In my opinion one of the best things about being an OKer is the great road trips. I'm sure that people in other clubs have fun sometimes going places to orienteer, but obviously anything they might experience pales in comparison to an OK road trip. Although it was before my time (and even before those years when Spike was at his best), that classic photo of Spike on the side of the interstate changing a tire seems to sum up everything it means to be devoted to OK.

By "road trip" I tend to think of travelling by car or plane, or whatever, to an orienteering function. Some of my favorites include a lot of those trips to SLOC A-meets with stopovers at Ernie's Diner in Columbia and watching the 'hawks in the NCAA tournament, one of those PTOC A-meets at Truman where the organizers must have found that the carrot cake they intended to serve at the official dinner was... (um, how should one say this?)... was somewhat smaller than they had originally intended (but the kitchen was left unlocked all night for crying out loud!). That was also the meet we held the Gene run-alike contest. I can't remember who won, but the point was it was a lot of fun. One obviously holds Clinton '96 and Rockcrusher in high esteem (but to describe those meets in mere words would seem a travesty), that trip to Manitoba in '88 with Fritz and Dan was a real classic: (I remember the tent dandruff, perogies, candlepin bowling in downtown Brandon, Dan's bullet wound, interpretive map-reading in that park near where we camped, and the world's largest oil can), the NEOH meet about 5 yrs ago when we stayed in that religious camp near Cleveland with the little shrines everywhere, Louisville buffoons, and the happiness pavilion, MMM was fun and also some recent trips like Washington in '98.

Does anyone have the guts to draw up a top ten road trips list?

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), September 09, 1999

Answers

My first road trip was quite memorable (at least to me). I had done two O' meet -- one at West Campus and one at a 4-H camp near Perry. Paul Jordan phoned me and asked if I'd like to go to Carbondale, IL for an A-meet. "Drive all the way to southern Illinois just to go orienteering?" I thought it was crazy. But, my Dad said, "why not?" I couldn't think of a reason not to go, so I went.

Parts of the trip were terrible. I had some sort of stomach flu and couldn't keep any food down. The weather was cold and rainy.

But, I had a lot of fun, too. I ran the Yellow course (my B category at the time) and won. I remember having a lot of fun on the course. I've often wondered if I'd have given up orienteering if it weren't for Paul's invitation.

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), February 01, 2000.