Palmer Park Scout-O
8 September 2001

This was another event. It was just another day in the Colorado sunshine. I had the courses designed. Flags were numbered. Made the clue sheets. Got the key to the gate. All was in readiness.

Saturday morning dawned gloomily. As I drove to Palmer Park the weather began to close in. The first snow started at about 7:15 and I was there, hanging the flags. The lightning flashes were a full 2 seconds ahead of the thunder. The snow increased. I was a frozen, dripping snowperson waddling around Palmer Park in the mud, wearing soaked and drooping jeans. I knew, though, from several experiences, that there would be orienteers here soon. A little snow doesn't stop orienteers in Colorado.

I started to hope that I could be done by about 10:00, waddle over to Grand West Outfitters and buy some parkas and snow pants. At 10:00, Louise would be coming, cutting short my snowy soliloquy. At 10:00, I was in my jeep with the defroster on full blast trying to get my fingers thawed enough to hang flags. I waddled back out along the trail, now a slippery muddy morass, knowing full well that I had to waddle back, sit in my jeep and try again to get thawed out. I unlocked the gate and went out to hang the remaining flags. Louise finally found me but there was no time left to go to get dry clothes. I put on dry shorts and keep the heater going in the jeep.

Colorado leaves me unsurprised that the clouds began to clear and small patches of blue seemed visible far to the Northwest. People began to show up. I was very cold. Fortunately, Louise is perfectly capable of being a hostess, running the registration and coordinating a lot of pre-race stuff for the people who were now driving in. I'm sure that these people endured hardships not unlike mine just to get here on this particular day. Fortunately, I had something for them to do. Thankfully, they came.

One of the people who came early was Christoph Zurcher. He managed the start and the finish the whole day, having run earlier as assistant cross-country coach for Palmer High School. We had a couple of scouts come. I'm glad. I found out how to contact the scouts the next time I do this.

Anyway, by now some of our regulars know that I put on meets that are a little unusual. I set two white courses, so that the scouts would be able to have some stuff to do. There was one orange course and two green courses. Certainly, this was not the standard fare for our RMOC regulars. As it turned out, the two white courses had little use. The orange has little more. The kinds of people who come to a meet on this kind of day tend to be more hard-core. Such it was this day.

I was still freezing. The wind was still chilling me though the sun now shone brightly. As thing wound down, though, several people volunteered to pick up the controls. Kathleen Brennan, Robin Spriggs, Beatrice Zurcher (all former or present club presidents) picked up the flags. Except that one group had difficulty with one flag, nobody else particularly complained.

Competitors:

• Ladislav would have finished 5 minutes sooner but, since he lives within sight of the meet center, he stopped to put a TV dinner in the microwave on the way to the last control.

• Laurent is very new in this sport and he made a beginners mistake: He forgot to go to the last flag. I could penalize him, but there's no money in this meet.

• Joel and Heather are very accomplished athletes who say they will compete in the ECO challenge in about a month. They did very well on most of the flags but had a problem with number 3. Under different circumstances, I would have been able to take them back out and show them how I set the flag and we could have determined if I was wrong. Personally, I really think that Orienteering and orienteers can help these adventure runners. I think we share certain goals. We have a lot of practice in our sport which comprises a very small part of their sport. I think that, if we take a little time and make some effort, both of our disciplines will benefit. Today, though, I already had the controls picked up and my feet were still freezing. Frankly, the flags they did find they did in a reasonable amount of time.

• Ben and Cynthia have been coming to our meets for several years. They were very happy to have completed this orange course, their first. They drove in from "way out East". This makes me glad that I put all the flags out.

• Andy & Drew Stokes contacted me as scout representatives (father/son). They told me how to reach the BSA in Colorado Springs.

• Neal Barlow was introducing his niece, Olivia, to the sport during her visit from the UK. He didn't want his time recorded.

- Bob McBride

Green Course #1
Name	Class	Time
Mark Gibbard	M	00:57:07
J P Ingebrightsen	M	00:59:30
Ladislav Jezek	M	01:05:53
Troy Bozarth	M	01:12:13
Beatrice Zurcher	F	01:07:15
Anita Brattland	F	01:31:00
Robin Spriggs	F	01:49:15
Bendix Gadegaard	F	02:38:04
Green Course #2
Name	Class	Time
J P Ingebrightsen	M	00:47:08
Laurent Billet	M	01:15:22
Chris Spriggs	M	01:28:08
Kathleen Brennan	F	01:29:43
Gayle/Marc Hoffmeister	F	02:03:35
Joel Janov/Heather Gray	T	02:16:36
Orange Course
Name	Class	Time
David Mueller	M	01:28:15
Ben Ferguson/Cynthia Masson	T	01:31:30
Ray/Barbara Kujawski	T	01:36:06
Andy/Drew Stokes.	T	NOT TIMED
Neal Barlow/Olivia Holmes	T	NOT TIMED
White Course #1 & #2
Name	Class	Time
Drew/Andy Stokes	T	NOT TIMED
M=Male     F=Female     T=Team