"Yeah, it was o.k. got wasted Friday night and just chilled out for the rest of it. What did you do?"
"I took my 8 year old Henry orienteering and let him do a course on his own with no help and without anybody following him and he didn't get lost"
"Yeah, but the route was marked out for them wasn't it?"
"er no"
" So you give him a mobile to call you if he gets lost?"
"er no, just map & compass"
"That's stupid. What if he got lost? Does anybody else do that?"
I entered Henry on the yellow and followed him round but I was a bit too over cautious in his abilities and ended up intervening at almost every control. Should have left him to it. Afterwards we got him entered on the easier white course and let him off on his own while I tackled the black course.
I did a middle race a few months back but this was way tighter and more intense. From the start I never got the hang of it. The map scale was 1:5,000 and I over shot everything never really getting the hang of the vegetation boundaries. The estimated winning time for black was 35 minutes so I gave myself an hour to get round. No chance, with the hour fast approaching I knocked it on the head at control 19 and walked back to see Henry at the finish greeting me with "you've been ages". Yeah I would have been a lot longer as well if I'd have carried on.
The conversation starting this thread was one I had with a work colleague on Monday morning. The child protection nanny state has got to everyone. I'm sure if he would have got lost there was someone about that would point him in the right direction.
Suppose I could remove the risk and just stay at home and chill out!
No comments:
Post a Comment