To hurd with expectation that the new map by Walk would be a treat. It was.
Feeling good on arrival I opted to try Green.
I pulled another Mt. Kisco: blew myself up on the very first control. While I told myself on the way to the park to concentrate on keeping contact with the map, I let myself be distracted by Walk's "twist": go as straight as possible between controls. Now good map contact and good azimuth maintenance are not mutually exclusive, in my small brain they apparently are. I devoted too many grey cells (Poirot) to managing the compass and not enough to reading the map. I think I was also too excited when starting out at the prospect of getting to O again, having had to miss so many opportunities this season for health and family care issues. Before I knew it I was sighting the road way beyond the first control - comprehension of time and distance was nil, and I knew I had "done it again d--- it".
OK, let it go. Beautiful woods and lots yet to see on a great weather day. Decided to subordinate (but not abandon) the "twist" to staying with the map. Much better. And with the open woods, the subordinated compass still got a lot of attention.
I'll skip the details, but I must comment that there were a lot of spoilers standing around the controls today. And I will confess that I read a grey area (bare rock) as green lying in proximity to #8, which threw me too far north as I spotted a laurel patch to my right as I thought, aha! that's the green patch. My only big bobble since #1.
Felt pretty strong coming in to the finish and before noon. So downed a banana and a bottle of water and picked up the Brown map and headed back out to redeem myself. See the next session.
My route:
green.