Each May for the last several years, Orienteering Hutt Valley have organised the City Safari, which is a rogaine -- a map sport a bit like orienteering, but where the aim is to navigate to as many locations as possible in the time available, in order to gain points, without having to follow a pre-specified route. The City Safari is somewhat special because it's based in a metro area (around Wellington, New Zealand) and allows the use of public transport to help speed travel to given locations.

I'd done the 6 hour version of the City Safari three earlier years (2006, 2007, 2008) coming in with 650 points (20th place overall, out of 39 teams), 450 points (32nd place overall, out of 43 teams), and 455 points (36th place overall, out of 50 teams) respectively. (I didn't enter in 2009 due to work constraints.) The team of 2 in the first year definitely helped with moving quickly, and thus getting more points, than the teams of 5 in the later years.

This year our team, "Wellyocity", entered the 3 hour version of the City Safari, with an aim to finish without being completely exhausted. The 3 hour version is popular (about 150 teams!) with family teams (and school and Scout Troup teams) so has many younger competitors and less serious approach to the event -- taking part is more important than necessarily getting the winning score, something our team was very much in sympathy with as we decided before starting we'd be happy to finish in the top 50%.

After some initial planning our team decided to concentrate on the Karori/Wadestown/Wilton/Northland/Kelburn area (particularly in the 3 hour version it's necessary to pick one or perhaps two parts of the city to focus on), so we started with a bus to Karori (number 3) -- unfortunately appearing to just miss the ideal bus, so we ended up waiting about 15 minutes for the next one which arrived a few minutes early. But this delay did allow us to pick up one location in Masons Lane after one of my teammates pointed out that it was closer than I thought.

From the bus to the top of the hill into Karori we headed along Nottingham St (1B), to the Karori Cementary (26 and 17), and then cross-country down to the sports building (25) after finding a way that didn't involve sheer cliffs. We then followed that out to the main road and up into Northland, picking up 18, 1A and 40 along the way. By that point we were over half way through our time, and so started heading back towards the city. We decided to visit the Zealandia entrance (3D) -- the new Karori Sanctuary, which now has a fancy new name and a fancy new entrance. After walking back out ot the main road, we managed to time it right to catch a number 23 (Southgate) bus through the Karori tunnel and into Kelburn, to pick up 3C. We then walked through Kelburn to the top of the Cable Car (29) and down to the playing fields below (1G). After which our team was sufficiently tired and footsore that we decided against trying to go for any more of the further out locations in our last half hour -- so we went through Bond Street (1H) and Dixon Street (1J) to collect a few more points before heading for the finish. This left us plenty of time to walk carefully across the City to Sea bridge and down to the finish.

We finished with over 10 minutes to spare, with a total (including the initial prologue around the waterfront) of 300 points. Assuming that the scoring is similar to last year this should mean that we achieved our "top 50%" finish in addition to having a great time. It sounds like several of us plan to go back to the Karori Cemetary again, as there are plenty of good photographic opportunities there (as well as, I understand, some of my more distant relatives buried there).

I was very pleased to be involved in the event again, and relieved that the weather managed to stay overcast with just occassional drizzle throughout the event (it'd been raining earlier in the weekend, and the heavens opened again about an hour after the event finished).

ETA, 2010-05-18: 2010 3 Hour Results, and 2010 6 Hour Results; it appears we came 65th out of 131 3-hour teams starting, so just made it into the top 50%.

And now for something completely different: Percunia Emptor about the perils of leverage in finance and particularly the recent "flash crash". Also the effects of high frequency computerised trading in changing the stock market over the last few years, which as one commentor points out does sound very much like Core Wars (wikipedia), but with real money.

ETA, 2010-05-19: Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" nee Nottingham, a (supposedly factual) tour of how the movie came to be the way it was made. I must admit when I saw it (last weekend) it seemed to me that someone had cut 1-2 reels (15-30 minutes) from between the final battle and the end set of scenes in the movie, as it wasn't obvious how one got to the "Robin Hood, Outlaw" bit at the end given what had occurred prior to that. The first two-thirds of it was an entertaining enough period action movie, presumably loosely based on history, if a little Gladiator like at times; the ending seems to be to trying to radidly link it to the "Robin Hood" story that everyone knows.