Discussion: Laramie Daze

One month until the Daze commences. It's Laramie! It's Daze! It's the Laramie Daze--more orienteering in a week than the ordinary human being could possibly know what to do with.

http://www.geocities.com/rmocer/laramiedaze.htm

United can get one from Winnipeg to Laramie with only one change of planes in Denver. That's tempting.

Just don't bring a guitar -- one of your countrymen learned that the hard way on United. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YGc4zOqozo

We were testing out some new terrain types today, including this section of Elf Tree forest:

From Swampfox Rides Again!!!

But in the end we rejected it, because it took about 25:49 to traverse a 30 meter test section of forest, and that was a relatively open bit. Anything slower than 20:00 minutes/30m is ruthlessly discarded for any Laramie Daze use. We have our standards.

Ah, summer finally reaches Laramie and Swampfox emerges from his winter lair.

Is this a new sport to replace culvert crawling?

Good question. Modesty prevented me from mentioning it earlier, however I am feeling a good bit less modest today, thank goodness!--and it might be with thoughts of a totally wild and unruly, swiftly approaching Laramie Daze in mind, or it could be I'm just thinking about cowgirls--but the 25:49 time did represent a new world record for the 30m distance at Elf Tree Forest crawl, which will serve nicely as a companion piece to my world record in the Uphill Culvert Crawl. And not just any old new world record, but a significant lowering from the prior mark, and I definitely didn't refused to resort to any polyurethane high tech O' suit to give me a "boost" or "lift" through the twisted, gnarled, elvan branches.

This probably calls for some celebration, and the more I think about it, the more I am inclined to do so, perhaps with a fine New Belgian Brewery offering of one sort or the other. Some maintain their Fat Tire is even fatter than that.

Can you crawl on top of those bushes?

Awe-inspiring. I may have to go time myself in a Northwest Blackberry Clamber in honor of your efforts in the Elf Tree Forest crawl and the Uphill Culvert Crawl.

Then again, perhaps I'll just stop to eat the blackberries!

Suzanne, that's an Elvan Forest, not a mosh pit! No, you can't crawl across those treetops!!

What do they teach you folks at Google anyway? ; )

Tory, no way would you get me in one of those blackberry thickets up in the NW--they're about the most dreadful things I've ever seen.

Mikell, I'll have to bring you some blackberries from the thicket in my backyard. You will not ever call them "dreadful" again! Well, except you have to watch out for the poison ivy that generally lives in harmony with the bushes. But hey, a little itch on the ankle is worth a bowl of fresh berries.

If you're going to threaten Laramie Daze with the importation of dreadful blackberry thickets--remember, this is one of the few parts of the country where orienteers can run freely with near total certainty they will not suffer horrible be-thornings in the summertime--then I suppose I will have to ask the Governor to mobilize the Guard to make sure no hostile vegetations are illegally imported into our wonderful wildlands.

Nothing against blackberries themselves (the berries, not the canes), but, tell me, do you ever see them appearing on pizza???

I thought not.

PS--The horrible barberry and the terrible greenbriar are not considered desirables in these parts either--and that's a fact! ; )

Organizers of Laramie Daze conducted test runs of the One Cowboy Relay this morning under cloudless skies and a perfect summer sun. Maybe it was only their imagination, but there even appeared to be some perfect summer moon visible in the sky, too.

The test runners observed the usual amounts of the following: sage, short grass prairie, ponderosa pine, bare rock, contour detail, clusterings of granite boulders, evidence of cattle, and very runner friendly terrain.

The test runners did not observe any of the following: cattle without bells, cattle with bells, swine or swine flue, armpit deep (or deeper) "maneater" holes in the ground, master maps, slugs or anything slimey or of a slimelike nature, horrible rush hour traffic jams, overpaid Wall Street investment bankers or other "fat cat" types, or any delayed or missing transport convoys.

Unfortunately, it is also the case that no cowgirls were observed, but there are some hopes this aspect of the One Cowboy Relay can be remediated/improved by race day.