Report from Womens' Outdoor Weekend.

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Nine women signed up for the orienteering course at this year's Womens' Outdoor Weekend (WOW). WOW is an annual event sponsored by the Clay County, Missouri, Parks Department. During the weekend there are morning and afternoon session where participants can learn about everything from shotgun safety to sailboating to orienteering. Orienteering has been on the schedule for three years.

Kevin Shipley, Mary and I taught the session. We used a little (and pretty rough) O' map of the Sailboat Cove area of Smithville Lake. The area is quite small and the map is adequate (I did the field checking in about 90 minutes).

Mary began the session with an introductory talk. She covered the basics and explained contours. Next, we broke into three groups and did a map walk. We walked a short course that had three controls. Next on tap was an introduction to using a compass. Kevin described how to take a bearing. Finally, we sent the participants out on a 11 control score course. All nine women found all 11 controls.

A couple of the participants were quite interested in coming events. So, we'll hope to see a few WOW participants at some local meets this fall.

Next year look for O' to be a part of WOW again. We'll probably add a couple of features -- a second course for the participants who finish the score O' quickly and would like to try some more O', and some sort of prizes.

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), September 09, 2000

Answers

Clearly you ought to offer up Snorkel as a prize. He may not be one, but how would WOW know that in advance? Alternatively you could give away tubes of Pringles. Some people are just crazy about them, and will even pawn their compasses just to get a little extra Pringles money.

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), September 10, 2000.

Any references to certain OKer's choosing certain competitions and terrains over others should not be taken as offensive by any residents of either terrain.

-- Snorkel (danielmeenehan@aol.com), September 16, 2000.

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