The Buff Barbie

[Squirrel Girl]

Ok, so I just signed up for an Adventure Race (Buff Betty). I was all excited, but then I researched it, and found out that it's all race and no adventure. I excel at adventure and I'm utterly pathetic at race. The paddling part is on a postage stamp of a pond. The mountain biking is on a gravel road for godsakes. And the orienteering is entirely on a trail and you don't have to wander off into the woods at all to find the control points.

I don't mean to disparage the folks. I have at least one hobby/sport that is entirely pointless, yet I do it because it's fun to me and that's good enough. But.....

I got to thinking.... What would be the Buff Barbie race? Lots of adventure, little racing. I figure you'd have to start off at night when it's raining (but not in the cold---I don't do cold). You'd have to cross a mountain, but there wouldn't be control points. Just a start and end. How you got from here to there would be entirely up to you. Then you'd wrestle an alligator or something. Then you'd bake a pie.

I don't know. But just for fun, I thought I'd throw it out to you guys to see what you would do to come up with as a *real* adventure race. What would test folks' sense of adventure without risking killing them? Not so tough that like no one would enter. Not so hokey it would make a bad TV reality show. Something fun for real outdoorsy folks. You know, like us. But not necessarily tied to any particular sport.

I posted this just now to the Cave Divers Forum. Now I'm throwing it out to you guys, too. I think it would be fun to see what we would come up with.

[Phil Winkler]

SG,

Brenda Mehta, (Newark, DE) a former caver (she'd still do it, but kids abound) was part of the first TV show that went round the world, crossed moutnains, etc. Was it the Great Race? Great Adventure? I forget. She lost in France. Anyway, she said a lot of the fun and adventure was figuring out how to travel from one place to another, trains, buses, schedules in foreign languages, etc., etc. According to her the original plan was very challenging and thought provoking.

[Teresa]

Send them into the woods without their cellphone and GPS.

Actually, send teams of two into a wilderness somewhere for a week with a survival kit out of the 1940s boy scout manual. You know, the string, two matches, one fishhook, 50 ft of string, magnifying glass, one cup sort of pocket kit. Leave 'em there for a week, and the one which comes back with the coolest stories wins.

[Squirrel Girl]

Actually, Teresa, you're close to on target to what I was thinking.

First off, at the clinic that I stumbled on, a guy who attended asked if he could use a GPS. The Orienteering Leader said in the US you can't but in Europe you can. But it doesn't matter. GPS slows you down.

I have only done Orienteering once. I went with another caver (who is good at it) and she let me navigate. I remember coming to about the second control point which was by a hairpin bend. I noticed all the other folks walking along the gravel road making the hairpin bend. I'm thinking, "Why the f are they doing that???????? The control point is about 20' down there. All ya do is cut off the switchback."

I also seem to recall that I never once used the compass I was required to carry.

And, yes, because I'm not into the whole race thing, I was thinking that the person with the best stories, would indeed win the Buff Barbie.

I guess the one thing that I can say for this being a race is it's motivating me off my fat @$$ and onto my road bike to train. Got to work at 6 am. Then took off about 8:30 to pedal on a bike path with some hills.
Now I'm showered up and back to the computer.

[Squirrel Girl]

Brenda Mehta, (Newark, DE) a former caver (she'd still do it, but kids abound) was part of the first TV show that went round the world, crossed moutnains, etc.

I'm not so into the TV variety of those things. Probably because I'm not so photogenic. When National Geographic did the Wakulla 2 TV show, they completely left me out of the whole thing!

[cob]

When National Geographic did the Wakulla 2 TV show, they completely left me out of the whole thing!

Don't feel bad Barbara...

During the Cliff Cave rescue in '93 there were news crews and photographers all over the place (I remember walking past the camera crews with all of my caving gear including rope (which we suspected would be useless but just in case) and feeling the lenses burning into me and thinking how "macho" we probably looked)... During those 2 days and the ones following just about everybody had their picture on tv or in the paper.

Me? "Hey Tom, I saw your truck on the news!"

It got worse: About a week after, a reporter from the Post called and wanted to interveiw some of us (and take pics with us in our gear) at the cave. I got word an hour before and did not have time to get gear but showed up for the hell of it anyway. In the interveiw she asked all kinds of really hokie questions including "How do you guy's think?" I laughed and pointed to the bumper sticker on the back of my truck which said, "THINK MUD".

When the article came out, everybody but me was quoted... Even my truck was quoted... "THINK MUD"

So... not only was my truck more photogenic than I, it was more quotable too.

tom

[Phil Winkler]

Many moons ago I attended the Army's Advanced NCO Course in San Antonio. One of the tasks was navigating the Night Compass Course (Orienteering) out at Camp Bullis which is north of San Antone in the Texas Hill Country. And, yes, their is at least one cave there and I visited it that week.

Teams of 4 were given a printed list of instructions and you used a topo map of Bullis to orient yourself. I appointed myself team leader since I was very familiar with maps largely due to caving and sailing. I looked at the instructions, compared them to the map and saw immediately where the checkpoint stations were and also the final destination. Remember, this was really supposed to be a refresher/introductory type test. After all, most of us were medics.

Anyway, grokking the entire course I slung a green cool-light over my shoulder and told the team to follow me and we started running. We finished the course real fast after hitting all the checkpoints, too.

One guy claimed to have been attacked by a mountain lion and only escaped by throwing himself down a steep cliff. He was certainly scratched and bruised up, too. From then on whenever he entered the classroom we'd all start to meow!

[fuzzy-hair-man]

Squirrel Girl maybe try rogaining, it's sort of like Orienteering except you have to collect as many points as possible (each control is given more or less points based on difficultly and distance from the starting point) in a 24 hour period. It is much less about raw speed and more about a sustained effort and good strategy and knowing how much you can do before the wheels fall off and you have to rest and refuel. Some will stay out the full 24 hrs others will sleep a while going back to the camp others will sleep a while under a log.

The original is 24 hrs, but there are also 12 and 6 hr versions.

[Eve]

Rogaining? That sounds like a method for curing baldness.

[fuzzy-hair-man]

It was started in Aust. the three people who started it incorporated thier names into the sport's name. (Not what I wouuld have done) Roger Gail and Ian ? but I am guessing.
It has sort of grown to become interational with rogaining events organized around the world.

[hewhocaves]

Send them into the woods without their cellphone and GPS.

Actually, send teams of two into a wilderness somewhere for a week with a survival kit out of the 1940s boy scout manual. You know, the string, two matches, one fishhook, 50 ft of string, magnifying glass, one cup sort of pocket kit. Leave 'em there for a week, and the one which comes back with the coolest stories wins.

you mean send them out into the woods as described and then send a coroner in a week later to identify the remains.

The granola-adventurers do not impress me. The buff ones even less so. I'm out of shape and still have to drag their sorry posteriors through a cave.

(amusingly, the same thing applies to taking incredibly fit undergrads caving. 95% of them tire after three hours in Trout Cave.)