Orienteering: Out on a Limb

Those kids in my Ranger Rick magazines always looked so smart and happy, running through the woods, strung with compasses and clutching maps. I wanted to go orienteering too, but no one where I grew up had ever heard of it.

So a couple decades later, I decided it was time to take some action and drag my own kids along with me. Virginia has at least two orienteering groups, Quantico Orienteering Club and James River Orienteering Club. JROC held an event at York River State Park in early March, so we drove out there one crisp, sunny Saturday morning with very little idea of what to expect. I knew that you had to find a bunch of flags without getting lost, but that's about it.

The nice thing about orienteering--especially if you're trying it for the first time and you have a 4-year-old who wants to ride on your shoulders every 15 minutes--is that you can start when you want, take as much time as you want (up to 3 hours) and find as many or as few flags as you want in any order you choose.

Sure, for some people it's a race, with points awarded for each flag, and so on. But we were there just to have fun, and we did. Even Helen, who got to jump across a little creek, read the code on a flag, and ride on mom's shoulders.

Of the 20+ flags, many seemed to be fairly close to established trails, but that doesn't mean they're easy to find or get close enough to in order to read the code you had to write on the scoresheet. (The video on Richmond Parents Monthly's main webpage shows Emily getting the code from a flag placed in the middle of a tree that fell over a gully.)
We took about an hour to find 5 flags, then called it a morning and ate a picnic lunch overlooking the York River. (The park itself has paddleboat and canoeing options, clean restrooms, a little nature center, and lots of hiking, biking and horseriding trails. Admission is $3 per vehicle.)

Unless you go orienteering alone (which you shouldn't until you gain some experience), it is a sport that absolutely requires teamwork, cooperation, planning, compromise and flexibility--mental and physical! Shawn Callahan, who heads up JROC, also does orienteering programs for business, schools and groups of young people. I can see why it would be an excellent team-building activity.

It can be a little intimidating to go to an orienteering event for the first time, but we weren't the only first-timers at York River. Both JROC and QOC have occasional events in the Richmond area that are open to anyone. At the York River meet, I picked up a flyer about a youth orienteering club in Richmond, with events right around the corner:

"Learn compass basics and the map-reading skills needed to participate in an Orienteering meet. During three 1-hour sessions, we will discuss and practice the skills necessary to finish a beginner, kid-level O-course. All kids ages 6-16 are welcome. Parents are encouraged to stay with the younger ones."
Dates: March 16, April 13 and May 18
Time: 3-4 p.m.
Cost: Clinic is free; compass fee is $12 if you need one. Expect a $5-10 entry fee for the May meet.
Where: Deep Run Park on 3/16 and 4/13--rear parking lot near soccer fields. Details about the May O-meet (Rockwood Park) will be handed out at the clinics.
RSVP: Tim Dunkum, fivedunkums@verizon.net, http://www.richmondasr.com/. (Click on the "Community" link and scroll down a bit.)

For more info about kids' orienteering in general, see this link to the US Orienteering Federation site.

Yo-yo: More Than Just a Cool Word to Say

I had heard that astonishing things were possible with yo-yos, but to see those tricks in real life was a thrill. I caught the finals of the Open Freestyle division at the Virginia State Yo-yo Contest, held last Saturday at the Children's Museum of Richmond, and it was spectacular.

On our main webpage, you can watch some video clips of Sebastian and Ann competing. Sebastian is a student at the College of William and Mary. He was the 2006 and the 2007 Virginia State Champion in the 1A Division. (In yo-yo speak, 1A means you're using one yo-yo to do string tricks with the yo-yo spinning at the end of the string.) Each competitor in this round had three minutes to do their stuff to the song of their choosing.

If you're interested in learning more about yo-yo tricks, Tony Basch (Richmond's yo-yo spinmeister) recommends a couple websites such as Begin2Spin and tricks.skilltoys.org.

We Did the Hokey Pokey

We went roller-skating yesterday at Skateland on Hull Street. Boy, did that bring back memories--most of them good! I couldn't remember if the music had been that loud when I was young, though. Probably was.

My girls each skated with a friend. It was a pleasure to see so many kids there, about equal numbers of boys and girls, and to see teens sharing the rink graciously with little ones as young as 3 or 4.

Review: "Pincus and the Pig"

Several years ago, the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra worked with children's author/illustrator Maurice Sendak to write a Jewish adaptation of "Peter and the Wolf." Sendak retold the story and drew the characters, and Shirim klezmerized Prokofiev's music. The result, "Pincus and the Pig," is truly an all-ages audience pleaser. The piece is available as a recording, but seeing it live is a thrill.

Shirim performed at the Modlin Center's Camp Concert Hall on Sunday, Dec. 2, to a nearly full house. Our seats in the center of the third row gave us an excellent view of the band--clarinet, trombone, piano, banjo, tuba and drums--though it may not have been acoustically the best place, as Emily and I agreed it was hard to hear the banjo and piano. A screen above the performers showed Sendak's illustrations during the "Pincus" piece.

The band opened with three traditional klezmer tunes, the kind that electrify the seat cushion, so that anyone who thought they were coming for a little bit of storytime and music would realize, happily, that they were mistaken.

Then Shirim performed five pieces from their "Klezmer Nutcracker," which does to Tchaikovsky's famous piece what Weird Al Yankovic does to... well, to just about any over-played pop song. I loved the woozy "Dance of the Latkes Queen." The interpretations weren't all just musical inside jokes--they were at times even gorgeous and jazzy on their own merit--but I think Helen and Emily got a little tired of the set.

As the main event, "Pincus and the Pig" serves up "Peter and the Wolf" with extra Yiddish on top. From the introduction that identifies each character with an instrument to the triumphant procession at the end, with the duck inside the wolf/pig, "Pincus" follows its model closely. This lets listeners familiar with the original put the oy in enjoy by listening for the Yiddish words throughout the text and anticipating the klezmer twists to the music.

I thought the duck as trombone took some getting used to, but the cat as banjo and grandfather as tuba were perfect. Susan Watts, the narrator, was fabulous, especially as the excitable bird.

Helen, who hadn't known the story at all before today, had a hard time following along, but she understood exactly why, as the littlest animal, the bird was so high-strung. (She also picked up on the moods of the music and would ask, "Why is this music sad?" or "Why is this music loud?" when she needed me to fill her in on the story.)

After the performance, Emily had a hard time articulating what she liked about the show. She said she liked the lighting effects (simple and kind of random, I thought) and how the narration and the music overlapped sometimes, then she tried to explain what she liked about the klezmer music. Finally, she simply said, "I liked how the notes sounded."

What more is there to say?

Kid-friendly Weekend

We use the adjective "kid-friendly" a lot in our pages, but I have to admit that weekends aren't usually that kid-friendly in my family. Between laundry, grocery shopping, house cleaning and all that routine, we're happy just to get outside and play or take a family walk. Sunday evenings, I sometimes look at the RPM calendar and go, "Oh, yeah--that would've been neat to see..."

But this weekend the kids lucked out. Emily spent Friday night at a friend's house, then they went to the Christmas parade together on Saturday morning. Manuel took Helen to the parade, too.

I overheard the girls talking to each other when we were all back at the house: Emily, 10, started in with a jaded, "It wasn't that great" analysis, but Helen was describing the charming antics of the Hello Kitty balloon with such unjaded, 4-year-old enthusiasm that Emily, bless her heart, realized that she should just keep her big-girl opinions to herself.

In the afternoon, I took both girls to the Children's Museum. I performed Christmas music with a violinist in the Commons area, then the girls and I played in the exhibits. I hadn't been to CMoR in many, many months, and it was great to see the changes.

The new apple tree has several improvements over the old tree--most importantly, small children can actually reach the apples to pick them now. Plus, the tree itself is more attractive--it looks like it grew to life from the pages of a children's book.

The "Tower of Power" has been removed, allowing more light from the dramatic skylight to reach the floor. In its place is a low-key dinosaur play area, including two bone excavation pits. (One has sand and one has chopped-up rubbery bits, so don't wear your nice clothes.)

But wait... there's more! On Sunday we headed to the Modlin Center at the University of Richmond to see a performance of "Pincus and the Pig" by the Shirim Klezmer Orchestra.

I had to wake Helen up from her nap, unfortunately, to make the 3 p.m. performance, and it was quite a scene. The drive there was long enough for the screaming to settle into some noisy kvetching, then into irrational insistence that I carry her into the auditorium barefoot, then into a resigned clamming of the hands upon the ears. But the hands came off eventually, and we all loved the show.

And now the weekend is over, children are in bed, and it's a nice, quiet, mom-friendly evening.