Word: checkpoints
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...signs of East Germany's icy displeasure were unmistakable. Bound for East Berlin on a private visit, West German Christian Democratic Party Leader Helmut Kohl and three aides last weekend routinely handed over their passports at the Friedrichstrasse checkpoint near the Berlin Wall; there a squad of gray-coated Grenzpolizei, the Communist border guards, brusquely barred their way. Kohl had crossed the Wall several times in the past, but this time he was forced to wait at the checkpoint for an hour and then was told that his visit was "undesirable." Although the Bonn government protested that the East...
...final Syrian checkpoint is at Zahrani, twelve miles north of the Litani River. There a large color poster of President Hafez Assad beams down at the red-bereted paratroopers. South of the checkpoint the road is deserted. The fields are desolate, showing no sign of care or life. Even the crows have flown to richer lands...
Orienteering is a survival skill with military origins. It made the transfer to civilian sport shortly after World War I when a former Swedish army officer set up orienteering programs for schoolchildren. Students who had balked at conventional fitness programs poured into the forests to race from checkpoint to checkpoint, studying maps, steadying compasses and racing against the orienteer's chief adversary, the clock...
...trick," says a top American orienteer, Peter Gagarin, "is to balance between speed and accuracy. You can be a terrifically fast runner, but that's no good at all if you can't find the checkpoints." Indeed, a small error in compass reading can land an orienteer dozens of yards away from−and make him unable to spot−a plastic punch dangling from a tree. Each punch makes a distinctive perforation in the hiker's punch card, indicating that he reached a particular checkpoint...
...stop for another compass bearing; the needle takes an agonizingly long time to settle, then finally points north. We sight through the trees 45° where our hill−and the checkpoint−should be. No hill. Trusting the compass, we dash off again, leap a fallen birch, catch a sapling in the face. Still no hill. We stop, listen. Nothing but our pounding hearts and labored panting. Retrace our steps and go back to the swamp? No, we'll crash blindly ahead on our bearing. Now the ground begins to rise: a hill. We sprint up it. Suddenly...