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#7449 10/10/00 04:13 PM
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Black Sheep Brewery go unpassed

Reminds me of the old chestnut of a sign in the gents' loo in a pub:

You cannot buy our beer for love nor money - you can only rent it!

Ow! Sorry Bridget I'll go home now.


#7450 10/10/00 07:29 PM
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"Treen" (often spelled "trine") is a Middle English borrowing of the medieval French word for loo (or what served its purpose 500 years ago). Thus, technically speaking, "the latrine" is redundant.

(If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!)


#7451 10/10/00 08:45 PM
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<sigh> treen = woodware

1971 Canadian Antiques Collector - Articles ranging from ladles to snuff boxes, candlesticks to combs, may be included in the group known as treen. 1980 Daily Tel. - hand-turned treen are a joy to look at and a great pleasure to use. 1981 Rescue News - The site has also yielded a great deal of domestic material, including a rich collection of pottery, pewter and treen.

[...in addition to being an old plural form of tree]

#7452 10/10/00 09:01 PM
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What actually is the difference between rogaining and what we called orienteering...?

Bingley and other would-be rogainers,

Rogaining is to orienteering as chess is to draughts. No, that's a bit unfair and likely to start an intersports war.

Let's start with the similarities... Both sports involve navigation on foot, usually through unfamiliar terrain, using map and compass to find checkpoints ("controls") marked on the map.

Now for the differences...

The typical orienteering course involves competitors running on their own - at say 2-minute start intervals -around a course of say 10 to 12 checkpoints which must be taken in order. Fastest finishing time wins, usually around an hour.

A rogaine involves teams of 2, 3, 4 or 5 people (for company and safety) navigating around a large area getting as many of the marked checkpoints as they can in the TIME allotted, IN ANY ORDER. Highest score wins, and to complicate matters, checkpoint values vary, from say 10 points for a close easy one to 80 points for one that is far away, on a high hill, or navigationally difficult. This type of event is usually referred to as a "score" event, in contrast to orienteering's normal "line" event. The "classic" (and usual "championship" rogaine) is 24 hours (eg midday Saturday to midday Sunday), with winners covering more than 100km in that time. Organizers have responded to recent market pressure by holding 12-hour, 8-hour and 6-hour events.

Orienteering appeals to me because it combines the physical exertion of running with the mental challenge of choosing the optimal route between each checkpoint and the next. Rogaining has all of that too, but adds another layer - the need to optimize the ENTIRE route strategy and also take into account fatigue, darkness etc. Should we head north towards the flat farmland or south into hilly forest with higher checkpoint values? Where will we be when night falls? Which checkpoints should we skip? Should we sleep at all? Should we plan one big loop, or several smaller ones with returns to the "hash house" for hot meals provided by happy catering volunteers (that one's usually an easy choice!).

That's what they call a long answer to a short question. Congratulations to anyone who read this far.

The AWAD spell checker wants to call all rogainers Roger. Was it a Monty Python sketch where all soccer players called each other Bruce?


#7453 10/11/00 05:12 PM
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SIGH: treen.

Folks, the sentence says that the fair was held in the treen; and that treen had a name. So, I don't think that treen here means a bathroom or a piece of woodware, unless
either was quite a bit larger than normal. A stand of
trees seems the best bet so far. I'm taking that one. (For those who want to verify, the sentence is in my post on
page 1.)


#7454 10/12/00 01:04 AM
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Rogaining sounds like a lot of fun. Reminds me of my younger years when I was in the airforce cadets and we were thrown out in the forest for survival training.

HOWEVER...am I the only one who knows the word ROGAINE as the brand name of a shampoo sold to men who have started to lose their hair and wish for the fallout to stop. This is a pretty common product here. I have also seen it in the U.S.A. (New York and Florida).


#7455 10/12/00 04:04 AM
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...am I the only one who knows the word ROGAINE as the brand name of a shampoo sold to men who have started to lose their hair...

No you're not, belM, which is why I specifically excluded it in the last sentence of my first post. I haven't seen the product here in Oz. Either my (Australian) friends Rod, Gail and Neil Phillips who invented the sport Rogaining and named it after themselves were blissfully unaware of the hair product, or perhaps it hit the market after the sport appeared (c 1975). [Or it's their sick humour.] The sport spread throughout Australia, and thence to USA, Canada, Europe and NZ, not necessarily in that order. Four World Championships have been held, in Australia (twice), USA and NZ, with the 5th to be held in the Czech Republic in 2002.

In my long explanatory post, I didn't mention that there are now several interesting variations on the classic country rogaine-on-foot, namely:

Snogaine
Metrogaine
Cyclogaine (with a handicap category for fish)




#7456 10/12/00 12:11 PM
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<we were thrown out in the forest for survival training. >

Well, bel, glad you survived. How high up were you when you were thrown out (of a plane, I assume) and did you have a parachute (or a pair of wings <grin>) to assist your descent?




#7457 10/12/00 02:03 PM
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a handicap category for fish

What exactly constitutes a handy cap for a fish? We need to know these things...


#7458 10/12/00 08:38 PM
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What exactly constitutes a handy cap for a fish? We need to know these things...

I'm not sure, but a flathead would have trouble keeping it on, whatever it was.


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