Originally Posted by
njkayaker
I'd say the signs and directions were good. A cue sheet wasn't necessary. There were (generally) enough riders around to follow. (In one place, I wasn't quite directed properly and figured out that I went the wrong way: hmm, 5000+ riders and I don't see one of them.) The park road south of the Ross dock circle was closed for the GF but they closed the gates there and at the exit. It looks like that was the result of some miscommunication.
You say the signs and directions were good, but you got lost at one point. That's my point. At one point on 9w coming back we were supposed to go up the road at the fork instead of down (I believe, but still can't be sure), there was nobody ahead of us so the group I was with took a guess and ended up down by a beach-like park on the river with no indication of where to go next. Luckily a GFNY van happened along and directed us back up and onto park road south. That's the cue sheet point. With no signs or markings you were stuck if there was a road fork and there were no people in front of you, or the people in front of you had no idea what they were doing. With a cue sheet you could take it out of your pocket and look at it.
Originally Posted by
lennyparis
Plus I have written 2 e-mails trying to figure out how to get my gold medal for finishing in top 25% of my age group with no responses
I'm betting you are out of luck on that. I was handed a gold one when I finished. There would have been no way for them to know at that point whether I had finished in the top anything of any age group unless they had looked at my number and cross referenced the results list as I as coming in.
I have a feeling that they reached into boxes of medals and handed out what they pulled out.