As part of my training now John B & I have added what will be regular Orienteering workouts. My AR team is fast of foot & wheel, but that damn nav always gets us. So to help our chances @ Nationals we're going to train @ it like every other discipline. Sounds good? Well how does one go about that? You get famous Rogaine course setter Brad Bledsoe to flail around in the woods setting impossible to find markers for you to go out & find. Easy enough.
So John, Anna A, & myself load up & head off to Rocky Barnes CC area. We hadn't been there 15 min before we are in the middle of a downpour/lightning storm. A few close booms of thunder will wake even me up in the afternoon.
2.5 hrs later we finally stumble onto a marker completely by accident. So John & I start really studying the map. Well it looks like we weren't lost after all. Bledsoe had used a GPS to get the coordinates for the markers. Usually not a problem but the Willard Topo is so old it uses the 1929 Datum & the GPS was set for WGS 84. Not to get technical but the Earth moves & maps are adjusted accordingly. Oops we've been off by 200-300 meters on all our points. So we're not the crappy navigators we were beginning to think we were, whewww!
So I'm sure future Nav workouts will have some entertaining stories especially when we do some night nav. Some of the funniest AR stories involve tricks of the compass. Just ask Bradley how all our compasses were broke & South had to be North; actually that's more of a sleep deprivation story.
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