As long as the guide isn't a Lieutenant.
I took orienteering at uni. I loved it. When I joined the Army and finally got to do it again, I loved it.
True story: I got to PLDC where we are first introduced to land navigation. I get my points, lets call them A, B, C, D. I walk them A, B, D, C and record the points on my sheet. This takes about 30 minutes for a 4 hour task. I spend the next 3 hours plotting all the points on the course--both the alphabetic and the numeric points. I return to base, turn in my sheet and was promptly failed. Remember I walked them A, B, D, C? That's how I recorded them too. I inverted the last two and was failed. I could live with that except another student shows up without a paper. He doesn't even know where he was supposed to go. The Senior instructor asks him what points he walked to, he gives him 4 points, and he is given a GO. I ask WTF? I am told to shut up and come back on Saturday.
Remedial training takes place on Friday. We are having a discussion about the course and what we might be going to. It quickly becomes clear that I have the WHOLE DAMNED COURSE mapped out on my map. The instructors ask me how I got this and I tell them I walked my course in 30 minutes and thought someone would need the help in remedial training never expecting it would be me. I even tell them about putting two points that had fallen over into the upright position. By now, everyone is plotting the points from my map onto theirs. Come the day of the retest, they issue me my points. I quickly plot them, pull the points I should be walking to, and turn in my results without ever walking more than 30 feet. I was golden. Not only was I golden, every recycle also passed. It was the first time they could remember getting a 100% pass rate. All because I #!$!@#$ writing down my points. Still makes me mad. -- jim