Father's Day Phone a Friend

Father's Day.  I get to pick the adventure and we get to try phone-O.  One partner stays at the start with the map.  The second partner runs the first half of the course while being guided over the phone by the first partner.  It could be fun or it could be bad.  But it will be interesting for sure.

Dancer and I leave Mama Bear to navigate with Dog and K-Rocks.  Mama Bear is a great map reader, but apparently has less experience with an O map than I thought.  Somewhere in the area of zero experience.  Not sure how that happened.

As we start, I keep assuming she knows more than she does and she keeps getting more annoyed.  Apparently “It's easy” and “Just read the map” are not very helpful instructions.  Not a great start for a course that relies on communication to get through.

After the tense start, things pick-up.  Unfortunately so does the heat.  Open fields, no shade and 90+ heat.  Glad this is Father's Day and not Mother's Day.  Dancer and I enjoy a brisk walk—she's not really a big fan of running, especially in the heat.

Along the way we run into a baby bluebird on the ground (I remember when Dancer was a baby blue bird).  Poor thing could flutter, but couldn't quite fly.  The momma jay was squawking like crazy as we stopped to check out her baby.  First time I've ever seen a blue jay chick that was half feathers/half down.

A bunch of trails through the fields apparently aren't on the map, so the remote navigation got tricky a few times.  But we keep finding the checkpoints without much problem, not until CP5 that is. Mama Bear sends us down a trail that disappears.  Literally it has no actual end.  It just gets smaller and smaller until it fades into the high weeds/stickers.  On the map it apparently looks like a great shortcut.  But there's a difference between the comfort of navigation headquarters and the troops in the field.

Fortunately, a few people had taken the same short cut, so at least some of the weeds were beat down.  After guiding Dancer through the bushwacking we're at a road.  Dog guides us through the next CP and hands it over to K-Rocks—who promptly sends us the wrong way.  Fortunately, Mama Bear intervenes quickly to righten the ship and K-Rocks nails the navigation after that.  The course turns much hillier, but mercifully, we're under trees now.  As we head up a hill to the finish, we take a shortcut which loses our navigators.  When we finally hear their voices over the phone and without the phone it doesn't take a genius to get home.

Dancer and I decided it would be wise to let Mama Bear stay with Dancer and navigate the second half of the course while I take K-Rocks and Dog out into the field (and the heat).  Not surprisingly Mama Bear's good with that.

The three of us run down hill to start the second half.  We find the first CP within a minute or two.  Alright now we're moving.  We come to a three-way intersection-

”Which way?”

“Any of them.”

“Really?!? That doesn't sound right.”

“Just pick one, it doesn't matter.”

That doesn't sound like good navigation.  But a short walk and there's the next CP—at least we think so.  Turns out it's CP7, not CP2.  Well at least that allows our remote navigators to lock onto our location.  After that, it's a quick jog to CP2.  From there, we breeze through the rest of the check points with excellent remote navigation.  K-Rocks has more enthusiasm than stamina, but as her little legs start to fade it just gives us an excuse to hold hands as I help her keep pace (e.g. pull the skinny little thing up and down the hills).

Krocks gets remote navigation from Dancer

In the middle of a long steep climb out of the valley, we get word from HQ that we haven't reached the steep part.  Really?!?  Any steeper and we'll need climbing ropes.  Fortunately, that was the only real mistake our navigators made.  Turns out we were almost at the top.  From there we grabbed CP6, then back to CP7 (which we visited earlier).

 Dog at CP7

A final jog up the trail to the finish and we are done.  Dog checks-in with the registrar and gets our times. (Official Results)  Turns out the young guns were twice as fast as Dancer—but maybe that was superior navigation from Dancer.  Or maybe, just maybe it was because Dancer just doesn't do the whole “rush” thing.  Either way, it was hot, it was muggy and it was hilly, but a fun way to mix things up. .

The bad news: for the second week in a row we had the slowest time in our bracket.

The good news: we finished, the gang got some good navigation experience and we had a blast.