About Me

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I have been a Cub Scout Den Leader since 9/04, Cubmaster since 2/07. I have also been a Boy Scout Troop Committee Member and Merit Badge Counselor since 2/08, changing to an Assistant Scoutmaster in June of 2011. Since spring of 2010, I have also been the Lighthouse District Cub Scout Program director, in charge of planning district-wide events. I have three boys -- Peter is a First Class Boy Scout, Nathan is a Tenderfoot, and Nick is working toward the Webelos rank. If you like this blog, please be nice and click a link.

Monday, June 13, 2011

The importance of being on time

This weekend, our Boy Scout troop participated in the Mountain Man Rendezvous campout. It as an event where patrols compete for points (represented as beads) at several events. The winner gets to take home a buckskin trophy which is mounted on a frame of poles that have been lashed together (although it has to be returned the following year). The boys are also supposed to dress up in period costume.

Our patrol consisted of two older boys, one in the middle (my son Nathan), and four scouts who had just crossed over from Cub Scouts this year. The patrol got off to a slow start, showing up for camp flags on Saturday morning. For that, they only received 5 out of 10 points. They did very well for the rest of the day, including setting a new record at the fire-building station. They managed to start a fire (without using matches or a lighter), cook a pancake (which they got to eat), put out the fire, and clean up, all in less than 10 minutes. Most patrols took about 30 minutes to complete that event. They struggled a little bit at archery where they lost some points for not following all of the safety rules, and they probably could have scored more points at the highland strength games if they had more older and stronger scouts.

The dinner was worth 30 points, it has to be prepared entirely by the patrol, and they had to invite a guest from the staff. The boys invited "Catapult Ken". During lunchtime, they began preparing a Dutch oven stew, and it sat on coals for the afternoon. After returning from their final events, they prepared an appetizer which was essentially Italian bread pizza, and they also prepared garlic bread for the dinner. One of the rules is that you have to pick your guest up for the meal to start at 6:30, and you can't be early, and you can't be late. Some troops had their food ready too early, while one had their cooking get caught in the rain, so they weren't prepared to eat until around 7:40. "Catapult Ken" absolutely loved the boys' cooking, as well as their hospitality, and they earned full points for dinner.

On Sunday morning, they reveal who won the event by doing a countdown. "If you have X points, take a step forward." This continues until only one patrol is still moving, and they can then claim the trophy skin. Our patrol had a total of 180 points out of a possible 190, although some bonus points were given out. As the countdown reached 150, there were only a few patrols still moving forward. They got to 170, and there were only two. They got to 180, and our patrol leader took a step forward, while the other patrol's leader didn't. Momentarily, it looked like the countdown was over, but the leader doing the countdown corrected the other patrol leader and told him to step forward. Knowing that we had reached our total, this now meant that we had lost out. The leader then told anybody with 181 points to step forward, and signalled to the other troop to keep going. They were the winners.

It turns out that the other troop had 184 points, beating our troop by a mere four points. In hindsight, had our boys not shown up late to the morning flags, they would have won by a single point. Although they were a little bit heartbroken to come so close twice -- they lost by only three points last year -- they still took heart in what a great job they did, especially when you consider that their patrol consisted mostly of younger scouts, while the patrol that won it consisted mostly of older scouts. Perhaps with an additional year of learning the Boy Scout skills, they will win it all next year.