Mad Dash Splash (Part 2)

I'll take the story over from here from Cortny...

Cortny on the floor and me on my knees definately made paddling better. Oddly, the only pictures we have so far were taken on the calmest part of the lakes (a bay), and make it look like an easy paddle. I wish we had some pictures of the white water splashing up into Code's face in Lake Monona...and then puddling in the back of the canoe under my weight.

If you look at the picture though, you can see I am on my knees, and I still make that canoe look small....and the oars short. That was our biggest problem.

We were eventually told that some teams refused to do the second part of the paddling, and they portaged the canoe instead for almost a mile.

Anyway, out of the canoes we went and on to bikes. The fun really began. We started passing teams now, and that was cool. It really gets you energized to pass teams. I think we had a bout 20 miles of biking done when we came to the Orienteering section....and we had put about 4 teams behind us on the way to it.

The O-course was great. It seemed to have control points for every level. CP's 1 and 2 were as easy as it could get, yet some (like 8) were a search. Still, we rocked the course and put another couple teams behind us in the process. It took us about an hour and 15 minutes to complete it.

The next bike section was good, but I could tell this was where the "Natives" to Madison would be outshining us. We were still stopping to check maps, but the next 2-3 CP's were in well-known Madison locations. It was difficult to keep up and still navigate. The "Natives" knew where they were going.

Additionally, I had mis-plotted a CP and took us 4 blocks out of way. Luckily the passport with the coordinates was still readable for us to fix my mistake (This would not be true later. Our "passport" was mostly trashed.)

We then arrived at the "Metro-Trek" section of the race, on the U of W campus, right on the shore of Lake Mendota.

I'll leave the rest of the story for Code to tell...