Orienteering race 1:05:25 [3]
Long course at Lehigh University/South Mountain. This was my least favorite day of the weekend. I made mistakes on the first and eighth controls, but even without those mistakes, I would not have liked this day. I just thought the woods were trashy, rocky, and not much fun. Plus, there were stinging nettles and poison ivy everywhere, so I was paranoid the entire time I was in the woods.
My mistake at #1 was because I was so afraid of dropping too low as I came down the hillside, that I stayed too high and couldn't make heads or tails of the trails. Luckily, I came upon a trail intersection with a stone wall, and could figure out where I was. On #8, it was just total lack of attention on my part. I came to a control on the trail in a depression, knew exactly where I was and, inexplicably, decided to leave the trail at that point to look for my control when I should just have stayed on the trail a bit longer. There were several controls in that area, and I just kept checking each one, convinced that one of them was mine! Blah! It was the penultimate control, and I was ahead of Peggy at that point, so I totally blew it nearly within eyesight of the finish. Oh, well.
Overall, a very, very fun weekend. The camping at Hickory Run was a blast, with an entire row of orienteers together. And, even though Dave and I had unarguably the worst site in the entire campground, it was okay because we had the best neighbors! Thanks to George and Lynette for letting us encroach in to their space. And, I predict the big time orienteer from the next generation will be Ethan Hall, who organized his own o-meet at the campground, complete with homemade map, controls, descriptions, and nearly the winning time on his course (beaten only by US Team member, Eddie Bergeron).