Andy & Joleen's route
1st scramble on bikes, 1st scramble in the rain, 1st time in Everett and best of all 1st time in 1st place ! (mixed 3 hour)
I'm amazed how slow the bikes turned out to be. Between dodging cars, traffic lights, stop signs, having to stop to read the map, longer stops at the check points because the questions have to be removed and replaced etc we averaged about 5mph for the 3 hours. Our original planning went something like "well we normally cycle close to 20mph on the flat so lets divide that by 2". Hmmmm on later reflection 30 miles would have been further than Teriaki Donut. Fortunately we planned for such contingency and just cut our southern loop to almost nothing after we completed the northern loop.
The rain wasn't too bad once you got used to being wet (after about 20 minutes) other than the fact that the question sheet started to disintegrate on us. Both our pens wouldn't write on the paper and after an hour we resorted to punching holes next to the right answer. The nice map holders that are handed out are big enough that you can mark then without taking the paper out - the map holders we have for the bikes meant opening and closing each time and letting the rain in.
Here is Our route
Checkpoints: 25, 54, 46, 51, 15, 32, 44, 52, 42, 36, 33, 48, 27, 34, 23, 24, 26 = 540
Looking at my map right now I have no idea why we missed 22 and 37 as we passed right by them.. they would have been trivial to pick up between 54 and 46
I think 21 should have been possible between 27 and 34 as well but we were in the last 40 minutes and unsure of the area.
Thanks for the advice on the
Thanks for the advice on the times. I have now run, walked and biked on a street scramble and since I mostly run that's how I think when I plan the course - its harder than I expect to look at a map and think of different speeds. In fact several times on Saturday I settled in for a 5 minute ride between checkpoints and was surprised to be there in 2-3 minutes :-)
I think next time it rains I will swap places with Emmett and see if you can win with me in the trailer :-)
Disintegrating question sheets
After our vow in December to always use Rite-in-the-Rain paper if there was any threat of rain, about 15 non-Rite-in-the-Rain sheets snuck their way in (honest, we had nothing to do with it!) (just kidding, it was our oversight) to the top of the stack, rewarding the early arrivers with disintegrating question sheets.
Rite-in-the-Rain paper is super sturdy. It doesn't take water-based ink, though.
Terry
Paper
You know I think disintegrating was a bit much in my descriptions, the map got fairly destroyed around the folds and edges but the question sheet actually did hold together other than a few holes at the folds. But the ink was our main problem. Still the hole punching worked pretty well once we were over the frustration of both our pens not working. Next time I will be brining a pencil too. But you know... it won't rain again will it...
speed and answer sheets
10mph on bikes is a winning time, since I believe the course setters usually try to require 30 miles to sweep the course. Note that 12mph when not doing checkpoints is about as fast as you can go in the city (what with stoplights, stop signs, and such). If you read our old reports, you can see that we've never done 10mph on a Scramble, whether it was my wife and I, me pulling Omar on a Trail-A-Bike, or me pulling Emmett on a trailer.
I don't know how fast anyone in particular should be able to go, and obviously it varies a lot by the course, but now that you have a baseline, you should be able to estimate better. You'll go faster on courses where you know the area, faster on courses that aren't as urban (such as Everett, Puyallup, etc.) due to lack of stoplights and such, and slower if the course is particularly hilly (Gig Harbor) or the weather is bad (Everett).
More on answer sheets and map cases when I write my report, but I use 8.5 x 11 plastic sleeves to hold everything, try to keep paper handling to a minimum, and I use permanent Sharpies to mark answers. During light rain, this works great, but Saturday was exceptionally wet. I didn't dare try to pull out my map to flip it over when I went from the north to the south side, and I noticed once that an old answer had gotten wiped into imperceptibility. Poking holes is probably a great solution is you know the weather is going to stay wet: Just put the answer sheet in a map case or other plastic sleeve, poke the holes as you go along, and never actually move the paper around inside. You ruin a plastic case, but they're cheap, and the paper inside will get wet, but I think it's the moving around that causes them to fall apart.