@Challengers, a quick note. Thanks to @Jamie and @caitlin-loehr for reporting that the FLRC Challenge sign for the Cornell Botanic Gardens course seems to have gone missing. I’m checking with my contact there to see if a groundskeeper might have removed it accidentally and can put it back. If someone stole it, that’s annoying, but I anticipated such a thing might happen and I can replace it soon enough.
In the meantime, if you run the Cornell Botanic Gardens course, you can enter your time manually using the Webscorer app. If you haven’t yet run the course, it starts and finishes at the west entrance off Caldwell Road, at the “Gate Closed 1 Hour After Sunset” sign just inside the gate.
I’ve now replaced the Cornell Botanic Gardens sign with an identical one, with one exception. On the back, I used heavy-duty double-sided tape to affix a washer (just so it looks like there’s something under there) and a sticker that implies it’s a wireless tracking device. (Apple just introduced the AirTag item tracker, so that’s been on my brain all week.) We’ll see if this little bit of security theater keeps this one from being stolen.
It’s serious double-sided tape, so it won’t just come off without significant effort. It’s all just intended to play mind games with any would-be thieves. I did notice yesterday that some Town of Ithaca signs have ominous-sounding stickers on their backs saying that theft violates various different statutes and will be punishable by fines, etc… So if I have to up my security theater game, maybe I’ll go in that direction next time.
