Ridecamp: [RC] Why it might matter

K S SWIGART   katswig@xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Steph said:

> For the record - each day of the XP2001 was run just like every other AERC
> ride. There were no rules that were broken that I could see. The rides were
> not short, if anything they were long, since we were following trails via
> GPS and they always added up to at least 50 GPS miles. The riders that
> received completions finished on 'fit to continue' horses. The horses that
> won BC, really deserved it. And this was the truest test of endurance that I
> have ever been involved in.
>
> Steph

It is for this reason that "relaxed and casual" about the rules
with respect to reporting starts, finishes, pulls, and causes
would be something to avoid.  Because if you are, self-admittedly, 
"relaxed and casual" and people who weren't there know only that
you are relaxed and casual about the accuracy of your reporting,
they are going to wonder about just how impressed they ought to 
be about the reported accomplishments.

If the people doing the reporting cannot be counted on to be
accurate in their reporting, then the people who weren't there
are justified in being skeptical about the validity of the 
reports.

Personally, _I_ don't care what anybody else thinks, but if it
mattered to me that other people recognize a ride as one 
of the "truest tests of endurance" then it would be important to 
me that the ride manager not have the reputation of being
relaxed and casual about the accuracy of his reporting.

If ride managers have the reputation of being relaxed and
casual about the accuracy of their reporting, they risk not being believed by anybody who wasn't there.

This doesn't matter to me, but it appears to matter to a lot of 
other people, including Steph.  Else she wouldn't have said:

> Whew! Guess I feel pretty strongly about defending this ride!

kat
Orange County, Calif.

p.s.  I have gotten to the point that the AERC records would have
to be REALLY wrong before I would go even a little bit out of my
way to correct them, and MY record from last summer's XP is not
accurate--not from any deliberate malfeasance on either my or the
RM's part but rather because I am sure it was an administrative
nightmare, and I didn't consider the minor errors to be worth
the effort to fix.  I didn't even consider them worth the effort
of mentioning to the ride manager that she might want to fix 
them.

I don't know if there are other people who are as cavalier as
I am about the accuracy of their AERC records, but I am willing
to bet that there are; in which case ALL of the AERC's records
would be of dubious accuracy, not just the ones from before 1995.

I gave up on trying to fix them about half-way through the 1999
ride year shortly after I started riding a lot of rides because 
I discovered that trying to fix them was as likely to introduce
new errors as it was to correct them. :)

I find it hard to believe that I am alone.


=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
 Ridecamp is a service of Endurance Net, http://www.endurance.net.
 Information, Policy, Disclaimer: http://www.endurance.net/Ridecamp
 Subscribe/Unsubscribe http://www.endurance.net/ridecamp/logon.asp
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=