoot in which I re-created some scenes from an orienteering cartoon I had drawn.
We enjoyed the map, the course, the terrain, and perhaps most of all, the community.
My friend Julie texted me that she was running "through" Ballard (she's an ultra runner, she can pretty much run as far as she wants)-- so I met her at the locks and ran with her to Fremont. Took the bus back. Sunny day. Yipee!