Predictions for Saturday's Wickham Park event were just like that - Xeroxed from the previous five or ten days forecasts. But the way these things go, we could just as likely have been rained on all day long, so we held our breath and hoped.
We needn't have worried. Our secret solution was to have the Orcutt's in charge; they who have never been rained out and seem to have the power of the rain gods themselves in their back pocket.
It was a beautiful day. Beautiful meaning 75F at dawn 100% relative humidity, mostly sunny until 2pm with 90F heat about noon, then the big puffy Florida clouds started forming, then about 2pm Janet and I quietly slipped away to visit friends nearby. Then it happened. While the Orcutts cleaned up and packed away the supplies for Jonathan Linforth, who had driven all the way from Howey-in-the-Hills, to pick up, leaving only Joe Maliszewski to retrieve controls in what must have been one of the biggest monster storms in the area all summer. Joe was wet. How wet was he? He was so wet....
I don't know for sure everyone didn't get drenched, but at least, since we were comfortably lounging on a pool deck about three miles away by then, I know it rained HARD. And the temperature dropped about 20 degrees in 10 minutes. Sitting outside I got goose bumps from the cold even before the rain started. And the wind blew, hard, and the sky darkened. And we thought of everyone over there trying to close up the event. Hats off to the whole crew for weathering the weather on a day like that.
The event itself was very well attended. Congratulations to all who braved the long drive, the threat of rain, the humidity, and the heat to make this probably the second best attended Wickham Park ever, and easily the best attended summer season Wickham. It looked like about 130 to me but we'll see when the results are posted. Very encouraging and will surely mean we'll continue to use Wickham as a venue.
Courses were excellent. The map is aging and trails come and go. Janet and I did the Yellow course and found it to be perfect for what we want yellow courses to do; and perfectly safe for learning in a spot like Wickham, too. I did the red course later and enjoyed it immensely. Rick did a good job of forcing us to pick our way through the maze of trials that litter the park. Put another way, he did a good job of tempting us to pick our way through knee deep ditches with vegetation so thick and low that I had to be nearly submerged to make headway, dropping glasses in the tea-colored water (Florida travel brochures always euphemistically call our thick, rotted-leaf, dark-as-espresso, stagnant, scum-covered, swampy smelly streams 'tea colored'), fishing them out ever so gingerly, and through head high palmetto looking for that exquisitely elusive 'clearing', and through a sea of befuddled glances from the horses and horse show attendees in the fields through which our 500 meter run-in from the last control routed us. Yessiree; My kind of day!
And my new red and white O-suit does indeed make one run like the wind. So then I finish, catch my breath, decide to take a dip in the swimming area to cool off/clean off and Kathy Orcutt says "Just don't put your head under the water". To which I smile and say thank you and only later think: but that's what I was doing out on that red course. Just one more story that will never make it into the Chamber of Commerce literature. All you out-of-staters reading this: remember to tell your friends FL is not a fit habitat for man nor beast. We don't want anyone else, who is not an orienteer, moving here.
Reactions from other courses were all positive. I saw some good times posted. I saw Nigel Gallier breathing down my neck in a park he'd never seen before, despite what must have appeared to him as truly bizarre terrain/vegetation. Janet and I saw a huge old Gopher Tortoise on the yellow course. I saw no Scrub Jays, though I looked around a bit while running through the best of the true Florida Scrub on the red course, from 9 to 10. You just have to believe me when I say there are many of them there. Did anyone else see them?
On the whole a great day. Thanks so much to the Orcutt family for their efforts, to Joe M. for control set and retrieval and to all the other helpers to be named by the Orcutts when they submit their event report/results later.
Next Stop: Ocala National Forest. A fresh new area of the Woodpecker Hill map. Labor Day. See you there!
Bob Putnam
| Name | Time |
| Wills, Scott (2) | 39:02 |
| Miner (6) | 40:26 |
| Name | Time |
| Brown THS | 22:15 |
| Taylor THS (3) | 25:57 |
| Rowan, Nancy & Rory (2) | 26:12 |
| Calderon THS (3) | 31:34 |
| Sloan THS (3) | 31:56 |
| Karhehm, D | 32:14 |
| Carter, D (2) | 32:30 |
| Meehan, Daniel THS (4) | 33:12 |
| Harriman, Martha (2) | 40:25 |
| Jennifer, Paul, Mike (3) | 61:25 |
| Tanchin, Don (2) | 64:00 |
| Holley, R (4) | 75:45 |
| Niziol, Duane (2) | 88:02 |
| Name | Time |
| Rich & Cathy (2) | 45:10 |
| Chanceller,S | 60:14 |
| Gallier, J | 70:19 |
| Bohn/Dunjan (2) | 71:03 |
| Prytulo, W | 71:15 |
| Charlene | 71:32 |
| Pardy/Luther (2) | 71:42 |
| Barker,B | 79:19 |
| Keyes, Bob & Sherry (2) | 88:56 |
| Simpson,B | 93:58 |
| Harrelson, K (2) | 96:20 |
| Smith/Richardson (2) | 98:35 |
| Patts, Garry (2) | 101:29 |
| Roesch, Diane (4) | 106:30 |
| Dishong, Brenda | 111:30 |
| Cathy, Alicia,Ron,Harry | 138:00 |
| Richardson, S (3) | 143:40 |
| Hawkens/Lunt (3) | 165:55 |
| Frazier, H | DNF |
| Cox, Bob | DNF |
| Frazier, D | DNF |
| Cooper, E | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| Hession, Paul | 74:52 |
| Troop 837 (2) | 102:08 |
| Troop 524 Leaders (2) | 114:35 |
| Skurnick Team (3) | 155:40 |
| Sherwin, J (2) | 201:13 |
| Bridge Clyde | 208:22 |
| Jones,B | DNF |
| Gallier, W | DNF |
| Gallier, R | DNF |
| Name | Time |
| Putnam, R | 54:33 |
| Gallier,N | 65:50 |
| Hyde,B | 91:55 |
| Manus, Pinkwater | 100:04 |
| Maliszewski, J | 133:38 |
| Holman, Glen & Audrea (2) | 142:21 |
| Ousley, Bev | 146:12 |
| Bennet, Lewis (4) | 189:22 |
| Crane, D (2) | 207:49 |
| Walaszek, S (2) | 240:40 |
| Troop 837 (3) | DNF |
| Honiker, V (4) | DNF |
| DNF | Did Not Finish |