Brain failure :-( followed by chat with the little monster :-)

Autumn Spartacus Cup Day 1 would have been great without a serious case of brain failure on my part. The day started with some geocaching where I found one quickly and another one not at all. Then we arrived at the event in good time and in spite of that I forgot to put on my Garmin watch. Funny that, especially that due to the later brain failure on control 10 I would have really needed it (for the first time) to tell me exactly where I went. As it is, I had to draw my route on by hand, so it is anybody's guess where my meanderings have taken me.

The course was long and hard. They cancelled W60 and put us in with the W55's. However, the W55 and W50 courses were identical, so we have de facto been upgraded to a W50 course, which in my case means 13 years. Never mind, I said to myself, I have often complained about mickey mouse courses, at least this is a dead serious one. From the Start to control 9 everything went beautifully. I took everything slowly and carefully and the controls kept popping up like good'uns. Then came control 10 and I still don't know what happened. I think it was a combination of oxygen debt and overconfidence. I couldn't possibly have looked at my compass once during this leg, otherwise I would have known that I was going wrong. Finally, I relocated off control 12 and then had to climb back up all the way to 10. Brrrrr!!!! This meant a full 10 minutes extra, although the only good thing was that I didn't feel completely done in after all this, unlike last Sunday in the Bukk, when I was close to collapse. The really annoying thing is not only that the lack of the Garmin robbed me of the information about my mistake, I also missed knowing the exact km's I went, which then gives you the true minute per km figures. Well, such is life. I was so cheesed off with myself that we left without looking up results or anything and went geocaching again. (PS: I came second according to the Internet, but 14, not 4 minutes down, which does make a difference!)

The cache I couldn't find in the morning was spotted by Roy in the afternoon in no time, after I dragged the pour soul up a steep incline into the thicket I was sure it was in. It was, but I was too blind in my hurry in the morning to spot it. Then we tried another one in Csakvar, but decided I did enough kilometres already in the day to go for another 6km hike. The one after that was a complete right off, as we couldn't even find the road to it off the main road. The next one, which was behind an Arboretum was OK, followed by another one in Etyek, the village of the Rokusfalvy Fogado, where after a lengthy foray into knee high undergrowth I spotted it at the foot of a tree. (not a bush as in the instructions!!) This gives me a total of 14, nearly 30% or 50 which is my current target.

Then we came home and just as I turned on the computer to enter my finds Alex rang. I watched my little monster eating, watching TV and generally being silly and funny as usual. That cheered me up, which was great.

Now I have to go to bed early as we are leaving at 7am for an early start time and then some more geocaching, shopping and going back to Ber.

Night, night!!