What a beautiful day!!! Sunny and up to about 80F around noon. A little warm for a Scandinavian, perhaps, but none of them seemed to mind. We warned them about having no water stops out on the course and none expressed any concern, so I saw no one carrying extra water – as nearly every Floridian did (force of habit). Note, however, that ALL of the water we had at the finish line disappeared in very short order, after the runners returned.
The head count above is 57. That means that 32 FLO’ers plus a couple of uncounted kids turned out – mostly, I think, so they could just stand back and watch Swedish Orienteers young and old run faster than nearly any of us Floridians do. It was quite an eye opening experience and quite a colorful atmosphere, especially since at least eight of the Swedish field were from a single club, Skåneslättens OL, and were dressed in their very the colorful club uniform.
The finish times were just about what I had planned, although I think the medium, Green, course was probably a bit longish. I could perhaps have made it a little shorter, but within the constraints of LBE’s flood plain palmetto ‘groves’, and the route choices imposed, I could not have done so without compromising the interesting portions of the course. And what I mostly wanted to do was show them all the Econ flood plain. We don’t have a lot of classic orienteering terrain to show off here in Florida, so when traveling tours come through we show them instead our more “unique” habitats, and if you’ve been through the LBE flood plain in dry weather, you know just how unique it is.
I took a few moments before the event to speak to the Swedish group about vegetation: Palmetto versus palm tree, and warned them about prickly pear cactus, although I could not find a nearby example. I also assured those who asked that there was virtually no chance they’d encounter snakes on the course. Then within an hour, two short course youngsters returned describing two-meter-long snakes they’d seen. Jerry’s hand-held fabulous i-something quickly confirmed they’d both seen harmless red rat snakes, but I had to apologize anyway.
Thanks to everyone for more-or-less honoring our 2-hour time limit. Thanks to the Fluegels’ friends for venturing out on my special Score-O course, devised just in case novices showed up who simply were not prepared to go out on advanced courses. They had no competition, but insisted they had fun. And that’s the whole point.
Thanks go to Ron Eaglin for setting the hardest, most distant, controls the previous Sunday and to Jerry Sirmans for retrieving them all. Huge thanks go to Jamie Sheriff for all-day duty on Start/Finish and to Dad Sheriff for setting out my last two controls. I’m pretty sure Kris Mante and Mike Dempsey also jumped in to help at several points too.
All in all, I’m coming away from the Two Swedish Tour events with a rather warm feeling that we did the best we could to show them a good time, and that they felt their time was well spent with us.
Bob Putnam
| Name | Time | |
| Chris Johnson | 36:30 | 2nd run |
| Sven Jacobsson | 48:03 | Gold - Male |
| Eva Andersson | 54:24 | Gold - Female |
| Ulf Bolinder | 55:30 | Silver - Male |
| Ulla Andersson | 56:37 | Silver - Female |
| Inga-Lill Wikingsson | 67:45 | Bronze - Female |
| Ethel Nord | 68:14 | |
| Ellert Thunholm | 68:35 | Bronze - Male |
| Ingrid Jigerstrom | 68:38 | |
| Eva-Lena Svanstrom | 70:47 | |
| Gertrude Asplund | 72:45 | |
| Christer Henriksgard | 73:45 | |
| Caje Jacobsson | 78:25 | |
| Blue Lightning | 107:19 | |
| Curt Anderson | NTR | |
| Adam Segerslatt | DNF | |
| Nerd Girls | DNF | |
| Pathfinders | NTR | |
| Andrew Briggs | NTR |
| Name | Time | |
| Roland Nord | 60:59 | Gold - Male |
| Christina Segerslatt | 63:40 | Gold - Female |
| Goran Andersson | 63:47 | Silver - Male |
| Goran Karlsson | 68:04 | |
| Desiree Segerslatt | 69:17 | Silver - Female |
| Mike Dempsey | 69:20 | |
| James Geraghty | 77:35 | |
| Steve Fluegel | 89:15 | |
| Joe Maliszewski | 91:40 | |
| Donna Fluegel | 96:54 | |
| Mike Schneiderman | 117:50 | |
| Rinkside | 108:20 | |
| Steven Spencer | 136:08 | |
| Deb & Paul | 138:15 | |
| Kris Mante | 153:00 | |
| John Griffin | 185:14 | |
| Louise Nordahl | RGR |
| Name | Time | |
| Elis Bengtsson M | 57:38 | Gold - Male |
| Hugo Mattsson M | 64:00 | Silver - Male |
| Primal Instinct | 68:19 | |
| Goran Mattson | 74:00 | |
| Sten Segerslatt | 82:31 | |
| Chris Johnson | 97:40 | |
| Jakob Segerslatt | 100:12 | |
| Per Nordahl | 102:30 | |
| Chase & Farles | 126:19 | |
| Andy Capp | 185:28 | |
| Robert Guerrero III | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| Steve Smith & Sharon Adler | 29 Points |
| DNF | Did Not Finish |
| DQ | Disqualified (Missed Controls) |
| RGR | Ran part of Green then joined friend on Red |