Florida Orienteering
Ocala National Forest: Woodpecker West
01 March 2003
Course Designer/Event Coordinator: Jonathan Linforth


Courses: WHITE | YELLOW | ORANGE | BROWN | GREEN | RED | NOTES
How did you like it?

Let's hear from you!

Ocala National Forest with a New Map and Preprinted courses had been my focus for weeks!

I was training hard for it.

I was really looking forward to it because I knew Arild Orsleie and Dave Ousley would be fresh and ready. And I knew that Ron Eaglin would be there and in top shape. What I didn't know was that Ron would go on an all night canoeing trip or something the night before, and drag in there on no sleep and brain-fades his way through what for him was a completely blown red course. Then Arild DQ's. Oh well.

Jonathan Linforth set our courses with some gorgeous long legs and hinted before we went out that he'd done some tricky things with control placements, so to be on the lookout. I did indeed catch at least two of his tricks with controls set close-by our red controls. But when I finished and caught my breath he waited a few moments and asked if I'd gotten the last control. I said sure, right there, pointing to it. He handed my map back to me and said look again. Doggone if the line from penultimate control to GO control didn't just happen to pass right through the finish tent and well off to the south toward the genuine last control about 300 meters away. What an effort it was to start running again, over the hill, down to that control and back to finish again. So far he hasn't disqualified me from the results list, so my time looks pretty good. Arild Orlseie was DQ'ed by one of those tricky nearby controls on the course, so I've challenged Jonathan to reinstate Arild or DQ us both. It's likely that "Shultz" should be the Red courses winner of this first inaugural Woodpecker West event.

Lots of visitors from up north. Steve & Donna Fluegel wound up their winter stay with us and we must all apologize for laughing too hard when Donna asked if the weather was always this hot & humid the first week of March.

The weather was, most of us thought, pretty nice. I'd guess about 75-80°F depending on whether you went out early with the clouds or later with the sun. And the relative humidity was only enough to break a healthy sweat. I normally carry water with me in hot weather, but didn't this day and was sorry halfway through the course.

The turnout was terrific in light of the less-than-perfect weather forecast for the day. They said it would rain all day, but we saw only a few drips on the windshield driving out there.

Speaking of driving out there. If any of you reading this were among those who could not find the staging area, I take full responsibility and heartily apologize for any confusion or frustration. I sincerely hope no one actually gave up and went home. I failed to modify the directions on the web site, resulting in lots of people reporting lots of confusion out along forest road 538 in the areas of our past events at ONF. We did place our orange and white direction signs in Paisley at the 538 entrance and another at the north end of 538 at the 445 junction. The catch was there's 5 miles of dirt road, and un-occupied staging areas, between the two. More signs and better web page monitoring was called for.

And to further reduce confusion in the future, we've decided to change the name of this new map from Woodpecker West to something else. You tell us. We've already got a Woodpecker Hill map, where the actual woodpecker nests are located. You may have noticed there were no woodpecker nests on this new map at all. Suggestions for a new map name range from Billies Bay, after the adjacent Wilderness Area north of 445, to...well, that's it so far. We've ruled out anything 'Shockley' to avoid confusion, since we've already got Shockley Ranch, even though both Shockley Heights and Shockley Hill are the two adjoining communities. Send in your suggestions. Maybe we'll name one of the depressions after the person with the winning suggestion.

As for results, check the web. Dave Ousley once again stayed up all night (it seems) getting the results finished quickly. I haven't done a head count yet, but it looked like 150 or so. Not bad for Ocala, but I wish more ROTC units could have enjoyed this first day map experience. As it was the Titusville cadets were the sole JROTC representatives, and did rather well too. We are aware that 11 of 24 starters on Orange failed to finish, and we don't like to see that. If you were on the 13 successful ones, pat yourself on the back, because that was perhaps one of the toughest Orange you'll see.

Helpers showed up early and made for a very low-pressure time of it at registration for a change. John Ide, Janet Putnam, and Bev Ousley registered. Jonathan Linforth had lots of help from Dave Ousley and Russ Steinke at the start/finish table. Jay Turner helped Jonathan set controls Sat morning. Derek Bohn, Kim Durgan, and Joe Maliszewski retrieved. I saw evidence of the Dempseys having helped out, too. Thanks to all, and to all the others I'm neglecting to thank by name.

Did I mention how wonderful the forest is on this new map? Our fieldchecker Malcolm Adams was sort of lukewarm in his reactions, reporting that the footing was not as clean as Shockley Ranch and that there were no intricate depressions like Woodpecker Hill and the undergrowth was a bit grotty, as the Brits say. But I liked it. A lot. There are more contours on this map than on any previous FLO map. There are lots and lots of very intricate vegetation boundaries which you will all be learning to read in the years to come because us coursesetters will be using them forever as control features, you can bet. The whole thing strikes me as a great place to orienteer and I had a ton of fun this first time out.

Be sure not to miss the next event out there, or any FLO event anywhere for that matter. Bring a friend next time - pay no attention to the weather or the weather forecasts.

Bob Putnam


WHITE

Name Time
Zehr 44:20
Trudi Short 104:00

YELLOW

Name Time
Tom Sammet (M1) 38:50
Pradella 42:09
Myers Family (3) 47:50
Mark Laughridge (2) 64:20
Slowikowski 73:45
Naisbett (6) 81:13
Kathy Buckles (10) 82:00
Jim Taylor (3) practice
Liz Kegler (4) practice

ORANGE

Name Time
Troop 524 #3 (4) 71:20
Troop 524 #2 (5) 89:20
Prytulo (M1) 99:05
Jeff Hunker 101:00
Bret Barker (2) 101:50
Bob & Elaine Bates (2) 102:45
Brown 118:05
Steinke (M1) 130:32
Mahnken 134:14
Paul Kavan 134:50
Titusville #6 137:20
Weber 171:47
Hawkins/Lunt (2) 209:00
Christina Royer DQ
Sarah Braddock & Alisha Vaughn DQ
Pardy Party DQ
Myers DNF
Durgan (F1) DNF
Troop 524 #1 (5) DNF
Dempsey (2) DNF
Nelson DNF
Santi DNF
Karnehm & Hood DNF
Jay Turner (M1) DNF

BROWN

Name Time
John, Karen, Luke Kremer (3) 92:24
Titusville #2 Jimenez 100:07
Titusville #1 Odermatt 109:25
Sammet 110:25

GREEN

Name Time
Cutler (M1) 55:22
Debra Gottschalk (F1) 69:22
Bohn (M1) 77:57
John Ide (M1) 78:15
Royer 81:45
C&R Tischer (2) 83:28
Titusville #4 91:17
Titusville #3 91:19
Titusville #5 108:55
Clayburn (2) 120:05
Mark & Abby Rosenberg (2) 137:00

RED

Name Time
Bob Putnam (M1) 62:00
Arild Orsleie (M1) 66:00
Schultz 78:10
Ray Bruneau (M1) 88:37
Donna Fluegel (F1) 94:09
Andy Holman (F1) 101:40
Dwayne Jenkins (3) 104:55
Ron Eaglin (M1) 107:40
A. Stanley III (M1) 112:47
Kyle Tallent (M1) 114:03
Bev Ousley (F1) 114:40
Ace Gottschalk (M1) 124:07
Chad Truxall (G3) 129:57
Murphy 133:30
Crane 138:20
Bill Barolet (M1) DQ
Aaronson DQ
Steve Fluegel (M1) DQ
Joe Maliszewski (M1) DNF
Fendner DNF


NOTES

DNF Did Not Finish
DQ Disqualified/Mispunched


Created 11-March-2003