Training Log Archive: barb

Dream last night - Dave wanted to adopt a baby, and I acquired her somehow, a cute little girl, dark hair and a ready smile. We were at a gathering of bluegrass bands; each band was playing in its own circle. Dave was over with the Bag Boys, playing the tambourine and dancing around, and didn't seem particularly interested in the babester after a quick hello. I decided he must not realize it was OUR baby, but felt annoyed anyway.

C • Poor Dave 4

Went to Foxborough to see the Revolution beat FC Dallas last night. Fairly large party, with 4 of the girls from Isabel's soccer team and assorted other families.

home to school to Arlington to work to home

A little night O with Dave to pick up the final few envelopes from Wednesday's field trip before the rains come.

Ran around putting out controls for a work outing. I used some of the control locations from yesterday so I could check for envelopes still in the woods. Got about 10; still have quite a few to check at some point. Beautiful day. David had the day off school, so he and his friend Reid came along and were a bus. As we were heading home he actually thanked me for bringing him to the woods.
I put on 3 bus-stop-O's in 6 days!

Map:

OK, 21 hits to 10k. Feel free to leave me comments and I'll try to figure out who is number 10,000. Maybe it will happen while I'm off at dinner with my workmates and Isabel.

C • counting... 35

Ramble about this excursion: Today's outing to the woods with 85 junior high kids, 6 teachers, 8 parents and J-J went just as well as you might imagine it would for a bunch of humans getting to enjoy being outdoors in woods on a perfect autumn day, with a breeze knocking down tons of yellow leaves, all fluttery and bright against the dark green of the white pine. It was typical of my endeavors: very complicated, with props & printouts, too ambitious for the prep time allotted. I was up all night and late getting the controls out: I arrived with only an hour to go, and there were 58 controls. Most controls were an envelope containing a puzzle piece or two, with a code written on the outside. 40 of these off-trail for 20 groups, each to get 2. There were 18 shared controls, thanks to a generous benefactor in the O community (thank you!), and these were on trails. And two of the controls were moving controls. This time around I asked for the kids' cell phone numbers, and each team had at least one phone, and at the end of the day I got word that one group was lost with no map or compass and had found control 116 and were waiting there to be rescued, so that worked fine. I ran around putting out controls as they did their first exercise, then checked back in with the group to make sure there was a good plan for getting started on the next activity, the team O I just described. It was bad; there are three puzzle controls I never got out. I got a lot of help from Dave and the kids last night: grading the licensing exams, making nametags, stuffing the team envelopes (maps, 3-page instruction manual including bus-stop-O directions, two types of punch cards, a compass loan request card). When I arrived at the parking lot this morning I was expelled by The Man, some guy who owns or works for the owner of that defunct medical center land; they're now enforcing their right to enjoy acres of decaying parking lot without a lot of riffraff coming in to park at the very edge of that asphalt sea and duck into the woods with their dogs or lovers or paint-ball guns or compasses or bird books and binoculars. That threw a loop as our base camp last year and intended one this year is in a meadow on ex-medical-center land, and I'd arranged for the buses to do their pick-up from that parking lot, so I had to figure out what to do about that. By the time the kids left, I was pretty exhausted, figured it was good rogaine training; I trudged slowly around picking up the control flags, but I think there are likely to still be a bunch of envelopes in the woods; I wonder whether, if I posted a map, I could con any CSU people into organizing a training that involves checking to see if there are still envelopes in the woods and if so removing them... My knee hurt after a while, but more in the center under the kneecap than the outside right tendon (?) below the kneecap. There were a remarkable number of vehicles driving around in the woods! I saw a dark SUV, a couple water resource authority trucks, two other vehicles that looked police-y but in a conservation land sort of way, maybe some work trucks. But so weird to see so much traffic in there! I meant to be the second bus (thanks by the way J-J you are a great guy and the hat looks at least as good on you as it has done on all the other wonderful O bus drivers) (I mean, with the obvious exception of Samantha who looks better than the rest of you put together, no offense) but was putting out controls, so random parent-who-has-been-on-an-orienteering-field-trip-with-me-before did that route, way too complicated for him, he got quite off schedule... Kids didn't seem to mind all the snafus and did their kid thing and had fun. My son, who is after all in 7th grade, did not even appear to be embarrassed that I was taking his peers on a field trip. The teachers are great: calm, steady, intelligent, open to doing this. Went home afterwards and went to bed. Woke up to Chinese take-out and some happy kids. Now for a shower and neighborhood walk w/Dave.

In the next few days, I will be celebrating the 10,000th hit on my AP log. Should I be throwing a party or something?

C • 10,000 5

Map for control setting:

To work, to school to deliver the exams, to home (took a nap!), to Dunkin Donuts (no corn muffins left! - and RAINY), to work (to dry out), to home.

So here is the "navigation licensing exam". If at least half of the 4-person team does pretty well on this, the team can opt out of having an adult chaperone tomorrow. It's supposed to be easy. It was made under duress (little sleep, last-minute) so probably not optimal... One thing I like about it is that every single kid will have visualized their first leg (which is the one in the test). I hope it will be sunny tomorrow!






As I was biking home from having dropped off the exams at school this morning I started to worry about whether any of the hill silhouettes or fake little maps might have unfortunate shapes. Those kids are so quick to find stuff to snicker about. You should have heard them when I was explaining about there not being bathrooms in the woods.

Taught 4 classes about orienteering today in preparation for Wednesday's field trip to the woods. I used powerpoint animation to explain the bus stop O concept. To prove that orienteering is really a sport, I showed a photo of that Wheaties box. I didn't mention AttackPoint, nor did I explain that the guy on the Wheaties box posts shirtless photos of Zac Efron on AP, even though I bet some of them know who Zac Efron is.
They were kind of quiet; not too many questions. Maybe it's a beginning-of-the-year thing. I brought in a hat to explain the bus stop O part of this.
[Things got less quiet in the afternoon 8th grade class... I am definitely not cut out for being a teacher! What an exhausting job.]

C • The key to teaching 8th graders 3

To school, to appointment in Arlington, to school, to work, to home.

Canoe-O with Izzy. Got back 4 minutes late...