The final Meet of Empire Orienteering Club's Spring season was held Saturday, June 18th, at Peebles Island State Park in Waterford, NY. We managed to get it in just under the wire before the season officially became Summer. In terms of the weather, however, Summer had long since begun. For the period leading up to the Meet, the temperature was routinely hitting the 90's by mid-day, which made the prospect of doing field checking after work pretty unappetizing. I kept waiting for the weather to change, but finally I couldn't wait any longer, and decided I would just have to get over to the Park in morning, before the day really heated up.

I knew I needed at least a couple of days over there because there had been a lot of recent changes to the Park. The re-opening of the bridge on the North end of the island meant many changes in the parking lot and road area, but those were relatively easy and non-critical, since no one would get too messed up if I drew one of the new parking lot islands in the wrong place. Where people could get messed up would be out on the course where some mapped trails were now completely overgrown, as were a number of mapped clearings, while a few new trails had been cut. In general, the vegetation was thicker than once upon a time, and since this was June, it was not very open anywhere.

By the time we actually got to the meet, the weather had finally changed. The temperature was now reasonably comfortable for running, but it was raining some every day. The forecast for Saturday is 30% chance of showers, and high temperatures in the low 70's, or below. And that's about what we got. There were some early showers, in the 10-11 timeframe, but by the later half of the Start Window, everything was clear and beautiful.

Because of the possibility of rain, the certain heat, or the many other competing events, we didn't get a huge crowd. Several folks arrived technically "too late", saying they had had difficulty finding the location, but we let them go out anyway. However, I think that everyone who came was glad they did, as they all had happy faces and stories to tell about their routes and adventures. Plus (and this is hugely important to a mapper, which I'm really not, I just pretend) no one complained about the quality of the map, or said they had been misled by some aspect of it.

After the actual orienteering had mostly ended, the Club Meeting commenced. As a legal corporation in New York, we are required to hold this meeting annually, and it does in fact serve to help us determine our future pathways. Perhaps the most important outcome of the meeting is that we had a member volunteer to be nominated for the Office of Secretary. He was immediately nominated and unanimously voted into that Office, along with the existing slate of other Officers who agreed to be re-nominated for their current positions. It should be noted that President Phil Hawkes-Teeter stated up front that this was the final year he planned to serve as President. From this time forward we expect to have our Annual Minutes posted and linked. (Eric's Minutes from this year)

Finally, after everything was over, the announced drawing for the last (leftover from the October A Meet) EMS Gift Certificate was held. The winner was Melissa Behr, who had done the Orange course (with son and dog). Her stated reason for enjoying orienteering: "As adults, we don't usually get to enjoy playing in the mud like this!"

- Phil Hawkes-Teeter