Discussion: Flying Pig Info?

Is this event still on? If one wants to make reservations, how do we know where to make them? I know Mike M. has been busy, but isn't there anyone else in the club?

The Friday and Sunday events will be in Miami Whitewater Forest at Harrison, Ohio, near the Indiana State Line (exit #3 off I-74). There are several lodging options in Harrison at exit #1 and #3.

The Saturday sprints will be at Cincinnati City Parks, which will be close to I-74/75, maybe a 15-20 mile (20-30 minute) drive east of Harrison. I would choose to stay at Harrison & drive to the Sat meets, unless you have a really strong desire to be downtown, near the airport, etc.

I had planned to start working on Pig details yesterday, but spent most of the day dealing with a failing hard drive. Good news is everything is rescued, bad news is this computer is on borrowed time. I've ordered a new one & should have it by the end of next week, but don't expect major updates to the OCIN website before then.

The other good news is that I've always been able to show up at the Pig with no reservations and easily find an affordable place to crash. There seems to be an excess of lodging capacity that time of year.

There is a Holiday inn, a Quality inn, and a Comfort inn right off of exit 3.

Just to expand on Adam's hotel info above:

Map of Harrison and Miami Whitewater Forest

Holiday Inn Express
10906 New Haven Road
Harrison, Ohio 45030
(513) 367-1111
holidayinnexpress.com

Quality Inn
10900 New Haven Rd
Harrison, OH 45030
(513) 367-5200

Comfort Inn Cincinnati West Harrison
I-74 exit 1
391 Comfort Dr.
Harrison, OH 45030
(513) 367-9666

I believe those are the 3 hotels closest to the Friday and Sunday events. For more options outside of Harrison, go here and simply adjust the search distance on the right.

Ok, I've put together a rough locator map for your reference. Hopefully this will give you an idea of where the events will be held in relation to one another.

Outside of the hotels in Harrison, anythng along I-74 will be centrally located to all 3 days' events.

hkleaf and adam, thanks for the help in getting motel/locator info posted! Here's OCIN's official locator map for Miami Whitewater. (Friday & Sunday events, although it does not yet show starting locations.) Friday event will be a middle distance with starts in late afternoon (2:30 - 4 or 4:30, with possibility of allowing late arrivals to go out until 5 or 5:30). Daylight Savings Time starts March 11, so we should have decent daylight until around 8 pm. Saturday will be two sprints, with a couple hours between, since they are at different parks. The parks shown on hkleaf's locator map are highly likely but not confirmed with 100% certainty. Sunday will be a classic distance at Miami Whitewater & we're planning 10-Noon start times.

Note that this will give you 4 ranked events in 3 days. The two sprints on Saturday will count as total time for awards, but separate runs for ranking purposes.

Intercollegiate awards will be based on total time from Saturday and Sunday events.

Harrison seems to be an 80 minute drive or so from the Dayton airport. I'm saving $250 on my plane tickets by landing there instead of CVG.

I'm flying to Dayton also, but not till Saturday night (arr DAY 10:23pm Saturday, dep 4:55pm Sunday). Would be interested in sharing somebody's hotel room for Saturday night if that works for anyone. (Car hire is also phenomenally cheap at DAY - $15 base rate at Hertz - but that may be true everywhere.)

Friends don't let friends enter sprints.

Indianapolis (IND) is also a good airport choice. Southwest and America West fly in there. I got a round trip from Tucson to Indy on Southwest for about $230. It should be under an hour and 45 min. drive from IND to Harrison. Columbus (CMH) and Louisville (SDF) also tend to have better fares than CVG, but are a little farther to drive.

As far as discount airline goes, I believe AirTran flies into Dayton and Indianapolis. Jet Blue flies into Columbus. And Southwest goes to Indianapolis, Louisville, as well as Columbus. U.S. Airways/America West goes to all area airports (Cincinnati, Dayton, Indianapolis, Louisville, and Columbus).

Just doing a quick search, looks like Jet Blue is offering a roundtrip from JFK-Columbus for the Pig weekend (Fri-Sun) at $128.8, while a Boston-Columbus roundtrip is running at $246.7

Preliminary info is now posted at ocin.org. Its a little sketchy on details still, but there is a registration form up. No prices yet for dinner, but at this point just indicate if you want one and plan to pay for it later. We're having trouble getting a hall at a reasonable price, so we might have to end up just doing a meet-at-a-restaurant-and-pay-your-own.

Hooray! Thanks, Mike.

We have now confirmed French Park and Burnet Woods as the Cincinnati City Parks for the Sprint events on Saturday.

For those of us considering a Sat arrival, it would be helpful to at least know the approximate times of the Sat races (e.g. morning, noon, afternoon?)

The first sprint (French Park) probably won't have starts later than noon. There will be at least 2 hours between sprints (allow 20 minutes to drive between parks, plus time to park, etc... and we need to allow our SI team and other workers plenty of time to move equipment & set up.).

I think you could feel safe on making the first sprint if you could get to French Park by 11:30, although that might not give you as much warm-up time as you'd like.