Such was the case last Saturday morning when I and a guy from work participated in the first orienteering event of the year. You don't know what orienteering is? Well then I'll have to explain it to you.
- Get a small topographic map from the event organizers
- Draw a route on your map that goes through some specified way-points
- Look at your compass
- Wait for the official time-keeper to tell you to go
- Start running like mad through the woods towards the first target
- Stop running because the first target is on top of the tallest hill in the park
- Try to find the little orange and white flag that is supposed to be by the fallen tree on the south side of the hill, according to the clues on the map.
- Find the target on the next hill over from where you originally thought it should be
- Mark your score card with the little punch that's hanging from the target to prove you really did find it
- Congratulate yourselves on only being a little bit lost
- Argue about whether to take the trail here or go straight through the brush to get to the second target
- Start running again because the team behind you is starting to catch up
- And so on, zig-zagging through the forest in the most inconvenient ways until you've found all the targets and you can return to the starting point.
It's kind of fun really. The events, organized by a local club, IRVOC, are more for exercise and fresh air than competition, although they do keep track of your times. I did one of these last fall, and the guy I went with has done a couple, never in the winter. Did I mention that it's the dead of winter?
It was 7 degrees. Which brings me back to the beginning of this post...
*witless, Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004.
No comments:
Post a Comment