Umstead West

(Results follow the article)

Let me start off with some of what went right… The courses were well designed with
challenging legs.  Everyone on the white and yellow courses finished without missing
any controls.  The weather was perfect, and wow, there were a lot of new people.
Several large groups of scouts showed up.  We hope you all had a good time and
are anxious to try it again.

Unfortunately, this is not the end of this meet report… It all started when Artem,
our meet director took the courses to Umstead Park for their approval.  To Artem’s
great surprise he was told that he couldn’t use the lower portion of the map, (that we
have been using with the permission of the airport for 18 years).  As a result, since
there are no trails on the upper part, he redesigned the white and yellow courses to
orange course difficulty, only shorter.

My first clue that this meet was going to be “challenging” was when I
listened to a message from the meet director of the US Champs, to whom we loaned our
controls with the understanding they would be returned in time for this meet.  In
this message he apologized for forgetting to send them back and would do so immediately –
unfortunately, it was Friday night that he remembered this.

When Artem showed up at my house to pick up the meet equipment we counted the number of
controls we were missing and began to make some temporary substitutes.  While we were
working he mentioned the “slight change” to the white course. I gasped, and we
spent the next 2 hours revising the courses (within the same legs that were already
approved by the park) so that white and yellow would be properly challenged, but not blown
away.  When we were done, Artem left to set the controls — unfortunately there was
not too much daylight left.  This meant that virtually the entire course needed to be
set Sunday morning, including some flagged legs for the white course.

I arrived early so I could run my course before teaching the class because I had
afternoon tickets to a play.  I got started at about 11 and was very pleased with the
map and the legs.  Now that I have gotten over the depression of seeing all the
downed trees I can enjoy the technical navigation and route choice problems they present.
A couple of the way out controls were missing, but I took note and assumed they had
not yet been set.

When I returned to the start area at noon, I was surprised to find nothing set up, and
Artem still out in the woods.  Fortunately he had forgotten to take most of the meet
equipment, so I had it in my car.  I set things up and began the registrations hoping
he would be back soon with the courses.  He arrived about 12:30, and began working
furiously to get the master maps done as soon as possible.  As a result, he put the
codes rather than the numbers on the map and didn’t bother with clue sheets.  Because
we counted the needed controls before we changed the courses we were short some controls,
and as a result the orange course wasn’t completed.  I assured a couple of people
that we could make up an orange course out of the existing controls, and pointed out that
the yellow course was pretty orange like – I didn’t have time to make up the orange, I
hope you were pleased with the course you took.  My wife Ruth went out on green, but
half-way around realized that she was running late, so she cut off the top of the red
& green course to make a brown course.  That turned out to be pretty popular (I
guess it was an orange substitute), and I think we should begin including it when
possible.

By 12:50 we had everyone registered, and the experienced orienteers had mostly left on
their courses.  Artem was ready to take over the registrations and starts, and I
taught the class. By 1:30 virtually everyone was either out on their course, or ready to
go.  Things looked well under control, and I went off to see the play.

Craig had offered to pick up the controls, unfortunately he arrived at the wrong site.
Kind of flustered at not seeing anyone there he proceeded to find the meet.
Getting there later than he planned he got the master map and copied his course down on
it.  He didn’t think about the fact there were no numbers, so, since his tendency was
to run the course clockwise he started to pick the controls up in reverse order.
Unfortunately there were still a number of people out on the course.   They were a
bit peeved at having their last controls picked up before they got to them.  I’ve not
spoken to them yet, hopefully they just continued on to the now unmarked sites and
finished their courses — naturally they won’t be disqualified.

The next problem — remember the control I thought hadn’t been set yet — one of the
far out controls on the red and green course, well, it was on the wrong stony ground.

Finally, the day was over, unfortunately there was one card indicating that someone was
still out on the course.  It didn’t seem like there were any cars left, but a quick
call confirmed that he was home safe and sound.  Good grief, what else could go
wrong? After Artem delivered the stuff to my house I realized that there were no signs.
I called Joel, who works at RTP, and he offered to pick them up on his way to work
Monday morning.  The only thing left is figuring up the results.  Some
competitors didn’t put their course on their cards, so we will add an “unknown”
category.  Call or e-mail me 
if we have made a mistake on your results, and we will fix it.  What else could
happen? I suppose our computer could crash while we are figuring up the results.

Joseph Huberman

Craig mentions:  “You can amend my time to “DSQ
(51:30)  Since I ran the course backwards, I probably should not count.
But I did keep track of exactly how long it took me to remove and bag
each control, and the total time lost to that exercse was exactly 3
minutes and 30 seconds. ”

Sorry Craig, you’ll have to do worse than run backwards to get DQ’d in BOK.

Doug Reports: “Please delete my time for the recent umsted event.
I was at # 10 in 47.19.
I spent 15 minutes looking for # 11 & 12 which were missing flags.  My time
is not 62 minutes.  Thank you”