I received a couple of sample maps today from the Swampfox. It looks like there will be a few fences to cross, and I'm presuming these are barbed wire fences? I didn't see anything about that in the course notes, but I'm curious to know.
They are wire, frequently barbed. In the past, Swampfox has published some tips for crossing them. Often, you can find a low spot in the terrain where you can roll under. Or, frequently the wires are far enough apart that you can push the bottom couple down and lift the top one or two up and squeeze through without catching. If you have to go over, look for solid wooden posts or corners. If you try to cross at or between the thin line posts, there is too much flex in the wires. Generally, they are more annoyance than serious obstacle. But be careful. One of our local juniors still has a scar on his back from getting up too soon whilst crawling under the fence at the start of the US Night Champs in Wyoming a few years back.
There's a note about barbed wire in the
Detailed Event Schedule for Tuesday morning, and also on the
Laramie Daze Meet Notes page under 'Safety' #2.
But, I don't think I received anything about barbed wire fences on Saturday / Sunday.
I'll wait for Swampfox to chime-in about that.
There are two choices for real orienteers to deal with barbed wire fences. The first is to just take a charge at them and if your legs are strong enough, the wires will snap right through. The second is, if you have a big enough map (and it looks like the blue course map on day 2 may qualify), you can build a makeshift glider out of it. It won't get you very high, but it can get just enough air to pull you cleanly over a fence. Its also highly useful for lightening the load on long downhills. But again, that only works with a big enough map.
Alas, the day 2 map will be 1:15000, so I think the glider idea won't work. I will bring a jar of termites, however. The termites will chew through the fence posts, and the fence will fall down so I can pass without risking injury.
Also, what are the black circles with a short line pointing SE?
"The black "Q" is a special local symbol to show outcrops of quartz. These can be very handy because they're so distinct and easy to see." From a
previous version of the mapping style page.
The first main thing to know about barbed wire is how to properly pronounce it, which is bobbed wire. Or, in some select areas of the country, bobbed war. Some folks may ask, well, if that's how you say it, why you don't you spell it that way? But there are many worse travesties in the English language, with such obvious examples as Worcester, MA, or ham.
Ham is especially bad. Why anyone would take perfectly good pig and waste it on ham when it could be turned into BBQ as was intended by god is a desecration that can not be explained. There are a good number of preachers in the Carolinas and Texas who have built up entire ministries by sermonizing on this one sin alone--and they aren't driving old beat up VW Beetles around town, neither.
The next main thing to know about bobbed wire is knowing which side the bull is on, and which side you is on. The distinction is not a philosophical one such as the ever popular: "If the bubble in my compass goes away when I close my eyes but comes back when I look the the compass again, did it really go away at all?"
The last main thing you need to know about bobbed wire is the time I once put on a local race and made a minor mistake in the course setting. There were about 3 or 4 dozen folks coming up from Colorado parts, and after I got them all started off one by one, I looked up and saw they were all still just standing there, about ten feet away, and there was a big old bobbed wire fence right on the other side of them. They weren't saying anything and were just standing their together looking confused. I asked them why they weren't running the course and one of them pointed to the other side of the fence and said that as best they could figure out, all the controls were over there. Talk about feeling low! Dang! I felt lower than a squashed armadillo on the Dallas-Fort Worth beltway during rush hour, and that is some considerable low. I had to cancel the race. Luckily there was a rodeo going on over by Cheyenne though, and so we did that instead. They had them some extra good BBQ there too--mustard based--so really I suppose you could say it all worked out for the best, I'm sure it must have been what god had intended right from the git go, and that bobbed wire fence was just his way of telling us we were overdue for some religion.
As I was eating my Black Forest ham sandwich, I thought to myself - "What does an outcrop of quartz look like? Will it interfere with my wrist watch?"
Hey!! Some of us Coloradoans know how to handle bobbed war...
Wait! The controls are where??!!
I thought it was bob war. I guess educated folks may say bobbed. Seems kind of prissy to me.
bob war. popl tree. crik. coolee.
Two comments from the peanut gallery (and Worcester resident).
First, barbed wire, however you pronounce it, was invented in Worcester, MA (along with the smiley face, the valentine, and the oral contraceptive).
Second, the name "Worcester" looks odd, I will admit that. It certainly does not follow the pattern of "Dorchester" or "Rochester". But if you break the name into syllables as "Worce-ster" instead of "Wor-ces-ter", it makes sense. That sauce has 3 syllables, the first 2 are the name of the place in England, the 3rd of which is "shire." The sauce name does not have 4 syllables.
If you are in the market for odd place names in Massachusetts, I find the following names odder than "Worcester", and more of a discriminant of who's a local and who's a furriner:
Haverhill
Woburn
Revere
Quincy
Natick
Nahant
Woonsocket. Medford. Billerica.
As someone who has a bit of experience with hang gliders, I will not recommend the glider approach. Wing loading is too high, stability too low.
As someone who has some experience running full-speed into bobwahr, I will not recommend that approach, and will gladly show you the scars on my left thigh that are evidence of the reason.
As someone with extensive experience orienteering in Wyoming and Colorado, I will point out that the most efficient way to get past a bobwahr fence is to run at it full speed and hurdle it. I'm not kidding. Not everybody can do it, and it can't be done just anywhere, but it's the best option when conditions allow it. I may be available for demonstrations next week. (No, I've never missed.)
My grandmother lived withing walking distance of the building where the smiley face was created, and I learned to ride a bicycle in the parking lot across the street, but that's neither here nor there. Or at least not here. It's not really there, either, because they tore down that parking lot to put in a
different parking lot. There is no 'h' in "Worcester", and it almost rhymes with "vista".
Is Worcester claiming to be where the smiley face was invented kind of like Al Gore claiming to have invented the internet?
Just think, one of the immortal lines in rock-n-roll could so easily istead have been: "I've got Worcesters on my fingers!"
Hm, I'll give you Haverill, Woburn, and Nahant.. and Revere if you say it right. But Quincy? What am I missing?
Quinn-see versus Quinn-zee.
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/smile... was the 1st URL returned when I Googled "smiley face" inventor.
We ran an event this past weekend that had nofewer than 6 barbed wire fences too cross. i am a fan off the roll under technique rather than the step through. Climbing over is good in a corner although with a skinny tree and just the top wire its possible to cross, be it with some balence.
I have a cut or two from getting it wrong before though
And I thought Forrest Gump invented the smiley face...
My only misgiving about the roll-under technique is actually more of a complaint about my O-pants. They have the pocket on the back instead of the front, and I twice had the unpleasant experience of a Gu packet bursting after bobwar acrobatics. Maybe Axis Gear could fix this in future designs.
Quinn-see versus Quinn-zee.
Ah, I'm obviously MA-tainted. It wouldn't occur to me that there even was a second way to pronounce it.
This discussion thread is closed.