February 17, 2008

It always snows: When we woke up Sunday morning the heavy rain had turned to thick wet snow covering everything in a thick blanket of white – fortunately it wasn’t bitterly cold so we figured that the orienteering event that Kerry was going to would not be cancelled. Kerry had convinced me to participate in the event, so I can give a first-hand account of this unique sport:

The event was sponsored by the Possum Trot Orienteering Club (www.ptoc.org) – at Monkey Mountain (about thirty miles east of Kansas City). We arrived at the parking lot of the park where there were about five vehicles. Kerry handled the financial transactions – five dollars to participate plus a dollar to rent a compass for me – in the first car, and the participant comes away with a detailed map of the park that outlines the geographic features (eg forest, open field, stream, etc) and topography, a key to the map, and a card with numbered boxes to be marked at each of the waypoints. In the second vehicle, a van-agon with camper fit-out, a second man shares a map with waypoints – depending on the difficulty of the course chosen – there were five different difficulties for this course, Kerry had of course convinced me to do the most difficult (red) course that she would be doing.
You take a couple of minutes to mark your map with the waypoints (control locations) on the guide map – thirteen scattered across the park, and numbered so you have to visit each of the controls in order, and a key to the lettered controls and hints on where they will be found (eg. Ditch, rootfall). The great thing is that this is actually a race – the timer starts the clock when you leave his van for the trail. But since there is a staggered start, and people are doing different courses that have sometimes overlapping controls, it isn’t prudent to spend much time following other people because they may be on a different course, or they might be on a different control, or they may just be bad at finding the controls.

Kerry left the parking lot about a minute before me – and I could have followed her to see where she went for the control, but I took a different route and ended up finding the control with her about the same time – a orange and white flag with a letter code (to confirm that it is the correct control based on your map) and a hole punch with a unique pattern that is used to mark a numbered sheet that comes with the map. From there we only saw each other a couple of times, the weather changed from light snow, to light rain, to cold wind, to eventually sunlight. The weather helped because periodically I would find Kerry’s footprints and it comforted me that I was in the right general area looking for the control.

At control number 5, I passed Kerry and ran north toward control 6. I didn’t see Kerry for another hour as I tried to keep ahead of her by finding the controls and running as much as I could, but the muddy conditions led to a lot of jogging, walking, slogging, splashing, and periodically falling on my ass. Because of the pressure of having Kerry chase me, I felt like Dr. Richard Kimble moving over uneven terrain, hopefully at four miles an hour from the unseen, menacing, US Marshall Lt. Gerard. Just before I got to the 13th and last control, I looked over my shoulder and there was Kerry’s red sweater, her first comment was, ‘why are you covered in mud?’ she shot me with her comment and we laughed and punched our cards and walked back to the parking lot together – we finished with 2 hours and four minutes each. Partially frozen, covered in mud (at least me), and pretty damn tired, we headed into KC for some Vietnamese food (pho) to warm us.

Cabelas: We took a detour into Kansas to visit the most outrageous sporting goods store I’ve ever seen – and while it was probably bigger than most Costco stores (with two levels) it was completely full of things that have nothing to do with soccer or football – this was an outdoors outfitter. The most striking feature of the store was the taxidermy – there were stuffed animals everywhere; birds in the display cases around the counters, hundreds of deer heads lining the walls, and three key features:

1) A faux (not pho) mountain of at least two stories in the center of the store with (all stuffed) bighorn sheep in action climbing up and down, while at the base and in crags leading up the summit were varying levels of dear (mule and white tail), bison cornered by three wolves, a bobcat snaring a rabbit out of mid-air, moose... the display complete even with animal skat.
2) The mule deer room – a room that is filled with over 100 full size deer displaying the different types and sizes of mule deer racks; both typical and non-typical rack types. Many of the record holders for each category were on display with even a couple of human mannequins that every couple of minutes would come to life via animatronics and tell us that the racks on the deer displayed are rare, but there are more out there!
3) The African savannah – here is an alcove that features taxidermy of big game from Africa – lions tackling a zebra that is kicking, two elephants in combat, even a crocodile grabbing at a group of five wildebeest!

Besides being the most amazing store, there was even an olde time shooting gallery where a person can pony-up some tokens and use a rifle that shoots a beam of light at targets scattered across a room for points and bragging rights. Kerry challenged me, but I didn’t have the courage to face her – in the bb gun wars of woodbridge, va, I was usually one of the targets rather than the shooter; and I wasn’t inclined to climb into the display and run around screaming like I did as a kid. I was already too tired and sore from orienteering.

Pics: a) the snowy start at kerry's house, b) check-in process vehicle, c) Kerry, D!) the detailed map (original in color), e) Control #8