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The training camp was held at Blue Mountain in Peekskill NY on March 24th and 25th, 2012. It was run by Erin Schirm with help from Janet Porter, Neil Dobbs, Jeff Saeger, Judy Karpinski, Barb Bryant, Tim Parson, Bernie Breton, Mr. Barker, and maybe some other people.
Unfortunately, at the last minute the lodging fell through, and the organizers had to restrict attendance to only the advanced juniors. So kids working on white, yellow and orange couldn’t come. There were about 20 juniors there, including some cadets from West Point.
I drove down with my mom and my friend Rachael Harkavy. At one point we heard that the training was only going to be on Saturday, so we planned for that, which meant we couldn’t stay for the morning training on Sunday.
The first exercise on Saturday was corridor orienteering: about 3.5 kilometers, where most of the map had been whited out except for a narrow strip. I thought this was supposed to be a compass exercise, but for me it was mostly a feature-reading exercise. I did this together with Evalin Brautigam. Working with her was pretty easy, we worked well together. Most of the time we switched off leading the legs.
by Ian Smith
Two A-meets, or national competitions, were held in March: the US Classic Championships in North Carolina and the 16th Flying Pig in Cincinnati. A-meets are major events sanctioned by the national federation, OUSA. Compared to local meets, A-meets are higher quality events, with months of advance planning, better courses, more stringent secrecy, and novel terrain. Results from A-meets are used to produce end-of-year national rankings.
North Carolina: A map sample from the Blue Course from Day 2 |
One of the best parts of A-meets is running in different terrain on unfamiliar maps. You can only run on a local map so many times before it becomes routine and memory is as much an asset as the map. At the start of a race on a new map, you boldly run into the unknown. Each terrain type invites certain techniques and poses distinct challenges. There are two upcoming A-meets near New England: the annual West Point A-meet in West Point, NY on the weekend of May 5, and NEOC’s own creatively named Western MA 5-Day: five races packed into two days on May 26-27 in Amherst, MA. Because of the extensive logistics involved, competitors must register for A-meets weeks ahead of time. Early registration for both West Point and the Western MA 5-Day closes in mid-April, so register now! Links are on the NEOC schedule page.
The Nominating Committee is seeking motivated individuals interested in serving on the Board of Directors for a two-year term. If you are interested or have any questions, please contact the Nominating Committee by midnight May 8, 2012.
The NEOC Board recommends that the membership strive to elect a board with the following characteristics:
Today is NEOC's 40th Anniversary. See the collection of articles gathered for this special date.
by Peter Amram
Mark Monmonier, a professor at Syracuse University, is the author of the 1994 Drawing the Line, tales of maps and cartocontroversy. Prominent among the cartocontroveries are the Vinland Map, a fraud which purports to show pre-Columbian discoveries in the New World, and the Peters Projection, a misleading, politically-correct attempt to show the ‘true’ size of non-European countries. Many maps, Monmonier suggests, are best approached with suspicion.