Congratulations to all the brave souls venturing into the blazing July-fields of Florida. If you went out early enough you missed the heat of the day. If you stayed out long enough you were pleasantly drenched. If you stayed even longer you were sobered by the lightning strike that touched down on the shell road in front of the HQ building about 100 feet from Arild Orsleie.
The courses themselves were challenging enough, we didn't need lightning.
I warned everyone that the Green course, though it was only 4.9 km, was
still tough enough that I felt obliged to add a Brown course - a shortened
green.
Gene&Dean (aka D. Ousley) blasted my Green anyway, and no one broke 110
minutes on my supposedly easier Brown. Once again, the best laid plans gang
aft agly (Burns).
...might have had something to do with the maps.....
I managed to introduce a new format at this event - Imaginary-feature-O -
this is where course designer uses all newly mapped features for control
locations and then provides everyone with the previous edition of the map.
We most humbly apologize for the map situation. We had on hand 15 or 20 of
the 'new' LBE maps fieldchecked last winter by Malcolm Adams. There have
been July events where this amount was sufficient. Not so 2003. We are grown
permanently large enough that even July events draw 140 and I've failed to
accept it, I guess. At any rate, the courses were designed using new maps,
but the bulk of the event supply were old 1999 maps. In a more perfect world
you'd think this would maybe affect mostly advanced courses, but Nooooooo.
I'd managed to design all courses using features shown only on new maps.
Much egg-on-face explanations followed, with me standing over master map
area explaining how best to update your old map to include attack point
features as well as control location features. I hope you enjoyed the day
despite all that. I can only pray everyone thought it was funnier than it
was aggravating.
The HQ building staging area worked out well. The rangers seemed pleased and did not rigorously count heads - so apparently we passed. I was pleased to see the area well policed at the end of the day, so it looked as though no crowds had even been around. Thanks. And no parking permit incidents. And no Lost Boys - contrary to the worst fears of Troop 184 leaders who launched a S&R effort after 9 boys were still out on Yellow after 3 hours. All were accounted for.
Some notable incidents occurred. It was terrific to see Phil Tasker (one of FLO's Life Members) return after several year's absence. Now that we have his correct snail/email addresses, we'll see more of him, and hopefully Helen too. The Latvian contingent of Artur Intson and a few friends came out ready to give the usual FLO elites a run for it, and it may be that Dave's 60 minute time on Green would have been in jeopardy if Artur had carried the same map Dave had. Never mind; Dave wins fair & square. As it was there were three parties bunched around 80 minutes on Green - Kip Koelsch's Adventure racers and Ron Eaglin's Team Xtreme, together with Artur. Sadly, Arild Orsleie chose to live another day, rather than run out the full green course in the mid-day sun, so he's not among the leaders this time. Probably wise, though.
Toby Henson felt good, I'm sure, beating the two Titusville HSJROTC kids in his charge, both of whom are quite talented. Chris Johnson will just have to explain how he turned in a fine time on Green while failing to even finish Orange, somehow. Bev Ousley's fastest female again, though her competition this time DNF'ed. Andrea & Michelle could say they won Orange (edging out Walenty Prytulo - good job) if Koelsch's group is considered as competing on Green first, or is that vice-versa?
We've been telling ourselves we're going to more carefully designate those who run two courses, listing the primary course and then showing a 'recreational' result for the other, not listing the second result in standings with the others. We may go back and rearrange these results to reflect that. We may just try to keep track of which course people do first and simply count that, then list the second result at the end. Folks like the Jason Reid family, though, could be listed both times, since not only was it their first experience orienteering, but the two girls sat out the orange course. In this case the parents didn't finish orange, but the point is we're not going to be mean, just fair.
Halfway around my control retrieval route on Sunday the thought occurred to me that we could re-name LBE something like Blackberry Fields or maybe Knee-cap Fillet. Is everyone else as thoroughly scratched in the knees as I am? Those aggressive little briars, the ones that hooked on and wouldn't let go, were young blackberries. The rest of the open field knee high brush is not vicious but after beating over ten or twenty thousand of them, the skin begins to welt up a bit.
And now that it's over I can tell everyone of the wildlife I saw while setting & retrieving: Big water snake right at Orange #4 in the flooded reentrant, Gators in the river at the optional route involving double-river-crossing between Green #4 and Green #5, which I sincerely hope no-one actually tried. Pigs at Green#7/Brown#3. Several deer. More spiders than I remember in a long time. And a huge blob of 'scat' that looked more like bear than anything. Hmmmm.
I trust everyone fully appreciated the profusion of wildflowers. Thanks go to all who pitched in. Ron Eaglin and buddies set Yellow/Orange. Bev & Dave set up and ran registration. Jonathan Linforth ran start/finish all day, insisting he didn't feel up to doing a course. Joe Maliszewski was going to retrieve controls but the rains came and the Summer Meeting came and we all thought, what the heck.
Name | Time |
BSA Troop 184 Team 6-G2 | 48:05 |
Sharon Despio-G2 | 51:58 |
Michele Morse-F | 54:09 |
Stacy Rogers & Billy Alverson-G2 | 54:14 |
BSA Troop 184 Team 3-G2 | 57:20 |
Jason Reid-G4 | 59:12 |
Cathi Hodge-G2 | 73:00 |
Hood & Karnehm-G2 | 76:10 |
Jeff Taylor-G5 | 80:03 |
Danis Zarins & Herbie Quinones-G2 | 94:00 |
Roland Magyar-G6 | 102:25 |
BSA Troop 184 Team 7-G2 | DNF |
BSA Troop 184 Team 2-G2 | DNF |
BSA Troop 184 Team 4-G2 | DNF |
BSA Troop 184 Team 1-G2 | DNF |
BSA Troop 184 Team 5-G2 | DNF |
Ruth, Dan, Andrea & Sylvia King-G4 | DNF |
Name | Time |
Kip Koelsch-G3 | 40:22 |
Andrea Holman & Michelle Thatcher-G2 | 57:18 |
Walenty Prytulo-M | 62:55 |
Jeff Hunker-M | 81:02 |
Sharon Despio-G2 | 97:03 |
David Mahnken-M | 104:02 |
Pardy Party-G2 | 109:44 |
Kimberly Durjan-F | 110:00 |
Ian Sawers-G2 | 120:00 |
BSA Troop 524 Team 2-G4 | 129:10 |
BSA Troop 524 Team 1-G4 | 177:55 |
Chris Johnson-M | DNF |
Jason Reid-G2 | DNF |
Cythia Stumpf-F | DNF |
Alisha Vaughn & Arid Christianson-G2 | DNF |
Name | Time |
Nina Ortiz-G3 | 110:24 |
Bret Barker-G3 | 123:02 |
Scot Nelson-G2 | 123:10 |
Mark Antimucci-M | 133:54 |
John & Karen Kremer-G2 | 142:08 |
Cynthia Stumpf-F | DNF |
Andrea Holman & Michelle Thatcher-G2 | DNF |
Jeremy Chapman-G3 | DNF |
Name | Time |
Gene & Dean-M | 60:00 |
Kip Koelsch-G3 | 80:10 |
Artur Intson-M | 80:55 |
Team X-treme-G2 | 85:03 |
Chris Wright-G2 | 94:03 |
Derek Bohn-M | 96:00 |
Chris Johnson-M | 104:50 |
Michael Dempsey-M | 113:49 |
Toby Henson-M | 121:50 |
Bev Ousley-F | 137:32 |
Ray Bruneau-M | 146:24 |
Ray Williamson-G2 | 153:25 |
Philip Tasker-M | 153:33 |
Mark & Abby Rosenberg-G2 | 158:50 |
Joe Maliszewski-M | DNF |
Arild Orsleie-M | DNF |
David Aronson-G2 | DQ |
Titusville ROTC(Taylor&Jimenez)-G2 | DQ |
DNF | Did Not Finish |
DQ | Disqualified/Mispunched |