Making sense of things

Since the cones course as it was displayed on the last post created  some confusion, I hope I can clear it up for everyone in this post. I admit I got a little lost myself while on course, even though I had walked it twice and thought I had everything under control.  The judge was above things in the bed of his pick up truck. You entered from the left side of the course as it is on the map. Salute the judge before going through the start finish gate and proceed to cones 1, 2 and 3 on the right heading towards the bottom. 

#4 A,B, C & D is where it got a bit tricky. You circled around to the right to go through cone 4A, then go past cone 11A on your left, turning left to go through cone 4B and 4C which is the two black dots with B next to them and C above them with the red dot.  Circle around to cone 11D on your right and head through cone 4D. Clear as mud yet? Then you turn left to cone 5 going back towards the top. Shown below in Blue highlighter.  

The start finish gate is dead once you go through it to start, so blow through that to get to cone 6.  Veer left to line up for cone 7 headed towards the bottom, turn left to cone 8, right to cone 9, left along the bottom to cone 10 and then right to cone 11A.  Is everyone still with me on this one? LOL

Go through cone 11A, make a left U-turn to come back through the B & C cones and a right to go through the 11D cone. (This is one part I got a little lost while on course. Why? I dunno since the tricky parts were over.)  You then swing around to the left again to go through cone #12 right by the start finish. Shown below in Pink highlighter.

Left to go through 13, head down to the bottom and left to go through 14, left and up the side to 15, off to the right to line up for 16, past the judge and over to 17, left down to 18, left again and circling down to 19, up the right side to 20 and now back through the start/finish gate to end it. 

The map is not to scale and there was a place where you could cut across through the 4 & 11 turnpike to get to some of the other cones. Normally you cannot go through the cones, but when they are multiples like this- once you go through them, they are now 'dead' and cutting through them later is not a problem. The start finish gate is also considered dead once you go through it and start the course. After you go through 20 (the last cone) it is now 'live' again and you must go through the right direction.

I was amazed I got through all of this and only went 30 seconds over on the time allowed. The time penalty is a half point for each second over.  I also realized heading into cone 2, I wasn't holding the reins right. When I tried to fix it, we came close to plowing over the cone. Not wanting to do that, I stopped Kat, moved him over and took off again. Problem is, stopping gets you 5 penalty point- wiping out the cone is only 3. Lesson learned- mow it down!