SR540Beaver

8. Avoiding main highways, take two rides of 10 miles each, two rides of 15 miles each, and two rides of 25 miles each. You must make a report of the rides taken. List dates, routes traveled, and interesting things seen. 9. After fulfilling requirement 8, lay out on a road map a 50-mile trip. Stay away from main highways. Using your map, make this ride in eight hours. GW, I was not part of the cycling MB, so I don't know the exact details of how they accomplished the requirements. What I do know is that the guy who taught it is our MB coordinator and a corporate trainer by profession and can assure you that the requirements were followed. Requirement 8 does not indicate that the rides have to be done by an individual alone. They can certainly be done in groups and probably should to increase visibility to vehicles. I can even see requirement 9 being done as a group or sub groups. If the group agrees to do 50 miles from point A to point B, they each individually lay out a route. More than likely, the routes are going to be very similar if not identical. Then they go on their ride. Pretty simple. Nowhere does the requirements say that the rides have to be done solely by the individual and that group rides are not allowed. But again, I do not teach the cycling MB and did not participate in how the group of boys from our troop did it. I just know they did it and emailed the troop a picture of the group on their bikes at the end of the 50 miler which was thier last ride.

We occasionally do group merit badge classes within the troop. In our case, the counselor usually announces that they will be teaching the MB on certain scheduled dates and it is up to individual scouts to determine if they want to participate. If they do, they take a card to the SM to get approval, buy the book or check it out of the troop library and begin preparing. The boys are never told that they have to do a MB as part of the program and the classes are always a scheduled on days and weekends other than troop meetings or outings. For instance, we have a committe member who is big into cycling and just finished counseling a group of boys to completion. They scheduled all of their rides on Saturdays. We are fortunate to have 21 registered and trained MBC's in our troop that cover 65 different MB's. They are available to teach any boy at any time who asks or to offer their specialty in a group setting.

Buff Skipper, Our troop does an (usually) annual Pin Fair each May at the council camp closest to our district. The Pin Fair is for the Webelos Dens in our district and is taught by the boys in our troop. It is an overnighter that starts on Friday night. The troop goes out on Thursday evening and sets up camp so we can hit the ground running on Friday evening. The Webelos and their parents arrive Friday night and set up their tents, have a cracker barrel with us and attend a campfire program we put on for them. We provide breakfast and lunch for them on Saturday and in this instance, it is cooked mostly by the adults since the boys are busy teaching a variety of Webelos pins. If memory serves correctly, I believe we typically teach five different pins and the Webelos sign up for one or two that they want to earn. We are typically thru by 4:00 PM so everyone can get home for dinner. The council camp is on the near outskirts of town. This is purely a recruitment tool for our troop as well as an opportunity at service and skill teaching and leadership experience for our boys. It has been highly successful for us.

Lem, Council events? Back in August, our monthly outing was a canoe trip on a local river. This december is shotguns. I agree with Bob that it is your "sales" team. Our boys choose what they want to do and where they want to go during their annual planning. They teach the skills session at troop meetings prior to campouts and the an adult mentors the individual outing's youth planner on making it all happen. Delivering the promise isn't difficult with skilled and trained adults.

Congrats OGE! It couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Well, it probably could....but that is beside the point! Congrats anyway! All kidding aside, congrats!

My council has a Venturing DE. I'm not involved in Venturing even though our unit/CO has an associated Venturing Crew that some of the boys are part of. To my outsider view, it has always appeared that Venturing just has not caught on and most people (including the Crews) can't quite figure out what they are. While there is "structure" and uniforms and awards available, many Crews I know of just don't use them and they die from lack of structure. I think that throwing a DE at branch of the BSA programs is an attempt to save what often appears as a floundering program. I don't intend that to sound like I am against Venturing. I'm just somewhat indifferent to it because I have more than I can say grace over with Scouting to get myself involved with it.

Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong. Like that won't happen! I do not have any old copies of the Handbook. While Campmastering at one of our council properties, I was looking at a Handbook with a 50's copyright I believe and was amazed to see that the Eagle rank was attained just like Star and Life (paraphrasing here) with a certain number of MB's, time in a POR, Scout Spirit, etc. and no project was involved. Did I read it right? Did a scout just basically do the same basic steps as Star and Life and became an Eagle? When was the project added?

Chug: "Apparantly, using the dishwasher to clean muddy tentpegs is a big no-no." NEVER do a job a boy can do!!! That one saying can keep you out of a multitude of days in the dog house.

Guns are known to increase the size of one's testicles......or at least make them think they have big ones.

Good luck Pappy. Oh BTW, as of my son's last physical before going to Philmont this summer, the doctor reported that his testicles were still firmly where they were supposed to be.

Pack, Those poor yankees, they just don't know how to appreciate a good nutritious starch. Most of them I have met and worked with over the years had no idea what gravy is and are shocked that you would put a starch on a starch...... gravy on potatos. Go figure? I nevah trusted dose folks wit da funny accent anyway, eh.

With all due respect, act like a Scouter.

Beav, Obviously you would file a complaint with a council professional if you had an issue with a volunteer at a "council run event". Kind of like youth protection. I know of a situation at a council run event where an adult volunteer on staff had his membership revoked because of his behavior......and it had nothing to do with youth.

Would you two please get a room!!! Sheesh!

Vicki, Wow! Seven staff development events? I'm not going to tell you that your council does it wrong, since mine does five. The WB Admin Guide restricts staff development to 90 days out from the course so as not to be too time consuming or a hardship to staff. I'm sure it CAN be done in that short of a time, but we find it much easier to do five along with a volunteer participants meeting which we are not supposed to do either because of it demanding too much of the participants time. I'm sure our Trainers Edge will be held separately from the staff devlopment because there are other folks who will want to take it and that is the way TDC was done.

It has always dumbfounded me how anyone can actually believe that a person would run for any political office and actually believe that the person "hates" America or Americans. If you hate your country and fellow citizens, why in the world would you want to be elected to a high office of that country. Just doesn't make sense. But then again, we seem to have some Scout leaders who give every indication of hating the BSA.

I don't have much more information. It is four modules and is a day long course. Supposedly, the participants will practice some presentation skills as part of the course. It is more interactive as opposed to just being presented to. I attended TDC back in August. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't worth burning a whole day for either. In my case, I didn't really see or learn anything I didn't already know. I knew how to use a low tech felt board when I was in kindergarten back in 1962. My personal feeling was that the TDC material could have been compressed into a half day course. Now......that might have just been the particular course I attended. However, I knew 90% of the presenters personally and know them well enough to know they were following the syllabus. My hope is that Trainers Edge is better, because I personally didn't take much away from TDC.

I'm not sure if it has been reported here previously, but I learned this past weekend that the current TDC - Trainers Development Conference will be replaced by a new course called Trainers Edge. The course material is being finalized and should be out in the next few weeks. This course will be required for 2009 Wood Badge staff and NYLT adult AND youth staff.

GW, Am I to understand that you don't know what a winky face means? Really? Google emoticons.

Just a disclaimer here. It was more or less suggested earlier that my view was JASM was a parking place to send a boy who is winding down. I never said that. My point was that JASM is a position of further leadership development to offer an older boy (16+) boy as an additional challenge. These guys are at a different level in there life and scout career and in most cases, can not be there as much as he should in the SPL or PL position. The point is, instead of just sitting him aside because he could only be there 40 or 50% of the time and couldn't fulfill his duties as SPL or PL, find a leadership position that would fit his schedule. That would be JASM. They would do the same types of work that an ASM would. The desired person to serve as in the 3rd ASM position for a Jambo troop is an 18 to 21 year old. This is by design. Likewise, a JASM can serve as a bridge between adults and youth.

gwd, For those bitterly clinging to their Bibles and guns, it would be defined as anyone living in a blue state.

Pack, Unlike the fear pundits I read and listen to every day (I'm a political junkie), it was a level headed, logical and reasoned assessment of the two candidates as things stand today. It was refreshing to hear that kind of talk for a change. Powell is one of those people who knows what he is talking about and does not make decisions based on ideology, but truth and fact. Like many others, he will be ostracized by those in his party for speaking truth (as he sees it) to power.

I've never been to those sites and I'll bet you most people have not. They appeal to a very small minority of people. Talk radio on the other hand has millions of listeners every day, all day multiplied the large number of hosts. They reach and influence a far greater population than a website will ever hope to.

Lisa, let me qualify my statement. Lieberman is conservative by Democrat standards. By Republican standards, he is not. He is a regular guest on Hannity's radio program and Sean always tries to entice him to join the Republicans and Joe always respectfully declines the invitation. You already know the history of why he became independent. The party was angry with him and punished him. Early on before McCain won the nomination, there were many in the Republican party who wished the same treatment of McCain that the Dems gave Lieberman for being a "maverick". So yes, Lieberman is more conservative than many Dems, but he can't really be called a conservative.

Joe Lieberman is a fine honorable man......but he is not, I repeat NOT conservative. The conservative radio talking heads and pundits love him because on one issue (the war) he sided with their view and not with his own party. For being a "maverick", they think he is a hero. The same exact thing they happen to hate McCain for. Go figure.