COLLIN MOODY HMIS

September 17, 2005

We took our bikes off the rack just before 7:00am, and they looked alright. About 7:15, I took a look at tire pressure, and noticed my back tire was flat. Then I noticed the valve tip had broken off. It's now 7:20, and I need a new tire. A quick tire change got us to the start line with 2 minutes to spare.

At this point we noticed our sharpie was back in the hotel room, so a quick run back to the room, and we're off. We're about 30 seconds late off the start, so we're already trying to make up time. To TA1, we seem to have taken the same course as most of the other teams - some biking, some carrying of bikes up cutlines, wet & cold feet, a good end-over on a downhill section.

At TA1 we were 8th in, so we had to make up some time. We decided the best way was to go over the mountain, so we headed straight up what I thought was the lowest point on the mountain. As it turns out, we ended up hitting one of the higher spots at around 6700 feet after an hour or so, but the view was fantastic. We could also see the location of CP5a, so we cruised down the slope and were at the CP within 20 minutes. Not knowing here we sat in the rankings, we ran down the trail to CP6. We passed a few teams coming up, so we thought we might be in OK shape. Coming into CP6 (after just barely crossing the river), we had made it up to 4th spot. A quick plot of the next advanced section, some inhaling of food, and we were off again.The river was great...for the first 20 minutes. We then saw a team over by the edge, went over to see if we could be of assistance. Unfortunately - we couldn't really stop, and we ended up going straight down a pretty nasty set of rapids. I knew it was bad when my 6'3 teammate disappeared under a wave. We managed to recover the canoe, and ended up capsizing about 15 minutes later. Another team came right after us, and I tried to throw the throw-bag, but missed about 8 feet ahead of the canoe. We were eventually able to help with the canoe, and we were all pretty miserable at that point.

The last orienteering section ended up being our nemisis. I ended up plotting for the wrong spot for the second orienteering point (the sad part is, if I had just paid a little more attention to the aerial photograph, I would have noticed). At any rate, we ended up fumbling around in the bush for an extra 45 minutes. We ended up finishing the race around 12 hours.

Great race, too bad about our finish.