The Saga Begins

It was a dark and not so stormy Monday night, all my packing and buying new shoes was done and all that was left was to catch my flight. So at 8:30 PM... who am I kidding... I'll fast-forward to Europe.

The flight itself was uneventful but not very restful - i.e. a typical redeye flight. I arrived at London Heathrow on Tuesday morning at 10:10 AM or so - slightly ahead of schedule. The airport is remarkable easy to navigate for one of its size and it's not long before, baggage in hand - 'on back' rather - I manage to figure out how to buy credit for my phone and find my way to the bus to Oxford. The first of these endeavours is rather pointless for while I now have credit for my phone I have so far been unsuccessful in navigating the delightful German maze designed to guide me to actually activating the credit I had purchased. The second endeavour went splendidly and before I knew it I was fast asleep and on my way to Oxford.

After an hour on the bus I wake up to find myself at the Thornhill park and ride, the first of the Oxford stops and the one where I was supposed to disembark. Off I go, and since I can't call for a ride from my rather useless cell phone, I grab the payphone in the station to overpay for a free ride from my delightfully British cousin in law. The rest of the day is dedicated to not falling asleep. While recovering from jetlag as quickly as possible is a noble goal, this is an awefully torturous way to go about it. I don't recommend it.

A friend of Caroline (my cousin) and Andy's (her husband and my chauffeur) showed up at the door later that afternoon to stay for a couple of days. Sam (the friend) certainly added to enjoyable atmosphere of the house - as Irishmen are wont to do.

If memory serves, my crusade to stay awake lasted until about 9:00 PM. The surprising thing is that I was up again at 7:30 the next morning and out the door for a run by 8:30 AM the next morning (read more about that here). The rest of that day - Wednesday, in case you're keeping track - was, like Tuesday, dedicated to staying awake whilst watching as much FIFA world cup and Wimbledon as can be crammed into an afternoon.

I decided to make Thursday into my Token Tourist Day and made a trip down to London in which I was very un-tourist-like and spent a grand total of under £25 on the bus fare to and from the city and Lunch combined. I spent a grand total of £0 on anything else more extravagant than a trip to a tiny public washroom. I won't dwell more on this trip here asAttackpoint already has five whole paragraphs and a google map dedicated to the subject.

Friday was my Oxford Day. I tried to be scholarly but was told that that really wasn't necessary. And this from a couple of Rhodes Scholars too! It turns out Caroline knows Mary Eaton, the registrar to the Rhodes trust so I e-mailed Mary who e-mailed her assistant who e-mailed at least three (that's how many I heard back from) Canadian Rhodes scholars letting them know I'd be interested in meeting with them. I ended up hooking up with two of them and we had a grand old time sitting on the grass drinking milkshakes and generally coming to the conclusion that Oxford was better known for its well manicured lawns than its engineering programs.

Note the remarkably well-kept lawn, fancy college buildings and people. On the left is Annick Labadie whom I met for lunch and on the right is Wojciech Gryc who came straight from the gym for a few good laughs and a milkshake.

At this point I tire of my blather. I could keep going but Attackpoint has been keeping score along the way so if you really don't feel satisfied by the measly amount I've written here see here.

Alas my taxi to take me to the bus to take me to the airport to catch my flight to take me to Copenhagen to get me to my girlfriend is due to arrive soon so I must say adieu.

Tune in again soon for the next instalment of OA.

The Plan

With the decision to travel to Europe out of the way and flights booked and major events registered for, it became a matter of sorting out the rest. About a quarter of the details got sorted out and the rest were put into the 'winging it' pile.

Actually, a good portion of the above is a big lie. The last 'major' detail was still to be worked out. That is, I only discovered later, that by the time I left I would finally be dating the girl of my dreams, who it just so happens, was going to be travelling to JWOC, WUOC, and O-ringen with me. Her name is Alison Campbell, is racing for the American team in JWOC and WUOC, and will be going to the University of Colorado in the fall. Life couldn't get much better. Except that by the time we'd see each other at JWOC it would be about five weeks since we'd last seen each other. Which made it very hard to focus on anything and my productivity consequently went downhill. But I wouldn't trade Alison in for my productivity any day!

With that said, it truly was time to put together a detailed - or more detailed - plan. The planning involved lots of back and forth with travel plans and other orienteers, more negotiating and debating, and plenty of research. The end result is as follows:

I am to catch a redeye flight from Ottawa that arrives in London Heathrow at 10:30 AM on the 22nd of June. From there I'll catch a bus to Oxford where I'll be meeting my cousin Caroline and her husband Andy with whom I'll be staying until Saturday night. The purpose of this portion of the trip was twofold. First I wanted to see Caroline and Andy obviously. Secondly though I've had it in my head for quite a while that I would like to apply to the Rhodes Scholarship to take a post graduate degree at Oxford University. Not knowing how crazy this Rhodes idea is my only plan for this first stage of my trip is a vague notion that I would like to meet up with someone from Rhodes House or perhaps some Rhodes Scholars to see how these things work.

On Sunday (the 27th)I need to catch a bus in Oxford at 1:00 AM to get myself to Stansted Airport for a 7:00 AM EasyJet flight to Copenhagen where I will meet Alison and another American orienteer, Holly. Finally! We then tour Copenhagen for the afternoon and take an evening train up to Aalborg, JWOC's host city. Accommodation plans on the 27th are uncertain but come Monday accommodation is provided by JWOC. From Monday to Saturday both the Canadian and American teams have organized training camps to prep their respective athletes for the Danish terrain. Half the Canadian team is only arriving on Wednesday however - hopefully this is enough time. For Emily Kemp - the All-Canadian superstar - it will be but the others will need to make use of what valuable training time they get.

JWOC itself starts with the sprint distance on Monday the 5th of July and ends with the relay on Friday the 10th. As a team leader for all of this I've signed myself up for the 'JWOC TOUR' which provides spectators and team officials a chance to run their own races. I'll be racing six races from the 4th to the 10th with a rest day on Wednesday the 7th.

Once Sunday the 11th roles around I have a week off of orienteering where I will more or less be travelling on my own. I plan on seeing more of what Copenhagen has to offer until the Tuesday or Wednesday then take a train up to Stockholm where I hope to meet a friend of mine from school before catching up with Eric Kemp and Robbie Anderson - both orienteers from Ottawa on the afternoon of the 16th (aka Friday). The 17th is my birthday so hopefully good times will be had by all and then on the 18th Alison flies into Stockholms nearest Airport, Arlanda, at 16:00 so I will meet her there and we will take the train up to Borlange for WUOC.

WUOC starts with the opening ceremonies on Monday the 19th has races in the sprint, middle, long, and relay disciplines during the week, and ends with the closing ceremonies on Friday the 23rd. On Saturday we all take a roughly three hour train ride from Borlange to Orebro to race the legendary O-ringen. Put simply O-ringen is the largest orienteering race in the world usually attracting between fifteen and twenty thousand competitors each year. It will be more than a little intimidating, a lot of fun, and a great way to end of a spectacular European adventure. Unfortunately for me my flight home is due to leave from Arlanda on the morning of the 30th and the last race of O-ringen is during the day on the 30th. Oops... Hopefully I can contact the company through which I booked my flight and get it pushed back by a day.

Mise-en-scène

The year is 2010 and the summer orienteering schedule is perfect. Too perfect in fact. North America has the best summer line-up of orienteering events in, well, probably ever. Out on the West Coast a massive North American Orienteering Festival which involves 21 events from the 26th June 26 to the 21st July, including the US champs, the North American Champs, Barebones in Whistle, and the Rocky Mountain Orienteering Festival. In August the Ottawa Orienteering Club is playing host to the Canadian Orienteering Championships. Meanwhile, in Europe, the stars have aligned themselves to provide the perfect travelling opportunity. The Junior World Orienteering Championships (aka JWOC) occurs in Aalborg, Denmark, from the 4th to the 10th of July. 2 weeks later the World University Orienteering Championships (WUOC) are being held in Borlange, Sweden, and the very next week and a mere 2 hour train ride away o-ringen (for those of you who think you're seeing a pattern, this event is never, in fact, shortened to OROC) is occurring in the town of Orebro. The result of this schedule is 4 weeks of orienteering in a five week period starting on the 28th of June and ending on the 30th of July.

I had a decision to make. Do I stay in North America and travel to the West Coast for some great domestic and near-domestic orienteering? Or do I travel to Europe for some equally good orienteering... in Europe? The decision is as easy as it looks. While travelling to Europe is slightly more expensive than travelling across our vast country, the difference isn't great enough to be the deciding factor. What tipped the scale is the combination of the awesome orienteering, the chance to travel with friends and see relatives, the opportunity to scope out universities for masters programs, and well... it's Europe. Enough said. Alright the scoping out universities probably won't happen much; but it makes for a good secondary justification for a trip to Europe.

With that decision made it came time to sweat the small stuff. And by small stuff I mean everything smaller than the decision to go to Europe itself.

First up: registering for the orienteering events and booking my flights. JWOC was easy. I'm going to JWOC as a team leader since last year was the last year I was able to qualify as an international junior - yup I'm now old stuff. Luckily for me, Randy Kemp, also from Ottawa, is also going as a team leader, and thanks to the fact that he's even older stuff, is taking care of pretty much all of the organizational aspect of our trip to JWOC. So I told Randy I was planning on going, paid more money than I care to think about, and all is set. Oh and as Randy isn't going to the training camp I'm getting about four days of free accommodations. WUOC involved filling out a few forms and sending some cheques to various people but was quite straight forward. O-ringen cause me some trouble though. The first time I tried registering my credit card wouldn't go through. And the second time was actually on the evening of the regular registration deadline and thus past it in Sweden. I was also down at the West Point Military Academy in the New York for an orienteering meet and couldn't remember my password to log in to register. I had to climb a big hill just to get enough cell phone reception to call home to get someone to find my password and register for me. Luckily for me it worked. Booking the flights was the usual messy affair of trying to find the cheapest options out there. I made the mistake of allowing plus-minus one day on both the out and return flights and accidentally chose the cheapest options - ie one that had me catching a flight home on the morning of Friday July 30 instead of the 31st as I initially wanted. The issue with that is that the last race of o-ringen is on Friday so I may have to miss it. And that's just not cool. The flight out was a red-eye flight that left on Monday, June 21st at 10:45 and got into Heathrow at 10:30 AM the next morning.

This is getting long now so tune in soon for more details and an update from the road.

Cheers,

Jeff