Note
Travel/rest day, no logged exercise, though there was a little bit of walking around. Nancy and I got in some pretty good tourism on this trip, going up to Mt. Diablo on Friday afternoon, and seeing a total of 14 lighthouses on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, including the dramatically located Point Bonita, which was outdone by the even more impressive Point Reyes (both of which we arrived at too late to actually get to the lighthouse), and a couple of awesome lenses: the third-order one at Point Cabrillo that is in operation (amazing to watch the beam swinging around), and the incredible three-sided double-flash first order lens on display at ground level at Point Arena.
The orienteering was quite enjoyable. I didn't do all that great, but for an old guy (oldest on Red?) who has been off his training and out of practice, it was embarrassingly bad. And it looks like I got through it with no poison oak, so that's good. An interesting tidbit: some people criticize me for running M35 instead of M45, and say that it's inappropriate for me to be depriving some M35 of his award (and I say if you can't beat this mediocre old guy, you don't deserve one). The interesting part is that in any Red category except for M-Red (which I would have won), my time on the Long course would have netted 3rd place (well, 3rd US on M35, because Graeme beat me, too).
*Yeah, this is the first meet where I could have run M55.
The following are minor gripes, which by their inconsequential nature reveal the fine quality of the actual orienteering:
1) The map layout sucked. Used to be that maps were prepared by the priesthood of cartographers, most of whom knew at least something about graphic design, and because the maps were going off for a large offset print order, some time was put into making them look nice. There was at least one cartographer in those days who was terrible, and these reminded me of his work. When any schlub can operate 0CAD, and the maps are going to be cropped differently for every course, aesthetics go out the window. Although, does it really matter?
2) One detail that did bug me on the Morgan Territory maps was the distinct trees. For the most part I ignored them, because they were invisible, though on Sunday I had a control on one, and couldn't figure out exactly what to look for (I can now see that there were three green things in the circle), so I got there by using contours. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the trees are printed using medium green instead of dark green. In any case, on a yellow background in sunlight, I can't see them at all.
3) The sprint maps had the courses printed with "transparent purple", and therefore there was no breaking of circles or lines. Great. There was one spot where it looked like there might be an important staircase right where the line met the circle, but with the purple there, I couldn't tell. I didn't risk it and took a different route, which turned out to be the right choice, because I would have gotten dead-ended.
4) There was a fence on the way to the first control on all courses except White, Yellow, and BrownY that really wasn't crossable. Five strands of tight barbed wire, very low clearance. I ended up climbing over at a post, I guess some people found places where they could slither under, and Nancy almost quit at that point, but eventually squeezed through. It's a good thing that BrownY didn't have to cross it, because I don't think most of those old people could have done it. I was worried that Charlie was going to have a back spasm trying and would have to be hauled out on a stretcher. I usually figure orienteers have to be able to deal with whatever, but I thought this fence was beyond the acceptable limits.
5) One of the things that people lauded about electronic punching was the fast, excellent results. There are definitely people who understand how to work things so that that is the case, but this was an example of how it can be worse than we ever had it. Results lists printed once in a while on letter-size paper, taped to a string. You end up with very little viewing room for stale results, and with those big sheets, people have to hold onto them to keep them from flapping, so there are arms obscuring everything.
6) For some reason, BAOC had to recruit prerunners for the courses from elsewhere (e.g., me). They don't have enough local people to do it? Not a big deal, and Nancy and I appreciated the early start times anyway. The whole operation was pretty disorganized, though -- we got mildly chastised for heading down the trail to the start without having picked up some equipment to carry (after I had said I'd be happy to carry stuff if somebody would tell me what needed carrying). Particularly perplexing was when we started on Sunday and were told that they had already woken up all of the controls. If that's the case, why do you need prerunners?