A few weeks ago, Cecilia and I were on our way home from canoe polo at the campus pool when we bumped into Dan. I didn’t know Dan, but Cecilia did – presumably because they’re both exchange students from the states. During the course of our brief conversation, Dan said he was keen on the idea of Rogaining. I had been out of contact with my rogaine partners from last year, so I did my best to etch Dan’s contact details on a banana I had in my pocket with my keys (in lieu of pen and paper). It turned out that he gave me the wrong phone number, but we set the record straight with facebook.
I sorted out entry and payment for our team of two, Dan hired out camping gear and whatnot from the bushwalking club and found us a ride to the event. Unfortunately our driver did her ankle at a netball game the Thursday before the rogaine and pulled out, so I found another ride at the last minute.
Greg met us at 8 on Saturday morning, we made it out to the hash house by about 10:30 after a wrong turn, a stop to pick up Greg’s partner Mick, and a coffee break at a fantastic small-town bakery along the way. Dan and I pitched the tent, checked in, collected the map and made a flight plan. We left at noon – Dan was the pack horse and I was the navigator. Not how it’s usually done, but this arrangement turned out to be quite effective.
The first couple of checkpoints were quite crowded, as is to be expected at the start of an event. At one of the early checkpoints, two older women arrived as we were writing our particulars on the marker. The lady in front, while explicitly stating that she didn’t mean to be pedantic, pretty much accused us of trying to sabbotage their game by taking too long at the checkpoint. Bitch! I mean, waiting 15 seconds for us to finish isn’t going to make much of a difference over a 15 (or 24) hour event. We were determined to get more points than the older women.
It was pretty smooth sailing all afternoon with few navigational errors. We occasionally referred to features on the map more nerdily as things like ‘local maxima’, ‘local minima’ or ‘places with a maximised directional derivative’. Steady progress was made in a southerly direction, away from the hash house to where all the high-scoring checkpoints were. We met some older bush walkers from Tasmania at around 4:00, and then again before dark. Nice to talk to, but they’d bite your ear off when given a chance.
We got lost on dusk (Mick told me later that’s what usually happens) – turned off the road too early and went up the wrong hill. Oops. By the time we went back down that hill and up the right one to the checkpoint, it was time to put our headlights on. It was the first time I had done night navigation, and to my suprise we were spot-on most of the time. We made it to a water drop at about 8:30 to find not only the usual supplies of water and fruit, but sandwiches too! A fine selection of jam, vegemite and peanut butter we had to choose from. Dan ate about half a dozen, but then again he’d been carring the backpack for the two of us from the start.
Tiredness made for some delusional conversation for the hour or two before we got back to the hash house at 10:30. Soup! Stew! Cous cous! Chocolate custard and stewed pears! The hash house always has a top-noch meal for returning rogainers. The catering team ran their first-class volunteer operation from a farm shed, all night long. In addition, there were a number of camp fires to choose to warm ourselves with; the flames and a warm meal seemed to facilitate communication as tired rogainers swapped stories from the day.
Woke up around 7:00 the next morning, had a quick bite to eat left within half an hour. I found the early moring walk a relaxing experience, perhaps even magical; the air was crisp and sweet as the dirt road – clearly less traveled than it once was – took us on a tour of crumbling houses, rusting machinery and vintage trucks with vines poking out of the cabin. The odd pile of hay bales indicated that someone still used the land, but whoever they were they were nowhere to be seen.
This tree managed to catch my attention, for it had clearly suffered a traumatic experience earlier on in life. Nevertheless, it manages to maintain a carefully balanced perfection, smooth, seamless, stable. Do trees know about center of mass?
We made it back to the hash hous a couple of minutes before noon. I experienced the most amazing cheese toastie ever. Monash actually won the university competition, so we (along with two other teams) were recognised during the presentation and awarded our choice of chocolate bar. I was quite pleased with our team score of 1420 points (unofficially, as one checkpoint wasn’t counted for some reason). Packed up camp and headed back home.
We stopped at the same bakery, this time for a vanilla slice. A top-notch vanilla slice is characterised by a crispy pastry and light custard filling; where I live most bakeries are run by Chinese bakers who have little appreciation for the humble vanilla slice. I am pleased to report that this particular slice was top-notch.
I was sore and stiff for two or three days afterwards, but the weekend away was completely worth it.
Apparently there are rogaining events run in Europe, Japan, North America and North Queensland, so there’s really no excuse not to try it out.
