Delaware Valley Orienteering Association

Topic created by dreider on Sun Sep 17, 2017 at 10:28 pm

dreider
Num Posts: 60
Primary Club: DVOA
Fav map:
First O: 2010

I was surprised to see a table set up on the Rustic Park parking lot at 7:30 this morning.  I asked the woman sitting at the table,  "Are you having an event?"  Reply, "Horse Orienteering!"  Fortunately, their courses were on the other side of the creek except one control on the side where Ed had his courses.

If you didn't come to the event, you missed a lot of horsing around.  There were sightings of horses reading maps, the older horses were wearing their reading glasses.... and there were road apples too.  Why do you have to pick up dog poop, but not horse poop?  My mom tells me that the people used to run out into the streets of Reading and pick up the huckster's horse poop.  Apparently, it was good free fertilizer for a garden.

Thanks to all that helped run the event, without volunteers orienteering is not possible.  It's fun too, I've come to know a lot of my fellow club members while working at events.  I was surrounded by a lot of good company today.... it was good to see all of you.

Ed, thanks for designing the courses.  Thanks to my friend, Tammy who doesn't orienteer for agreeing to changing our walk venue and helping me hang some controls on Friday evening.  I couldn't have carried 6 gallons of water and the controls by myself.  Bob Gross, Ed and Ed's son put the rest out there on Saturday & Sunday.

Parking, Dave Urban.  At the registration table, we had Dave Morgan and Donna Zimmer.  Epunch by Rich Boehme (thanks for the horse jokes) and Kathy Urban (fixed up those Orange courses).  Start was manned by Ed and Bob Gross.  A cameo appearance by Ron Bortz... thanks for delivering the water jugs (We needed those pictures to pack the box, we wouldn't have been able to get the flags into the box without them!)  Control pick up, Ed, the Zimmers, Bob Agosta, Dave Urban & Kim McCane.  Ron Wood & Len Kushleyeva thank for asking if we needed help.

Thank for taking the equipment away Tom Overbaugh.

Reply by shiatsuron on Mon Sep 18, 2017 at 2:08 pm

shiatsuron
Num Posts: 47
Primary Club: DVOA
Fav map:
First O: 2004

I asked the woman at the horsey table at what age they teach the horses to find the flags. She replied "oh, we don't use flags, we just use paper plates with numbers written on them". SO, talk about horsing around.....Maybe we have sme old flags we could give them.

Reply by furlong47 on Mon Sep 18, 2017 at 5:17 pm

furlong47
Num Posts: 354
Primary Club: SVO
Fav map: Fair Hill 1:15,000
First O: 1994

Mounted orienteering, unfortunately, is a much different animal ;-) which involves riding to certain locations and then using bearings to triangulate the position of the paper plate. 

Reply by kathyu on Mon Sep 18, 2017 at 7:46 pm

kathyu
Num Posts: 671
Primary Club: DVOA
Fav map: Hickory Run Sand Spring
First O: 2004

Paper plates -- This brings back memories of TSD car rallies when clues would be on paper plates on telephone poles (go L at "red hat").  Anybody else remember seeing those random paper plates?

Reply by LarryG on Mon Sep 18, 2017 at 10:27 pm

LarryG
Num Posts: 76
Primary Club: DVOA
Fav map:
First O: 1998

interesting, apparently the plates are standard.  they have 5 plate and 10 plate courses.  http://www.nacmo.org/introduction.php  And as an extra challenge at this "Boogying at Birdsboro" event, they had to joust with bees (I'm assuming yellow jackets). ouch!