GHO GHO GHO Awards

Each year GHO hands out a few 'fun' awards at our year-end GHO GHO GHO party. Here are a few of this year's GHO GHO GHO Awards.


The “Could You Just Hum A Few Bars of That” Award
To Mike Van den Bosch

Who served double duty at the North American Championships as disk jockey and first aide expert. This lead to some confusion when Starr asked for some help. Although he knew about the Beasties, he had to admit he didn’t know what to do when Starr asked him what he had for bee stings.


The "It Wasn’t Meant to be” Award
To Barb Campbell

She had a little trouble back last winter while going to a Thomass event. It is best described in her own words....”A tree in our front yard, about 25 cm in diameter, had split vertically all the way down its trunk, and its branches were blocking part of the driveway. I had to bushwhack through it in my car as I shot out of the garage into the deep snow, trying to keep up some momentum. Our driveway is 125 m long, and I got stuck for the first time ever in a Subaru Outback as I did my turn-around. Got out and kicked down the heavy snow around all the wheels until I was able to move again, then when I made it to the end of the driveway, the snowplow had blocked it with a 1 m high snowdrift, heavy as concrete. Ran back to the house to grab a snow shovel, then dug out the minimum necessary opening in the drift, then took a run at it to get to the road. Made it. Phew.

Only one side of the road was driveable, so I stayed in the tire tracks, approaching hilltops carefully in case another car was approaching in the same tire tracks. Just before I reached the main road, a huge fallen tree blocked my way, and I had to backtrack and take a longer route around on deep snow-covered country roads. Finally got to an intersection where the road had improved to half-snow, half-pavement - still not great, and the snow was still falling.

I checked the clock and realized that given how long it had taken me to get to this point, I was going to be cutting it close to reach the race on time. And then I glanced below the clock into the passenger foot-well where my running shoes SHOULD have been - and, well... the decision was easy after that. It was totally clear that I was not meant to do this race!! I turned around and slipped and slid all the way back home.”


The "Two Minutes for Elbowing”Award
To Mike Waddington

Who ran the first leg of the Tio-Mila, a very large 10-person orienteering relay. The club he trained with in Sweden chose him to start the race and run first at night. Mike thought that this was a great honour. So 350 men started off at once, in the dark, and had to squeeze through a narrow running chute. Mike was involved in a great pile-up at the bend. There was lots of shoving, pushing, swearing etc. This is where Mike realized why he had been chosen to go first. In his own words he put it very nicely. “I really knocked this guy good at the start. Gordie Howe would have been impressed.”



The “How Could I Be So Dumb” Award
To Jim Waddington

Who after losing 4 compasses in one year was told that he really should tie a bright red ribbon on the compass so that if it fell to the ground, he would be able to find it. Well on Thursday when he returned from checking out the controls for today’s race, he has happy that he still had the ribbon. Unfortunately it was no longer attached to his compass.


The "Please Help Me I’m Falling Award” or “I’ve Fallen and I can’t get up award”
To Trudy, Sue and Marianna

Trudy is ineligible
a) because she already won an award
b) because she really did fall and hurt herself and that’s not funny

To Sue,
Who fell during the World Rogaine Champs. While we proceeded across a very large field at night, we came across a fence. Sue is not one for leaping fences in a single bound. She has trouble with fences in the best of times. Now this was no ordinary fence either. She couldn’t use her “gracefully roll on the ground and squeeze under the damn thing” technique because the bottom of this fence was buried into the ground. She couldn’t use her “gracefully climb the damn thing and despite her bad hip get her leg over the top” technique. The top row of the fence was barbed and the one below that one was electrified. So after considering for some time how to get over, I more or less threw her over.

Needless to say I was not in Sue’s good books. However she just lay on the ground. She had dislocated her hip! After laying on her back and swinging her leg around in the air for I while she suddenly gave a big sigh and everything was all right again

To Marianna,
who had a rather spectacular fall during the spring GIANT”S RIB RAID. Nina will describe it.