Meadowood

RouteGadget and splits on both WinSplits and Attackpoint are all online for this event.

QOC spent the last day of September extending a season-beginning streak of excellent weather during events to three at Meadowood SRMA. The fine weather and the presence of FUMA and several JROTC groups contributed to a record-shattering number of starts for Meadowood, indeed the second largest number of starts for a QOC local event on record. This unfortunately made it questionable whether the designated parking inside the SRMA would suffice under a laissez faire parking plan, hence the strong encouragement of carpooling and the request that non-carpoolers park at Gunston Elementary and walk to the event following a marked route through the park. The carpooling response was commendable. However, one lesson learned from the event - you really can't overdo it when it comes to making the beginning of a marked route obvious. It seems Ken Walker may have been the first person to take the marked route, apparently without any problems, but "not so poorly marked as to cause Ken Walker Jr. to get lost" isn't quite the gold standard when it comes to making a route easy to follow - several other experienced orienteers didn't do so well finding the beginning of the correct route rather than another, more visible trail leaving the school grounds. Our apologies to those this inconvenienced and extreme gratitude to Virginia DeBons for taking it on herself, on encountering the problem, to drive around to the event to pick up more flags and streamers and improve the trail markings for later arrivals.

Once at the event, it seems safe to say everyone found Sid had set a challenging set of courses, replete with chances to make parallel errors, through mostly quite pleasant woods. Unfortunately, he made at least one fairly significant error in control placement himself, hanging a rootstock control affecting the green, red and blue courses on the next mapped rootstock south of the desired one. The generally philosophic attitude towards having to search the vicinity of the mapped rootstock adopted by most of the affected runners is appreciated but not so intensely appreciated that we won't do our best to make the consolations of philosophy unnecessary for the rest of the season.

The day's volunteers deserve thanks - apologies in advance for any omissions:

Steve Nurre (setting up, registration, beginner instruction)

David Levine, Amy Louden (setting up, cleaning up)

Ken Ferris, John Baker, Jon Bertheussen, Jon Torrance, Kathleen Lennon (parking and traffic control)

Jon Torrance, Virginia DeBons (streamering walk from school parking lot to registration)

Lisa Beck (registration, control pick-up)

Marla Ozarowski, Jana Seidlova, Michael Bianchetta (registration)

Valerie Meyer, Ryan Hanna, Cathy Attfield, Neal Attfield, Peggy Dickison (e-punch)

David Linthicum, Greg Lennon (beginner instruction)

Bill Wright, Charles Carrick, Tim Good, Jon Torrance (control pick-up)

Gary Smith (cleaning up)

Dan Do, Meet Director

Additional notes:

The carpooling raffle winners were Trish Strat and Tim Good. Each won a $50 REI gift card.

Lost and found: one Suunto thumb compass (this was found at Lake Needwood the previous weekend), one Suunto baseplate compass, and one black Adidas digital watch.