Orienteering (Foot) 48:00 [3] 5.0 km (9:36 / km) +90m 8:48 / km
SSS Squirrel (Kill) 2017 at Arundel Mills Middle School, Odenton, MD. Before starting the event, which included a written test, foot and cycle orienteering, and card house building, Samantha was having issues. Heidi Onkst walked with her to calm her down when not much else was working. After a not so good written test result, but a good roll of the dice, I got going on this oddly nice August day. It was in the 70s F. Ted Good's newly mapped area was pretty interesting with more technical navigation than I'd anticipated. The first part was sprinty around school grounds, but after that we were in a mostly open forest with lots of trails and sometimes good visibility. The controls were the 1 ft. tall construction streamers on a wire post so they added to the difficulty factor. One often had to be right on to see it. Overall, my navigation was pretty good. I did pass the control a short way at #7 but relocated quickly. For #10, I opted to leave the trail and got into unmapped greenery--high grasses and thorns near a creek. The green pushed me to the left on that but re-oriented at a trail intersection to recover and find the control--taking the trails would have saved me a few minutes. I needed a bathroom break and lost more time. Going from #13 to #14, I had a hard time matching up the trail I was on with the map, but it got me to the control correctly. It was a nice event. I did save the card house building for last, and got 2 levels in the 2 minutes for that. I had aimed to do the cycle orienteering too, but the replacement chain I'd purchased in the morning, got left at home. The party after the event was as always, nice and a good way to more or less close out the summer orienteering season.