Discussion: Why don't you just park on ...

Why don't you just park on the side of the parking lot close to the trees? (I really shouldn't have to tell you this.)

Because they'll fall on his car?

Acting on your suggestion, I have submitted a proposal replete with documented justification to the Forest Service, calling for them to permanently designate the closest parking spot to the trail head as a reserved spot for anyone who has ever finished last in Oringen. I don't know if they will go for it, but if they do, I will be set.

And I will return your kind favor with a suggestion you can incorporate into your golf game (or pass along to any of your golfing buddies), as a simple way to improve your game: just increase your percentage of hole-in-one shots to 50% of shots taken. Of course there's no reason to limit yourself, so if you can get above 50%, so much the better!

Great idea! Except I expect my future days on the golf course to number less that your future days finishing last at the O'Ringen. In other words, of limited value... :-(

Dang. I was hoping I could maybe persuade PG to join me someday for a round at the nine-hole course down the street from my house. I guess I'll need to get Mikell to finish last at O-Ringen twice.

Finishing last in Oringen requires years of careful preparation. There's the physical training, the technical work, choosing the right equipment, nutrition, sleep, sport psychological training, class selection strategy--it's way more involved than the casual observer would assume. And besides doing everything possible to tilt the field in your favor after years and years of dedicated preparation, you *still* have to be the luckiest of the lucky to do it even once. To do it twice, I dunno....the odds would be so long, you would almost assume cheating had to be involved.

Given the diversity of . . . um . . . preparation you might encounter in the age group classes, I think a person who wanted to maximize his odds would have to opt for entering the elite class.

But this thread started with parking, and it reminds me of PG's confidence in approaching parking situations, seemingly always borne out.

Yeah, if all these years he's been parking on the far side of the parking lot, well, that's just dumb. Something he was told as a plebe and he never figured out they were kidding?

Charlie, you might misunderstand the meaning of finishing last at Oringen. That's not just finishing last in a given class. That's being the last person to finish out of *all* the classes. Only one person can finish last per year. It's not easy to do!

"To finish last, first...you must finish." - Billy Wilson

Rhonda did something like that one time at the Swiss 6 day in 1991. She did not understand the convention at the time that the last control was not at the circled feature, but rather at the head of the chute. I hadn't understood that either and was perplexed for a bit before checking out the head of the chute maybe 25 or so meters away from the cliff that corresponded to the circle and the clue, finding the control code matched and finishing my course. Rhonda was not so easily deterred, and I finally went looking for her, after the chute had come down and everyone else had gone home. She was wandering around the base of that cliff, rather patiently, under the circumstances.

I suppose if this became a competitive activity, it could actually drag on for quite a while. In order to have a chance I think you would need a late start time, no?

Thinking about it from an organizer's point of view, for sure you wouldn't want to see this becoming a competitive activity.

In my own case, a late start, sheer determination to finish, and being in a class wayyyy over my head were all contributing factors. I had entered 19-20E, and had been orienteering less than a year--ha!

I was completely clueless. It did not help that the terrains and forests were utterly unlike anything like the Harriman area terrain I got started in. Each day there were one or more controls that I really struggled to find. That's besides the fact that I would have been dropping gobs of time against the other folks even on the legs I did reasonably okay.

Cadets...some things never change. May we all grow up to venerate and emulate the mighty Swampfox!