Thank you to our volunteers, who worked to make the meet run smoothly. A table of volunteers and their activities is below. I am sure that some have been omitted—people are great, and they just pitch in and help all the time, so please let me know the names of those I missed.
The Mystery
We started setting control bags with E-punches a few days before the meet. By Friday, we had set almost all the controls—there were still 10 to set, and the water. On Saturday morning, we drove up the hill with the Rangers to set the water. While driving up high, we noticed that control 84, which was at the north end of a pond, and should be seen from the truck, was missing. We assumed that cows had messed with it, and decided to fix it after setting the water.
When we arrived at the water stop, we noticed that control 46, which should have been visible, was missing. Hmmmm. Went over to look around, thinking “pesky cowsâ€. But it wasn’t there, although the streamer was there. Searched around a bit, and Hah! There it was, standing neatly against a tree deeper in the copse.
Well, cows don’t prop controls up against trees. So we decided that some person must have moved it. Asked the Rangers, but they were innocent. Perhaps a horse person? A nearby landowner? Oh well, no big deal, we just put it back, and carried on with the water deployment.
Uh-oh, spotted a control propped up on the fence east of the water. Went over to it, and it was number 55—wow, 500 meters from where it had been placed! Started getting worried.
Went over to 35. Missing completely. Now really worried. So we split up—the Rangers and Jay would finish placing the water, and I would check more controls. Steve was out placing other controls.
While replacing 55, I found 35, so I replaced it as well. Checked 36, 37, 79, 67, 78, 47, 52, 59—all okay. Went back to the water point and headed north. Placed 34 and checked 58, 45, 85. All okay.
Went to the pond where 84 should have been. Could not find it. Plenty of cows around—maybe they stomped it into the pond? Fished around in the pond a bit, but couldn’t see anything in the murk. Decided that most likely the person who moved 35, 55, and 46 was responsible, so I looked around the area and didn’t see it. Replaced it with number 90, and marked 90 as 84 since the maps were already printed.
By now it was late, so I checked 96, 41, 97 (all okay), and placed the last two controls—33 and 44. On the way back to the car, I checked 32, 31, 57, 83, 87, 51, 54, Start, 93, 94, 40, 39, 38. All okay.
At this point, the conclusion was that a person had moved the visible controls at the top of the hill. Only 84 was missing, and it had been replaced. All the others were okay, so we were good to go.
Wrong! During the competition on Sunday, a Scout Leader called Nina to inform her that 53 was missing. She texted me, and Steve Harrison dashed out there to check. Yup, it was missing, so he replaced it. Steve started back to the arena, going north, and HEY! What’s that near the ruin 200 m north of 53? Wow, it’s 53!!! So he placed it back where it belonged. Sadly, a number of teams on Course 3 had already been messed up by the missing control. What a pity!
At the end of the meet, Greg, Vicki, Deron, and Fyodor went out to retrieve controls. They arrived back and reported nothing extraordinary. Then we checked our controls inventory, and guess what? 84 was back!!! Fyodor figured he picked it up where 96 is located. So we checked. 96 was now missing! Good grief! Well, it was 6 PM and getting dark, so we packed it in knowing that we had lost one control (96), and that someone had been messing with us.
Monday afternoon I went to look for 96. Found it! So there are no controls missing, and besides the teams on Course 3 being messed up (which we will try to correct in the results), all’s well that ends well.
So what do you think? Was BigFoot unhappy with us—maybe he doesn’t like orange-and-white bags with electronics? Do controls relocate themselves? Were we suffering from delusions of placement?
Perhaps there are a bunch of lessons to learn from all this. I am actually seriously concerned for next year’s big California Orienteering Festival (http://www.cal-o-fest.com), and would welcome suggestions for how to mitigate this kind of issue.
Cheers,
Gavin