Veteran's Day Night O at Hyland Park Reserve, Bloomington, MN

This year's edition of the Veteran's Day night event was at Hyland Lake Park Reserve. Registration was at Jan's Place, which I promptly misunderstood to mean one of the MNOC members' home. It turned out to be one of the park facilities and fortunately, I found it right away, unlike Ian's home, which served as departure point for last year's night O at Katherine Abbot Park.

This years event was laid out as a butterfly course, with 3 km, 5 km and 8km distances I picked the middle distance, worrying about screwing up like during the past few events and returning late in the night.

I hit the initial six controls right on. CP 7, however, was a different story, as is immediately evident from the map and my track above, and the satellite image, below. Screwing up on this CP was a mix of outdated map (pond missing), darkness (I would have seen the bigger lake if there had been any light), failure to estimate distance and count steps and my pigheadedness about sticking to a couple of obvious attack points trying each several times without trying a third alternative.

In the end, it's all about thinking. But in spite of my troubles with CP 7 I did manage to pull off a victory in the medium length category: Hyland Park Reserve Night O Results.