Moving to the East side of the Powissett map for some variety, this year's Halloween-O featured a return of some hallowed traditions including the dreaded "worm-punch" and the bloody mannequin which had previously been fixtures at the event. Also continuing a more dubious tradition, your intrepid meet director and course setter once again succeeded in setting courses that exceeded the recommended standards of difficulty. Despite this concern, as well as the somewhat tenuous weather, the roughly 175 competitors generally reported a challenging but rewarding experience in the woods.

Once again, the availability of an OCAD version of the Powissett map allowed an updating of the trail network and a remapping of some of the more questionable areas of the earlier version. The White, Yellow and Orange courses all utilized new trails that had been blazed over the last 2 years. The GO control (with worm-punch and candy cauldron) was also place in a previously unmapped small clearing quite close to the finish (perhaps allowing more than a few energy-depleted competitors to return after completion of their courses to replenish their sugar supplies).

Various time bonuses were available to competitors who either wore costumes or chose to fish around for the worm-punch at the last control. The raw times and time bonuses are both reported in the following results. As indicated earlier, times generally ran on the longer side. To a certain extent, this was intentional on the introductory courses where a few more challenging controls were included as teaching points. With regard to the advanced courses, your course setter suspects that the slow times largely reflect the moderate to heavy amount of underbrush which abounds on the map, although other possible explanations including unduly difficult control placement, inappropriately hidden control flag placement, excessive control number, paucity of trail legs or otherwise straightforward controls, map inadequacies (mismapping or printing problems) and weather effects may also be contributing. In the interests of improving the experience in the future, your course setter invites any specific feedback at JRSchapiro@aol.com.

This year's thank you list is more extensive than usual as I must include several scouts who assisted in checking the punchcards and posting results at the finish. I particularly wish to recognize Donn Springer, Kathy McArdle, Jon and Tori Campbell, Joanne Sankus and my parents and sister Amy for their many efforts which resulted in the most seamlessly run Halloween event under my direction. I also wish to thank Bob Dangel for helping to update the Powissett map and both Jim Paschetto and Richard Burns for assisting in control pick-up.

I look forward to seeing all of you and then some next year.

PS: Please contact the event director if you lost a compass in the Registration area.