What a splendid day! After three days of freak weather, we woke up to zero degrees Celsius, but bright sunshine throughout the day - time to go orienteering! Brett decided to come with me to Ironwood, to see the West part of town and the magnificent nature West of gates Pass. When we got to Ironwoods there were about 30 guys getting ready for for some orienteering in the desert scrub. I clearly didn't have the proper equipment for perambulating the omnipresent sticky vegetation. I decided to pick a orange course, meaning long-easy (5,2 km), as I could then stay on the trails as much as possible. They claim this terrain is fast and a Swiss guy, running for Goteborg, Sweden, Raffael Huber, ran yesterdays Blue (long-difficult) 9,7 km in 48 something!!! The symbols follows the international standard and if you didn't know the symbol of a wash/riverbed, you would definitely have learned it by end of the day as they were abundant and kind of the only natural guidelines out there. I pretty much followed the plan and stuck to the trails until I was absolutely forced to get in to the wild. Halfway I came close to the start/finish area, so I got some water and picked up my camera to get some action pictures. I actually asked one fast looking guy to go back and pose at the control he just sprinted to, so i could get a shot - he told me to hurry! There were national team members from around the world and a lot of hiker looking ladies and gentlemen, dressed in jeans and big shady hats, enjoying a day of desert searching. When I finally finished I asked the timing guy if they had some left over maps from yesterdays event and I got some to bring back home to my club, Viborg Orienterings Klub, where I know there'll be some map-o-fils waiting to see some very different terrain. The guy was called Leif Lundquist and came from outside of Stockholm, Sweden, also escaping the icy Scandinavia. All in all a very pleasant experience and thanks to all the folks who put so much time and effort in to organizing such event. I was sorry I couldn't help retrieve the controls afterwards, but Brett had some important Divisional Finals to see at 1 p.m.. I had a quick lunch, watched the first quarter of Colts vs. Jets, skyped Katrine and then went for an easy 2.15 spin with Jenny. Unfortunately Brett Favre and the Vikings lost in overtime to The Saints, good for them though, they've never been been to the Superbowl - Good Luck and Good Night.
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