GKlose

Stosh, Buff -- My two most memorable summer camps, when I was a scout, were the summers that we drove six hours north to a county park in Michigan, where we set up and ran our own summer camp. This was one of the rare times that several dads camped with us, and many provided the program for the week. Our own waterfront; a rifle and archery range; a "trading post"; the whole place was our own nature lodge. 300 feet apart? I have no clue where the other patrol sites were (although I knew in what general direction they were). Nobody was within a quarter mile of my patrol's site. We'd hu

D-rat: about the noise... In the process of me making multiple complaints, I said that I had no problem with those noise levels prior to 10pm (the alleged camp-wide quiet time), but that once we hit 10pm I had a problem. Everyone understood. Granted my troop's site was adjacent to the shower house where this took place, but other troops agreed with me, saying they could hear it too. The booming was exacerbated by the roof cavity of the shower house, but we were also talking screams, yelling from one stall to the next (yelling, not a regular talking voice which could easily be heard),

Buff -- I can send private email with more details. But I have your email address at home on another computer. Here's a thought off the top of my head -- the mix of our patrol was 4 experienced scouts (13-15) and 2 younger scouts. Ranks are T, 1C, 3xStar and Life. The way our troop is, none of them have much experience at actually cooking for themselves. (it's difficult to explain, but of the rest of our scouts, about 20 of them, there are about 6 who are young and didn't sign up for camp, about 6 who are older and have no interest in camp at all, and the rest are scouts who attend a

I'm just back from a patrol-oriented summer camp -- during the week, I stopped in a couple of times to chat with the commissary staff (two women), to modify some choices (it was way too hot for cocoa in the morning, for example) and to read a couple of labels (does their canned spaghetti sauce have dairy in it?). Along the way, I figured out something -- just in our own troop, we have a couple of vegetarians, one severe peanut allergy and one severe dairy and egg allergy. The commissary staff told me those aren't so hard to deal with, that it's the gluten-free diets that are hard to accom

Just got back from summer camp -- this year, I pushed for going to a patrol-oriented summer camp. Honestly, the camp was everything it was billed to be, and it was great. This is Camp Bell, part of the Griswold Scout Reservation, Daniel Webster Council, NH. The patrol cooking aspect went extremely well. Cooler deliveries to a central site, twice a day. There is a standard menu for the week, or you can write your own menu from a commissary sheet. Since we had a couple of issues (vegetarian; egg-dairy allergy), I stopped in a couple of times to review and modify our order, and to read label

I just got back from a week at a patrol-oriented summer camp (Camp Bell, part of the Griswold Scout Reservation, Daniel Webster Council, NH) and the camp provided virtually everything a patrol needed. The only thing that may have helped, a little, is an extra cook kit -- we had one vegetarian and one kid with an egg and dairy allergy. So we had two kinds of cross-contamination to worry about. While I brought some extra equipment, almost all of it went unused.

We're leaving Sunday for a patrol-oriented camp (patrol cooking AND patrol-oriented program -- this is most definitely not a merit badge mill type of camp). We'll have one vegetarian and one with a potentially fatal dairy and egg allergy (luckily, nobody with a gluten allergy). Next year we may have one with a potentially fatal peanut allergy. The vegetarian is content with getting by however he can. But when something is good (last year, it was egg salad in the dining hall, of all things!) -- he wolfs it down. The dairy/egg guy eats bagels and bacon. I'm anticipating having trouble of ge

Great article. It sorta reminds me of Sebastian Junger's book, "The Perfect Storm" (turned into a highly fictionalized and somewhat sappy movie), where there is an entire, and fascinating, chapter on the physiology of drowning. Guy

My council is running the old BA22 course (at the parent's meeting, the BA22 SM told us "as far as I know, we're the only council that still runs it" -- but I have no confirmation of that fact -- a google search shows that some councils run NYLT but call it BA22). I took it during the 70s "All Out for Scouting" phase -- and yes, I made on. Thought it was pretty cool. Anyway, my oldest is at this year's BA22 course. Started yesterday. It will be interesting to see if he makes one too. (Eagle92 -- I remember your query about the syllabus -- I'll ask the BA22 SM at the end of the w

Some quick observations: I'm a "recently retired" district membership chair (due to a district "realignment") and I wish I could adequately describe how difficult that job was. Just as soon as fall roundups were over with, then came the "It's Not Too Late" campaign, boy scout recruiting, new units, Webelos to Scout transition, and then finally my DE said something along the lines of "what about Learning for Life?". What an overload of stuff, and it all adds up to either membership increase or (mostly) decline. With such an overload it is difficult to focus on a single area or two for improveme

But don't you think it ironic that a Woodbadge SPL is appointed by a course director, and that the PL duty is rotated among patrol members so that everyone gets a turn? :-) Guy

My troop, when I was a Scout, would do sections of the AT every fall (Columbus Day; 3-day weekend). You had to be 1/C or above to go on the trip. We'd leave after school on Friday, hit the trailhead and hike in a couple of miles to a shelter. Then continue on the next day. The trick was that we lived about six hours away, so we'd be hitting the trailhead about 1-pm at night, and hiking in an hour. Anyway, as far as annual planning conferences go -- our scouts don't really know how to do it either. So we're planning on teaching them. I'm setting up a fall retreat, similar to what you've de

You know, I pretty much left Scouting when I aged out, and returned a few years ago. Somewhere in there, I misplaced my pink pajamas. Does anyone know what happened to them? Is it one of those gray area PC kinds of things?

I'm terribly conflicted -- this spring, the same time that our district was making an all-units blitz on FoS, the council executive board was making a decision to "realign districts." This biggest change in this realignment was to take our district and split it in half. Two municipalities moving east to an existing district and two municipalities moving west to an existing district. From there, the experiences diverge. In my new district, they followed the spirit of the realignment, where the district committee was completely reformed. The other guys, however, have entered into a nightmare, wi

E92 -- I don't have a copy of it (and I'm curious about it too, because I went through the program myself, in 1976 -- woo hoo, All Out For Scouting!). But, my oldest son (13/Star) is going through the program in a couple of weeks. I know the course director (BA22 SM) from my Woodbadge course. The other night, at a BA22 meeting, he held up the binder, and to me it looks like it is at least a couple hundred pages. I'll see if I can get a closer peek at it, and then ask him about copies. Guy

Thanks, guys -- Skip, that's exactly what my first reaction was (I'm not seriously considering taking this project on -- I'm more worried about what to do at the unit level). But I'm still curious if anyone does make this work at the district or council level. I don't want to be caught up in only seeing the roadblocks, but as you've pointed out, it has to be your troop's SPL working with his assistant(s), and with the troop's group of PLs, not some random mix of an SPL telling a bunch of unrelated PLs what to do. So, allow me a "what if" scenario...what if you have an SM that is

Do any of you have districts that do some sort of equivalent of TLT (or the old JLT)? Our council has week-long Brownsea 22 (the old syllabus) and NYLT offerings, but a question came up recently. At a district event, I saw my Woodbadge SPL -- he asked me about one of my ticket items, which was to work on a troop-level training weekend for my troop's youth leaders (I've already sketched out an outline, and I'm planning on trying this out this coming September). He mentioned that it was something that his troop could use, and a nearby ASM from another troop, also a friend, mentioned that hi

I grew up is SW Ohio -- '71, '74: on our own, is N. Michigan '72, '73, '75, '76: Camp Hugh Taylor Birch (Tecumseh Council) '73: National Jamboree, Moraine S.P. '75: Philmont '76, '77, '78: Camp Birch staff '76: Maine National High Adventure Area -- '95, '96: Yawgoog Scout Reservation (Narragansett Council) '09: Wah-Tut-Ca Scout Reservation (Yankee Clipper Council) -- '10: Camp Bell, Griswold Scout Reservation (Daniel Webster Council) (planned) Guy

Last Saturday, for the second year in a row, my oldest son and I headed to a local cemetery, where the town veterans' affairs coordinator was organizing a group to replace worn and tattered flags at veterans' gravesites. He supplies everything: flags, replacement markers, doughnuts, coffee and water. There is one other cemetery in town, and the coordinator tells me they do their own thing there, and that he doesn't need to support it. It doesn't take long, and with one or two other troops in town showing up, what could be a two-hour job takes even less time. I had to leave on the early si

Here is a document that describes ours: http://www.yccbsa.org/Training/University/110709UofSCatalog.pdf I was at that one, and at the two previous ones. 18 hour-long sessions total, so far, and I can only think of a couple that I didn't much care for. The presenter was less-than-dynamic, and I figured out that I was scheduled to be in another session with him, so I decided to skip that one and find another. One session on Wilderness First Aid was rather poor -- the instructor was a no-show, so there was a fill-in from the "instructor pool" came in and just started winging it. I thoug

I've been experimenting with charcoal lately (a couple of years ago, I went "old school" and bought a Weber kettle, and gave up the gas grill). "All-Natural Hardwood Lump" charcoal (I've tried four kinds) starts up quickly (about 10 minutes in a chimney) and burns hot, but has a relatively short duration. So I prefer it for searing steaks, for example. One of the more popular brands of lump charcoal, Cowboy brand, is not my favorite. I like Royal Oak better, and it is cheaper in my area of the country. A friend gave me a bag of "Wicked Good Lump" which is alleged to be among the best, but

I was just at a district camporee a couple of weekends ago. The theme was "food" and one of the highlights was a series of cooking competitions: dutch oven, foil, and hobo stoves. That could even be broadened out a bit, for example, dutch oven desserts, one-pot dinners, etc. Maybe even add a box oven category. The other parts of the theme included a troop-wise emphasis on T21 rank cooking requirements. And I was brought in as a Cooking MB counselor. I worked with 4 scouts who had prepped menus ahead of time, and demonstrated their cooking prowess while we were there (they weren't able to

Shortridge -- the Backpacker item is fine, but it is somewhat misleading. Here is an internet source for the Everest: http://www.cpap.com/cpap-machine/aeiomed-everest-3-travel-cpap-machine.html (substantially cheaper than $700). On cpaptalk.com, there was a kayaker who used the Everest on a multi-day trip and he liked it. A scouter I know :-), considered the same solution, but balked at the expense of the batteries: http://www.cpap.com/productpage/Evo-AEIOMed-Everest-Rechargeable-Battery-Pack.html (the scouter was considering 5 batteries, for a 5-night wilderness trip)

I have to add a note of concurrence to what B-Dweller says. Many CPAPs have DC inputs (the ResMed AutoSet II is unusual in that it requires a DC-DC converter, for reasons I don't fully understand). An inverter takes DC (the battery) to turn it into AC. There is a loss of efficiency in that step. It is much more efficient to go straight from a DC battery to the DC input of the *PAP (if it has a DC input). More efficiency means the battery lasts longer.

I know a scouter :-), that has a ResMed AutoSet II that he runs off of a garden-variety Black and Decker rechargeable battery he bought at WalMart. There is a DC-DC converter that the ResMed requires (which was about $40), but other than that, everything works fine. Used at summer camp, recharged daily in the nurse's shack. While the machine normally has a heated humidifier attached to it, that was left out of the equation, in order to reduce electricity usage. I'm told things were a little drier, but other than that, no ill effects for the week. The machine ran fine for 8+ hours on