Discussion: O-horoscope

It's Monday, so maybe some guidance from New Mexico Orienteers' O-horoscope might be useful: http://nmorienteers.org/ohoroscope.html.

I got: "Today is a good day for going out for a quiet walk. You should avoid staying in bed. It would be auspicious to run the green course and to seek a ditch and a spring, but be wary of a pit, a lake, and the blue course. Your lucky vegetation feature is the clearing. Your lucky man-made structure is the wall. Your lucky direction is southeast. Avoid northwest, and any road or open land."

mine sounds strangely ideal for swampfoxes:

"Today is a good day for drinking beer. You should avoid rogaining. It would be auspicious to run the blue course and to seek a depression and a spring, but be wary of a boulder cluster, a lake, and the yellow course. Your lucky vegetation feature is the forest corner. Your lucky man-made structure is the well. Your lucky direction is southwest. Avoid north, and any trail junction or clearing."

I think they are right on...after those marshes at Tiomila, I am all about avoiding the gully, especially mixed with the seasonal stream...sounds like a recipe for disaster!

"Today is a good day for going out for a quiet walk. You should avoid staying in bed. It would be auspicious to run the green course and to seek a terrace and a pool, but be wary of a gully, a seasonal stream, and the blue course. Your lucky vegetation feature is the clearing. Your lucky man-made structure is the ruin. Your lucky direction is east. Avoid northeast, and any ford or open land."

Nope, Kenny. This is what a Swampfox horoscope sounds like: "Eat pizza. Drink whiskey. Entertain the womens until their menfolk show up, and then run like hell! Punch all controls seen while running. Don't stop for nuthin'!"

It told me to stay in bed.... This is a rather odd idea to have an orienteering horoscope ;) But it is an interesting idea...

Today is a good day for staying in bed. You should avoid going out for a quiet walk. It would be auspicious to run the blue course and to seek a ditch and a spring, but be wary of a pit, a lake, and the yellow course. Your lucky vegetation feature is the clearing. Your lucky man-made structure is the well. Your lucky direction is northwest. Avoid south, and any trail junction or open land.

is west point close to home?

"Today is a good day for staying close to home. You should avoid helping at the finish. It would be auspicious to run the yellow course and to seek a col and a stream, but be wary of a cave, a sea, and the brown course. Your lucky vegetation feature is the clearing. Your lucky man-made structure is the road. Your lucky direction is southeast. Avoid northwest, and any wall or open land."

Is there a control symbol for sea?

One of the Attackpoint T-shirts has a sea on it. Maybe that is the C-symbol? Obviously that poor fellow didn't read Joe's horoscope.

I've run on one or two maps with the sea on them (sand dune areas in SW England), but don't remember ever having a control on it.

Wouldn't that be a large pond?

I can think of at least four maps in the US that abut the Atlantic Ocean, and it's possible that I've hung a control on a salt water feature. I think I remember one flag on a boulder floating away when the tide came in.

re reading my horoscope I discover my lucky feature is the clearing, but I should avoid open land. technically a clearing IS open land, no? How many people can name the maps JJ can think of? I can think of two: HVO's Hunter Island and maybe LIOC Caumsett State park. How about Nickerson SP out on the Cape?

Nope, no ocean at Nickerson (incidentally, do people like that map? would you come to an event there if one was put on?). CSU's Mystic River map in Boston abuts a tidal river, but I doubt if J-J had that in mind (although I did put a control on it and called it 'lake edge', which he wasn't very impressed by at the time). DVOA's Elk Neck? NEOC has a map of World's End in Hingham, MA, no? and of Rocky Neck in East Lyme, CT. CSU has a map of one of the Boston Harbor islands too, although it hasn't been used for a public event. I also know of at least one tiny private O map of someone's house in Nahant, MA.

The last control in the middle distance final at the world university champs in Bulgaria in 2002 was on a previously featureless beach at the water's edge - but for the event they had built a man-made feature and the control description was just 'x'. The tides aren't a big problem in the Black Sea. There are plenty of coastal sand dune maps elsewhere in the world - Woodhill near Auckland had plenty of great terrain, and there are plenty of others elsewhere in NZ, in three states of Australia and in Scotland, to name a few I've run on.

What is a col? I need to know, obviously, if I'm going to avoid one.

Today is a good day for staying close to home. You should avoid helping at the finish. It would be auspicious to run the green course and to seek a re-entrant and a lake, but be wary of a col, a waterfall, and the blue course. Your lucky vegetation feature is the clearing. Your lucky man-made structure is the ruin. Your lucky direction is southeast. Avoid northwest, and any ford or open land.

In French a col is a pass, as in mountain pass.

I wouldn't consider Elk Neck on the ocean, tho the tides are a factor in course planning and I got lucky we had low tide for the last course I set there.

Places I've run on with ocean or sea on the map: Woodhill NZ (Tasman Sea), LIthuania (Baltic), Spain (Med on the map where the recent control picking record was set), Portugal (Atlantic). Woodhill is especially fantastic.

I don't need a horoscope to tell me my unlucky feature is "sand dune" :-). Never seen a control on an ocean or sea feature, that I can recall, anyway.

pond; deep; 10^7x10^7; western edge
How close does the size estimate need to be to meet IOF standards?

And Julie needs to be wary of a French pass!

I wasn't thinking of World's End, but that's a great answer. Hunter Island was on my list. Mystic River I wasn't thinking of, nor Elk Neck, but they're possibilities. I haven't been to Rocky Neck, but I think that would count. I was counting Colt State Park in Rhode Island (on Narragansett Bay) and the What Cheer canoe-O map in Providence. I hadn't thought of the Spouting Horn map in Nahant, but I was counting Byard's Point in Maine, which OME has used for public events (originally made for a goofy race at a wedding reception). I think Urban Forestry Center in Portsmouth(?) NH should count, and maybe also the map in Miami that Jon Nash and I made -- not quite on the beach, but it's only a couple of hundred meters away on the Intracoastal Waterway. Probably others as well -- any ideas? I guess the Hudson River is tidal as far north as Albany, but it's definitely fresh water up there, so I wasn't counting the USMA map, or Tallman Mountain. Hmm, maybe HVO has something else (Fort Lee?) that's closer to the mouth of the river.

Rocky Neck (NEOC) counts - I ran some beginner courses there in March - route to the first control was on the beach, second control was on a boulder (wrong boulder BTW) bordering the tidal flat. When I didn't find the flag on the mapped boulder - I left the greenbriar woods and ran out on the flats (low tide) until I found the flag on a boulder about 100m S of where it should have been. The flats were a bit spongy, but a lot more runnable than the greenbriar infested hillside that ran alongside it..

Pohick Bay and Hop Frog Run abut tidal waters, and Chopawamsic (that's got to be mis-spelled!) might. The old map over the main Quantico base area would. Then Westmoreland does. Once upon a time there was an O' map at Ft. Story, and was even used for the Intercollegiates, I believe.

At JWOC in 2002 I ran on that Spanish map that the event with the most controls was on this year. There weren't any controls on the beach but at least it was a catching feature that you couldn't miss.

I love Nickerson ... I'd go back to run there for an A meet. As I recall the map was a bit shakey in parts and the terrain wasn't the most open & it had some odd parts where you had a longish leg along a lake beach or two ... but still, I remember it fondly. Put it on and they will come.

Hurd SP is on the Connecticut R which is tidal up beyond Hartford, don't think it's very salty though.

I hear it tastes just like chicken

thanks eddie for a good laugh.

And Peggy, it's not like you've made a ringing endorsement for Nickerson... shakey ... not open .. odd parts...

We all need to go out and do some training...

The Pacific Ocean is prominently featured on the Presidio of San Francisco orienteering map, and will be one of the obstacles for the participants of San Francisco Night and Day.