Hal_Crawford

Srisom:

The New River Adventure looks neat but they will have to kick it up a lot to compete as a national high adventure base. The BRC program has one day of white water rafting, one day of white water canoeing and two days of COPE. There is an optional fifth day of mountain biking, climbing or caving. Scouts sleep each night in base camp in Pulaski County, VA. They bus the scouts to WV for the rafting. I would hope that whatever they do in West Virginia will involve some sort of a trek of at least 10 days.

Hal

IMHO: The first problem is that the adults are the ones enforcing these rules. Our troop is by no means the model for uniform standards but the scouts enforce tucked in shirts. I'd love to see them tucked into scout pants instead of an odd assortment of jeans, sweats and running shorts but it has to be scout driven.

We are working on our PLC to schedule uniform inspections so that the boys can take ownership of the uniform standards. Ultimately, I would be happier with a boy led troop in multi colored tutus than an adult led troop that looks like it just walked out of the Boys Life. (Fortunately there is no threat of the scouts wanting to dress in tutus).

Get the boy's PL to talk with the boy. Odds are he will listen to a 13 year old more than he will listen to the adults or his parents. Peer pressure is not always a bad thing.

Good luck.

Hal

Great story, a win for the good guys, thanks for sharing.

Hal

Skipper:

Goshen is bigger than the average council camp with multiple camps on the reservation. Camp Post which has the reservation administration building, the health lodge, some staff and guest cabins as well as the climbing tower and COPE course is already a good start to being a training center and there is some room to grow. Looking at what they have had at past jamborees I think that they will be expanding the reservation one way or another. The 2005 jamboree had 20 sub-camps and I think one of the criteria was the ability to have more. There have been at most 8 camps at Goshen (currently 7 including the Lenhoks'sin base) so some things are going to change/expand. They will certainly need a lot more latrines and showers.

I have registered to go to a council town hall meeting on March 16 where all will be revealed (or maybe reviled, you know how these things go). I believe that the letter from council said that 2009 would not be affected. I am a little apprehensive about what the impact will be on the reservation after that.

Our troop has been going to Camp Bowman at Goshen every year since 1966. We have also had a few crews do the Lenhok'sin High Adventure trek there and will have another this summer. Our troop has a strong connection to and affection for Goshen. I hope that the improvements that make it suitable for the Jamboree do not diminish the council camping and high adventure experience. After the town meeting I will share what I can with this forum.

I also look forward to the high adventure base in West Virginia. I looked at a topo map of the two counties and they cover a lot of land and a variety of backcountry terrain. The New River Gorge is on the line between Fayette and Raleigh counties and there is a lot of mountainous terrain. A lot of coal mines, a lot of strip mines. Could coal mining be one of the "programs not offered elsewhere"? The county line also pulls away from the gorge and moves into some pretty remote backcountry. There is a lot of room to get lost in. Don't know where in this area they are looking at but there is a lot to choose from. Nearest city is Beckley WV.

Hal

Like some of the posters above I would hesitate to accuse the person or go sleuthing around unless there is a good reason to be concerned. The loser in this will likely be his son who will get pulled out of the pack as soon as dad is accused or his exaggerations, misrepresentations and/or lies come to light.

If you do feel the need to dig there are a few things you could check before interrogating the leader. If you are the CC or CM you should have access to the unit copy of his adult application. If not the CC or CM you will need to share your concerns with one of them.

The application asks if the applicant is an Eagle and the date earned. If he checked "no" then he should be asked about the discrepancy. If he checked "yes" then perhaps it can be checked with national. There are also blanks on the form for past scouting experience, if he took Woodbadge then he must have been registered as a leader somewhere. Does the info on the application match his story? If not you or an appropriate person can ask him about it to update the file.

Again, expect that the leader is going to beat tracks with his son, never to be seen again. Be sure that its worth it.

The NCAC website now confirms that it is Goshen Scout Reservation http://www.boyscouts-ncac.org/openrosters/vieworgpagelink.asp?orgkey=370&linkkey=26692.

Hal

SSScout:

Yes, I think the the centennial camporee will be an interesting test. My guess is that 10,000 is more than twice the normal peak capacity. I wonder how they will handle parking the buses? Certainly there will have to be a lot of changes and upgrades before they can handle the jambo.

Interesting that nothing has appeared on the council or national website about this.

artjrk:

In-laws used to live in Staunton (pronounced Stanton for the uninitiated) and SIL is still there. I share your love of the valley though I am not a fan of dodging semis on I-81. It is beautiful country. Summer nights at Goshen can get downright cool by DC standards.

Hal

Shortridge:

Wiki's acreage reminded me of Star Trek Episode where the universe kept shrinking until it was about 200 meters square.

Like Tokala, I've been hearing rumors for for a while that they were looking at Goshen. I am pretty sure that the reservation will be at least part of the Jamboree site.

Bicentennial birthday greetings go out today to Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin, both born 2/12/1809. Happy 200!

Shortridge:

Wikipedia is wrong (Shocked I say, shocked)! According to them it is less than 1 square kilometer. The entire reservation within a 1000 meter square? I have hiked enough of the trails there to guarantee that is wrong. Heck, the lake is 450 acres!

According to the their web site it is 4000+ acres. The adjacent state land that is used for Lenhok'sin High Adventure makes the total close to 40,000 acres.

Look at it on Google maps: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Goshen+Scout+Reservation&sll=37.97668,-79.453812&sspn=0.078347,0.151234&ie=UTF8&ll=37.976274,-79.447289&spn=0.074964,0.151234&t=p&z=13

The reservation surrounds the lake and extends up into the hills.

That being said I think they will have to expand beyond the existing camps and facilities to handle the numbers for a jamboree. Because of the lake a portion of the area is underwater. I must confess I have never been to the jambo but I have spent a good deal of time at Goshen. I don't know if the commonwealth is planning to transfer land to BSA. The non-state owned area around Goshen is pretty depressed so they may be planning to buy more acreage. I will be interested to see how it all plays out but I am relatively sure the reservation will form the core of the Jamboree site.

Hal

As someone who has camped at Goshen Scout Reservation every year since 1996 I applaud this choice. I hear what Skeptic says about a central location but by the same token I look forward to the new high adventure base in the mid Atlantic region. It is a long trip to Philmont and the mountains of West Virginia will provide a different set of challenges for hikers.

While more humid than what many westerners are used to, the Goshen area will be a lot nicer than AP Hill.

I don't know what they will do there to accommodate the Jamboree numbers but if you want to see what is there now visit http://www.boyscouts-ncac.org/openrosters/ViewOrgPageLink.asp?LinkKey=15974&orgkey=1933

There are currently seven camps on or near Lake Merriweather. Bowman and Marriott are patrol cooking boy scout camps; Olmstead is a dining hall boy scout camp; Ross and PMI are cub scout camps; Baird is a high adventure base and Post is the reservation headquarters camp with health lodge, COPE course and climbing tower.

The reservation is 4000+ acres adjacent to another 35,000 state wild life game lands.

Goshen is about 3.5 hours from Washington DC and close to the I-81 corridor. I-64 is also nearby.

Trivia:

Camp Marriott is named for the Marriott family that founded the hotel chain; Ross is named for a bicycle company, PMI for a company that runs parking garages and Bowman for the distillery that bottles Virginia Gentleman.

Fighter planes from Langley AFB and Oceana NAS often buzz the lake. It is believed that many of the pilots are former scouts who camped at Goshen. Perhaps they are practicing bombing the dam.

I think this will be a good move for BSA. Hope it all works out.

Hal

Before I started with our troop there was a scout who passed his EBOR and shortly after was arrested on some serious felonies. I understand he was informed his Eagle had been revoked. I believe that his application was pulled before approval at National so you could argue he never was actually an Eagle though if the BOR is the defining moment then maybe he was. He was subsequently convicted and did time. To my knowledge he is neither gay nor an atheist... but he surely isn't an Eagle.

As I said, this was before I joined the troop but the repercussions were still being felt when I joined. It was rough on the next couple of Eagles in part because the adults had been so badly misled by this young man that some started looking for faults in other scouts who had known him.

Hal

I did a search on line and found this: http://www.scoutbugle.com/index.html

It looks like a bugle can be had for a lot less than a trumpet. The most expensive on this site is $69. It seems that it is a lot easier to find a bugler if the troop provides the bugle. I am not a horn player and I cannot personally vouch for this site or the instruments they sell but it looks legit. Good luck.

My experience is similar to Lisabob's. I serve the youth. I have very little contact with our CO.

The CO has been kind enough to continue chartering the troop for nearly 60 years but there are very few if any youth in the congregation and none of them in our troop. For several years the CO had a string of interim pastors who did not pay much attention to us. We now have a new COR that is taking some interest so perhaps things are looking up.

As a troop we try to repay generosity by doing service projects for the church but there is no feeling that we are part and parcel of the church. Getting scouts to go to scout Sunday is rough because none of our scouts or scouters are of our CO's denomination (Baptist) and a number of our scouts are non-Christian. The Cub pack decamped for another CO but we have nice facilities (a great storage shed, built of brick by the scouts in the 1950s or 60s) so we do not want to leave as long as the church will allow us to stay.

Hal

Is this in response to the announcement that Justice Ginsberg had surgery today for pancreatic cancer? While that is a grim diagnosis she does not plan to retire yet so perhaps we should put off picking her successor.

SSScout:

Did you mean to say double the working limit? That reduces the safety factor. For manila, our industry standard is 10:1. If the breaking strength is 1000# then the Safe Working Load would be 100#. Some use 8:1 but I would never go down to 5:1 with manila. This is because manila is more susceptible to wear and abuse than say wire rope or even some synthetics.

None of this really matters for lashing. The strength comes from the wraps and fraps and I doubt you could actually compute the load on the rope. I would still go with manila for lashing.

There is truth to what you say about junior staffers. If you contact them through the web forms there is at least a track of which issues are getting a lot of correspondence. When that happens the staff takes notice.

I did write Senator George Allen (former R from VA) asking him NOT to vote YES on a particular bill. About two weeks later I received an form e-mail from him assuring me that I did not need to worry, he was voting YES on that the bill. I was glad to vote against him in the next election and glad to see him go.

Senator John Warner ® on the other hand wrote back that he opposed the bill but for different reasons than I had stated. Seemed that someone had actually read my e-mail and responded accordingly. He had a really good reputation for responding to scouts who wrote for cit/community MB. Sorry to see him go but I know our new Senator, Mark Warner (D-no relation to John) is a good man. I met him a couple of times when he was governor and I am glad to see him in the Senate. Haven't written to either Webb or the new Warner yet so I don't know the quality of their (staff's) response.

Good luck.

The web forms on the Senate web site

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm

are the best way to contact your senator.

I haven't ever felt the need to wet down manila rope. It is subject to humidity and moisture; more so than synthetics. Damp or wet rope gets shorter and fatter; dryer rope gets thinner and longer. It is an issue in stage rigging because lines have to be adjusted whenever there is a shift in humidity. Those who have been to a jamboree can attest that we do in fact have humidity here in Virginia. Maybe manila behaves differently in the dry air of the SW. I don't think it should make much of a difference with lashing as the lengths are short and the frapping should give it all the purchase it needs.

Hal

I would recommend either manila rope or a synthetic equivalent made from polypropylene. The following link will give you a price comparison.

http://www.us-rope-cable.com/HTML/manila-rope.html?gclid=CPazkOnDxZgCFQxKGgodWTf_1A

Manila is fine but splintery. Good idea to wear gloves while handling it. It is an organic material (I have heard it described as coherent compost) so it loses strength over time but this shouldn't be a problem for lashing. It is a consideration for lifting which is why a 10:1 safety factor is used for overhead lifting. It is much cheaper than any synthetic alternative. This is important as you will probably need a lot of it.

Synthetic manila stronger and does not splinter but costs a lot more.

I recommend purchasing the rope locally. Buy it by the 600' or 1200' spools to get the best price. As a theatre technical director I have bought a lot of rope. My local source is a steel supply company which sells rigging supplies. If you live near a college that has a theatre department, call them and ask for the technical director, odds are he/she will know the best local source for rope.

ONE IMPORTANT NOTE: DON'T TRY TO SAVE BY ASKING ANYONE FOR USED ROPE. You don't know how old it is, how it was used etc. You would have to assume the breaking strength is zero. I say this because I was once working on the renovation of a theatre rigging system. As the crew as dragging the old rope to the dumpster a gentleman came up and identified himself as a scout leader. He asked if he could have the rope to use with his scouts for "climbing". The rope was 3/4" manila, heavily used and some of it could have been 30+ years old! Totally wrong for climbing and dangerous to use for anything where strength was important, like monkey bridges.

We told him that he couldn't have it and why but we all got the sense that he was going to come dumpster diving after we left. We took the rope back inside and cut it into 3' lengths before throwing it away. Our good turn to protect scouts from a dangerous leader.

Good luck with your camporee.

Hal

But pork fat AND maple syrup... even better. Yum!

I believe Geithner and Daschle have paid their back taxes, penalties and interest. This is what would be expected of you or me or Republican politicians. The Senate, including a number of Republicans has confirmed Geithner and Daschle has withdrawn. It's over. This thread is, to quote Shakespeare, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".

Ed:

A couple of months ago you were pretty rigid about enforcing BSA rules when it came to an unmarried adult couple sharing a tent. You said it set a bad example. Now when it is about smoking, your attitude is, yeah we did it scouts saw it so what?

How are these two situations different?

Target. $19.99.

http://www.target.com/Waffle-Iron/dp/B0002YTFXM/sr=1-2/qid=1233718914/ref=sr_1_2/192-2050058-2469964?ie=UTF8&rh=k%3Awaffle%20iron&page=1

At that price it's certainly worth a try. Sounds like a great gift.

OGE:

I normally avoid posting to pro-life/pro-choice debates but I want to say amen to your post. My feelings exactly.

Hal