Eagledad

Great day all Aw to be your son. Getting backpacking equipment was always wonderful experience for me. My dad wasnt all that active with my scouting, but I we spent a lot of time together finding gear for my first backpacking campout in Colorado. I suggest external frame packs for the younger scouts. As John said, your son is going to be growing and external frames adjust easier to growing scouts. They are also easier to pack, unpack and adjust on the trail if needed. They can take a lot of punishment and are little cooler to wear in the summer. New scouts like to just throw things in here and there, so they external is great for that. Plus it is much easier to find a piece of gear in one of the many compartments of an external frame backpack in the dark tent. Internals require patience looking for anything. The external backpack will teach your son how to pack for when he is ready to get and internal. Then there is the cost difference too. External packs look uncomfortable compared to the external, but they are fine. There are several good brands. Jansport and Kelty have good beginner packs for less than $100. Lisabob is right to check for used gear. Ask if your troop has any to borrow or for sale. We had several. If you find an old pack somewhere, make sure it has a good hip belt. The hip belt is the most important part of the pack suspension system because it will carry 85% of the weight. If it looks cheap, skip the pack. John is right about good boots, but not too good of a boot. I have two sons who out grew a pair of boots every year until they were seventeen. What you need for growing scouts are boots that will hold up to a teenage boy for a couple years. But it is hard to know what is good and what isnt. So here is a good test. Grab the sole of the boot you are looking at and try to twist the boot. If the boot has little or no twist, then it will likely work fine. Leather works better, but there are some good no leather boots out there. Wallmart has some decent boots for the job. No steel toes. They get cold in the winter. Your son needs to walk in those boots as much as he can before the first hike. If not, blisters are likely. Socks are where I wouldnt cut cost. Typically backpackers wear two pairs of socks. Liners and main socks. The thin liners repel moisture which is the main cause of blisters and cold feet, and they allow the main sock to slide enough to prevent less friction which is also the cause of blisters. Technology is getting good enough where you dont have to wear liners to repel the moisture, but I still like them and asked my parents to get them for their sons. If the feet get very wet, which is common in backpacking, great socks will protect the feet where good boots wont. Check the material of the socks and make sure they dont have any cotton. That is why they will be a little more expensive, but cotton absorbs moisture. Expect to spend $6 to $10 for good reasonably priced hiking socks and liners. Try on the boots with the socks because they can fill up a boot pretty quick. There are some good sales right now if you mail order. Do a search for different stores, Campmor and REI are good starts. Those are couple suggestions, I know others will step in as well because backpacking is a lot of fun. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

Beautiful Weekend All >>Contacting Barry off-line in hopes of stemming further problems. BW>Thank you gentlemen.

Great Camping All >>I usually have a raft of questions I have stored away so as to keep the conversation going and the boy taking. Otherwise it is designed more for the boy's reflection rather than information gathering on my part.

Beautiful Saturday All This really sounds great Gwd. I always look forward to your post. I would like to throw out one thing. I think our culture today is struggling with personal one to one communication with each other. We dont seem to know our neighbors as well and our youth mainly stay in touch through all the latest in technology gadgets. Because one of our Aims is citizenship, I look at Scouting for Food and other opportunities for scouts to personally meet the folks in the community. Not only that, in a time when Scouting needs to put its best face forward, the community needs to meet and talk to these young folks while in the practice of citizenship. This is who we really are and it is the face our community needs to see when they think of boys scouts. However you can and want to do this, figure out a way that your scouts and your church community, and even the surrounding community can meet each other in community service. When a parent comes to me and ask if I would by popcorn for their sons unit, I cant give quick enough. But I also tell them I would sure enjoy meeting their son personally. I know it is a pain to the scouts, but maybe they just need a little prompting of the value of personal communication with their community. Give the community a chance to actually shake their hand and say thanks. And if I could have just a couple seconds to brag about being a scout once myself in Bethany Oklahoma, it would make my day as well. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

>>Your answering for me isn't going to work.

Happpy Friday aall Sorry about the accidental unfinished post, fat fingers? Lets try it again. >> Barry, I have no idea how you come up with your conclusions about what Bob posted. He never said he was developing the Venture Crew to take ALL the 14 y/o and older Scouts. Please tell me how YOU arrived at that conclusion.

>> Barry, I have no idea how you come up with your conclusions about what Bob posted. He never said he was developing the Venture Crew to take ALL the 14 y/o and older Scouts. Please tell me how YOU arrived at that conclusion.

>> No Barry, we can't let it go there,

Great Scouting All >>Barry, Can you honestly say that a troop of 150 is not heavily adult run?

>>Nice post derf56 Barry

>>Shame on you Barry! Why don't you buy something American made, such as a Toyota, Honda, or Subaru?

So John, I take that as a no on the corvette. Barry

Yes I understand, but ideally what you are attempting to do is end your Troop program at age 14. And really it isnt 14, it is 13 because 14 is the age the scouts can join the Crew. You cant imagine my amazement with this suggestion. Even if an older scouts goal is to stay and practice leading, managing, planning, guiding, coaching and teaching scouts, your program really isnt conducive to it because in your mind, your oldest scouts are 13. And you keep referring to the Eagle as if that is scoutings primary purpose to exist. I have so many questions. And I cant put down the words that show my amazement (shock) to what you propose. Please you don't need to defend yourself Bob, we can let this go here. Barry

Another Happy Cold Oklahoma Scouting Day All >>Before a troop grew to that size I would help organize a Venture Crew and train an Advisor, and we would graduate older scouts to the Crew to continue working toward Eagle if that was their goal, or follow special activity interests.

>>If you don't know where your Webelos are coming from before the cross over you =have a communications problem not a unit size problem.

>> I have never gotten a call with 25 new scouts at one time. Normally what would happen is a month or more before the crossover webelos Dens would vist the troop.>I would simply explain to the other Webolos and parents that due to space and resources we find it necessary to limit the trop size, and we would be happy to recommend other are troops for them to consider joining.

>> I know to what Beavah is referring... its the underlying attitude in some posters responses that the person is wrong or should be ashamed, or should leave scouting or his/her current leadership position.

>> When I give a SM Confrence, i make notes in the margins and blank spaces of the boys book. This give him a place to reflect on the goals we've set for him and gives him some idea of what his SM looks for in a member of the troop.

>>I feel it becomes the responsibility of a trained and knowledge adult in the unit to explain the pitfalls of such a large membership to the IH, CR and CC of the troop. And to guide them to a more productive number.

Great Scouting All Im less idealistic then I use to be. I dont care for them because they are typically adult run, but I have found that they serve a lot of happy scouts very well. By the way, what if the CO wants a mega troop? Bad CO, bad CO. The main contributor to a Troops size is the SMs style and performance (program). But the SM generally have very little control of holding their troop to a fixed size. The risk of losing scouts during a leadership change is the same in all troops, size doesnt matter. In fact, it is almost a certainty that a unit will loose some scouts because new scoutmasters have so much to learn. Im a boy run kind of guy, so 50 is about the maximum. 40 is better. Many families will only look for and join a large troop because they are typically very well run, well equipped, very organized (adults) and look very sharp. Should we ignore those families? Mega troops tend to have aged based patrols with a large Venture Patrol program and/or a Venture Crew program. Smaller troops tend to be mixed age because it is easier with small numbers of new scouts. Mega troops tend to be very adult run and aged based patrols work best for that style. Purposely limiting the size of a troop? There are ways but the risk is huge. Just off hand I can think of two fairly big troops that nearly destroyed themselves from the rumors created from how they limited scouts from coming in. Its not the facts that hurt, it is the rumors. We researched the idea of splitting and in almost all cases we researched, one unit failed to almost nothing, and the other became a mega troop again. SM thing again. Our Troop is considered one of the most boy run programs in the District. Our goal when we started was 40 scouts. We had 60 in four years. We tried to limit our program by only recruiting from Webelos that visited us. Since that didnt work, we raise our yearly dues to (A LOT). The result from that was we made a lot of money took on 30 more scouts before I retired as SM. If the Troops are doing fairly good at providing a scout program, I suggest we praise the leadership and spend the time working on bigger problems. Barry

Great Scouting all. A Scoutmaster Conferences works best when it comes from the heart. Like everything else, it takes a while to find our style, so we feel around trying different approaches until we get the sweet spot that achieves our goal. While I think your SM will find that scouts dont like additional prep-work and make changes, I think reflection is an excellent part of a SM conference and that is what he is doing here. I would enjoy hearing how it goes for him. By the way my SM asks for the same thing when I was a scout back in the 70s. You know, this approach tells me that your SM is taking this very seriously and wants to get it right. I like your SM more every time you talk about him. You got a pretty good one there. Barry

Is nobody going to ownup to putting a down payment on a Corvette? Barry

Another Great Winter Day All My question hotdesk is if you asked the scouts what the rewards and benefits of leadership in your troop are, what do you think they will say? I think getting a scouts to seek out leadership is a culture change. Im wanting to say it the shift of going from the mindset of a boy to a man. But I think it is even more then that. Scouting is a safe place. We say that a lot, but what does it mean. Well to me that means scouts are free to act and behave in the way THEY think is appropriate and not feel they will get called down if they dont meet up to expectation. I found that few scouts will make decisions on their own initiative when they think the adults will react negatively. A safe troop is one where the adults view bad performance as good opportunities to grow. In that kind of troop, the scout knows he has free reign to act the way he thinks is right and the worst that will happen is that they will try again differently to get better performance. That is in all activities, but very important in Leadership. I didnt spend much time talking before elections,, but what I told the scouts was leadership is the opportunity for them to learn. "If you think you know how to do the job well, then you are the wrong person for it. Leave that space open for the next guy to learn and grow from his struggles and mistakes. If you are afraid to screw up, then the job is not for you. Learning from mistakes is the best method of learning, so we not only expect you to make mistakes, we want you to makes mistakes. I promise you will learn a lot if you meet those requirements." A lot adults think that boys are lazy and just dont want to work. And some are that way, but I found that most are just afraid or tired of adults jumping down their throat. And I understand. Every year at summer camp our scouts and adults are reminded how quiet our troop is when it comes to adult and scout relations. You can hear so many adults in other troops yelling at their scouts through the week. The first half of the week is telling scouts what to do. The last half is yelling about all the things they did wrong. Maybe that is why I didnt like any yelling in our troop. If you couldnt handle leading in a normal tone voice, then it was likely you needed to step away at the moment and/or needed to learn a new style of leadership. Yelling to me is a red flag that you need more skills guidence and the scouts learn that pretty quickly. One other thing; our scouts knew who their leaders were. We have a PLC meeting every day of our activities for some reason, and they always get some kind of treat like coke, candy, sometimes pizza, or whatever I can come up with at the time. They work hard and they were rewarded for their effort. Hope this helps in some way. I love this scouting stuff. Barry

>>I took a class at the University of Scouting about Venture Patrols. The most interesting idea that came out of the class was for the Venture Patrol to be an ad hoc patrol or 'virtual patrol'.

Happy cold sledding all >>We can pontificate all we want as to the value of training, and castigate those who, for whatever reason, do not place a high enough priority on getting themselves trained.