By Mark Ellis / Brian Sullivan
Tuesday, August 1

Team Michigan rocks through the challenges

Tuesday, 4:30 am
PDGA Competition Director Mark Ellis awakes to prepare for the long day ahead. Everything starts well. Coffee and shower are both hot.

5:30 am
All still looks good... until the power goes out, when our intrepid hero is located in the basement. The basement is very dark when the power goes out. Bump, crash, oof.

5:37 am
Emerged to discover the door opener on the disconnected garage is purely electrical. No side door. No manual override.

It just so happens that the scoreboards for all non-Hudson Mills courses and the practice basket for Cass-Benton are all enclosed within said garage. They are currently unreachable without power or heavy machinery.

5:44 am
The Nextel phones used to communicate with other Worlds 2000 staff -- which were rented at great trouble and expense -- are no help because of programming difficulties.

5:53 am
Punt. Drive car (which was fortunately not located within the offending garage) to the local Meijer superstore and purchase new scoreboards in the form of 300 pushpins. First and second round scores would later be posted onto picnic tables with newly purchased pushpins

6:28 am
The morning is back to looking good, until the rangers at Kensington decided the Worlds 2000 staff did not deserve any off-road permits, despite prior approval. Course Central items were hand-carried to preselected location.

Team Michigan's crack staff managed to overcome all these and many other difficulties, and emerged victorious within preset time constraints and without major incidents.