Rogaining

Recently, my friend asked me to participate in a rogain. What is a rogain you may be asking yourself — it’s essentially extreme orienteering; they give you points on a map with varying score values, a limited time, and tell you to get to as many as possible and have the highest point score at the end.

This rogain in particular was with the Victorian Rogaining Association, a group of varying age and tatlent weekend warriors who rogain. We were given a 15-hour or 24-hour option, it being our first rogaining experience we opted for the 15 hour competition. This meant that we can use any of the 15 hours between 12 noon on saturday and 12 noon on sunday that we desire. We laid out our course, agreed that we were going to get lost frequently, and took off at a jog for a whirlwind 15/24 hour period.

Our first point is supposed to come after we have passed all the buildings, we pass them and look for our turnoff — we don’t find it, instead we hit the next intersection. Uh oh, we already missed a point, but we decide to cut down to the stream on the map and make our way to our next point. We cut east and find our “waterflow” (we dubbed them “rivers”). There was no water in it.  In fact, it didn’t look like water had run their for some time. There was however large trees, fallen branches, ferns, and a steep hill on either side. We stick with the plan and make our way down the river to the river intersection where our first point will be located.  Several minutes into this plan, we have all fallen, got mad across most of what we were wearing and progressing slow.  It becomes clear this is going to be an interesting exercise.  We finally make it down to the point looking quite disheveled and somewhat annoyed at the amount of unnecessary time spent trailblazing without the apparently necessary machete. Some other groups eye us, their faces say they think our trip is going to be most interesting…

We make our way back out to the road and proceed as planned for several points, we make pretty good time. Aside from one minor detour where we misread the map, we’re doing pretty well. After our aforementioned adventure we revise some of our plans to travel by river and instead decide we might be better suited on trails or roads. This decision highlights one of the biggest tradeoffs in rogaining — when is it advantageous to shoot a bearing with a compass versus stick to established paths? Good question.

As we’re trudging through the forest we have some fantastic views, the path at some points is carved into the side of major ridges and provide beautiful glimpses of canyons and trees. Many trees in Australia shed their bark, which is very hard to adjust to; the trees get so smooth and bark is scattered across the whole forest, it’s definitely something that takes getting used to. There are several flipped cars throughout the forest, it provides an interesting contrast to the otherwise very natural feeling — it also begs the question as to how they got there? It might be tough to drive through sections of this forest..

We found a mine as we were walking along a ridge carved path as night fell. An open hallway in the side of a ridge is pretty spooky, we explored it only very briefly, as the clock was ticking and we wanted to push on. We decided we would try to one more point, 72, and take a shorter path nearby to bring us to the road and home.  This is where we learned how hard night navigating is, we wandered around the area where we thought it should be, finding a path that wasn’t on the map, rivers of course with no water, and the flow it was supposed to be on was quite hidden.  We stumbled upon the path on our last ditch effort before heading back.  We decided we’d skip as much of the night navigation as possible.  Our walk back had few points on it and was very long — by the time we made it back to the camp it was just shy of 10, leaving us 5 hours to work in the morning. We devour food and sleep for a few hours.

6:30. Time to get moving to be out by 7. We have varying paths for the day depending how ambitious we decide to be. We start off at a jog — we’re going big. By now we’ve gotten much better at reading the map and determining which paths are feasible, we still manage to overshoot one turn by a couple hundred meters, but we’re doing pretty well. After grabbing the points on our ambitious plan, we make it back to the hash house (base, food) a bit after 11, leaving us a bit less than an hour (late fee is 10 points/min, read: bad). We decide to finish with a bang, we drop our packs and run to grab the 46 point we missed yesterday (hah! take that!) and add on a 58 point a bit further down the road. We see people heading back as we’re going to grab our last point, we overshoot it mildly but keep our jog up and make it back with 9 minutes to spare.

We won the novice field, but it wasn’t exactly competitive. There was one other team doing the 15 hour competition, and 3 doing the 24 hour (but we think they required as part of a PE requirement or something, so they might not have been giving it their all…). It was a great time: a fun challenge with some friends and nice to be outside in this beautiful country. Using the extremely precise measurement of string based on the path I believe we took (highlighted in maps below, blue is first day, green is second) we did approximately 34km the first day and 27km the second, totally 61km or about 39 miles.

Rogaining

Rogaining

10 Photos


If I Were President, Part 1

I’m open to opinions, this is the conclusion I have wandered to – I’m thinking through writing more than declaring infallible truth.

The United States has received criticism both internally and internationally about its environmental protocol and consumption-waste lifestyle. This has led me to wonder how I would solve the issues. I think a number of “green” solutions have been taking the wrong approach, and the “green” movement needs realignment.

Celebrities endorsing things that are “green” is ridiculous, it does little more than try to make people feel good about themselves without any serious change.  The near celebrity status of the Toyota Prius and hybrid movement is really quite similar; I am not the first to seriously question the environmental benefit of Priuses.  Weighing a car down with the use of heavy, expensive and difficult to dispose chemical batteries seems to be backwards thinking.  There are other options that consume similar levels of fuel, a Volkswagen Golf TDI is a 4-door car that offers 50 miles per gallon and costs less than the Prius.

The Lotus Elise weighs in just less than 2,000 pounds, goes 0-60 in less than 5 seconds, and offers super car like handling for a price tag in the $40,000 range. It has highway mileage of nearly 30 miles per gallon to boot.

An original Mini weighed between 1400 and 1500 pounds, a new one weighs at least 2,500 pounds. The original Beetle was tipped the scales at just fewer than 1900 pounds, a new one: 2,700 pounds. While cars have certainly gotten heavier, these increases are still less than 3,000 pounds, almost all family cars now are weigh over that. A new Chevrolet Suburban has a curb weight between 5,600 and 6,300 pounds. A Honda Accord now weighs between 3,300 and 3,600 pounds.

Cars have gotten heavier because of added features, particularly advancements like air conditioning and certain safety features.  However, materials have also gotten a lot better, manufacturers have gotten much better at using steel and aluminum which enables them to do better quality construction with less material.  The main problem has been an arms race amongst consumer, who can have the biggest car with the most room to bring around as much stuff as will possibly fit.

I propose a tax at the time of sale of new cars based on weight.  Cars that weigh over 3,000 pounds will be charged $1/pound tax.  Current taxes like this such as the gas-guzzler tax are fixed prices (such as $1500), and have done relatively little in the long term to change car design.  Car manufacturers can engineer cars to weigh in this category, but they will be slow to do so and the nation should push consumers to lighter cars and stop this trend of the heavy car arms race. The funds from this tax could either help pay off the unbelievable amount of US debt or go to funding public transportation. There should be exceptions for large work-related vehicles; in the grand scheme of things dump trucks for construction are not the vehicles that need re-engineering.

Any car enthusiast could talk your ear off about the advantages of lighter cars, ranging from performance to better gas mileage. Lighter cars also obviously use substantially less material and are thus easier to dispose of.
I think this would be a good first step to changing the American mindset in regards to cars. If we as a nation decide that we want to consume less or go “green”, we need decisive action that will encourage the citizens to follow this initiative. Perhaps it is time to start to move from the “bigger is better” mindset.