Being out in the forest it’s a very different story.  After a hot dry summer, it’s very dusty and brown everywhere.  Our club is looking after the “Information Centre”, which means we hand out everyone’s race numbers and tourist information, answer lots of questions, look after lost property, deal with endless requests to change courses and start times, and a whole bunch of other miscellaneous tasks each day. 

Good Friday was 30 degrees, and the races were in the afternoon so Pete was the only one of us that went out on a course.  This day is an informal “warmup”, usually good fun and short, but Ian and I decided we’d be too busy on the first day, with everyone arriving and wanting assistance.  So our competition began with the Easter 3 Day proper.

Day 1 was in Inglewood, in what is known as reef mining terrain.  This means lots and lots of piles of dug-up dirt, and pits that the dirt was dug from.  It was pretty flat but with a lot of detail.  The tracks were vague, and the visibility was low thanks to the scrubby scratchy vegetation.  It was quite easy to come unstuck – as Ian found out.  Not checking his control number carefully enough, and assuming that there would only be a single water control, instead of several, he mispunched mid-course – but didn’t realise until the dreaded words at the finish tent – “you missed one”.

Bugger.

Meanwhile, I was plodding my way around.  This was my first course in the 65AS age class, where the courses are pretty short and the controls pretty close together.  The nice thing is that the course setter generally will consider that people on this course have sharp minds but not very agile or flexible bodies, meaning climbing into or out of things like deep erosion gullies is no longer an option.  There is nothing more frustrating than knowing exactly where your control is, but not being able to physically reach it without a highly undignified bum slide or crab crawl – techniques I have become very familiar with.  No such difficulty today – once I found the flag I could just walk up to it.  I only made one error, finding my no 5 before my no 4.  I was slow and steady, and didn’t finish last, although I was nowhere near the winner’s time. 

Afterwards, I was presented with the microphone as I read out the names of the random draw prize winners.  I tried to keep people’s attention with a bit of banter, while keeping things moving along quickly.  I got used to public speaking at work, although my audiences there were generally much less receptive, as I was usually telling them things they didn’t want to hear.

The Dining Room felt empty with just the four of us, so we invited Simon over for dinner – white tie and full butler service of course!