Scoutmaster Musings

I personally appreciate this service project by scouts of Troop 747 out of Tucson, Arizona. The project involved making and installing wildlife escape ramps in livestock water troughs. This lets rodents climb out rather than drowning and rotting in the water.
This is obviously better for livestock using the trough, but hikers that refill their water bottles benefit as well. There's a good chance I might need to use one of these water troughs while I'm hiking the Arizona Trail next spring, so "Thanks, Scouts!"

See this page.

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Back at the beginning of October, I posted about a contest being sponsored by the BSA to promote the Be A Scout website where interested parents can find a local pack, troop, or crew. The 1 minute opening video on the site is waaay cool with lots of action and some neat stop-motion scenes - you should check it. There's short videos in each of the sections as well.

I've been told that Kevin S. has been chosen as a winner for his tweet about the post. I'd like to thank the many visitors that commented on the post and tweeted about it, and congratulate Kevin.

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Spent yesterday and today presenting Red Cross CPR/AED and Wilderness First Aid training to scouters getting ready for Northern Tier, Sea Base, Philmont, and troop-planned treks over the coming year. One participant was a Cubmaster preparing for pack camping which I thought was pretty cool. It was a good group of folks, but a long weekend.

I enjoy hearing what plans various troops have for their outings. It's always exciting to talk with folks looking forward to their first high adventure trip and help them prepare. November is the month to enter the Philmont lottery for 2013, so I hope your troop is taking care of that now - and don't wait until May to think about required training.

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Where were you at 11 minutes and 11 seconds after 11:00am on November 11, 2011?
My son (who had the day off from school) was playing xBox and I was right here preparing for Wilderness First Aid training tomorrow.
Fortunately, he hollered at me in time so I could open the PC time and save the historic occasion to share with the world.

So, did you miss it or not? Those of you west of Central Time still have an opportunity to enjoy the excitement!

12:12:12 12-12-12 will be here in a year, so get ready! It will be the last such date for quite awhile, and maybe forever if you consider Dec. 21, 2012. :-)

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I think my son finished his eagle service project yesterday, but I'm not sure. He's out helping another eagle candidate this morning, so I'll have to ask him when he gets home.

All I know is he put a bunch of tools in the Honda Odyssey (official vehicle of scout troops) yesterday and was gone for a couple hours. He was supposed to finish it last weekend, but he said a delivery of rock did not show up so he had to set up this extra day to finish.

I'm happy to report that my part in this project was to hike to his project site one day to delivery the camera to him. He also let me hold a pipe straight while cement was poured around it.

Other than that, I was out of the picture. I didn't see, review, or edit his project plan. I gave no advice, suggestions, or recommendations on how he might do it better, or how I would have done it. I didn't meet the person he's doing the project for. I don't know how much it cost, or how many hours it took.

Can you tell I'm proud of myself? :-)

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Troop Kit - let Scouts lead

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Well, here's a wild one for you. Click the image for a much larger version.

I read a rumor this morning that these photos are part of a new Boy Scouts campaign created by Ogilvy & Mather, called "Be One with the Wild".
What the heck, I'll help spread the rumor.

There's a Wolf, Bear, Webelos, and Boy Scout. Their uniforms all look good except all the collar bling on the Boy Scout and his nametag of R. Manderfield which I've not seen on a uniform before.

I noticed the council patches on the uniforms are from the Atlanta Area council, so I went and searched around. There's this page on their council website that has more info about their recruiting campaign.

So, it's a council campaign that was used this fall - rumor solved, I guess. And, it looks like that council has some fun folks involved, if just a little on the interesting side.

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Yesterday's 8-mile hike was mostly just covering miles. It was dreary, even a few drizzles of rain. Not much to see.

But, when I stepped outside today I was greeted by Orion, Cassiopeia, the Pleiades, Ursa Major, and Polaris. A perfectly bright, crystal clear night sky making it easy for a quick review of the constellations and direction finding, even though it was just a bit before 7:00am. That will all change this weekend when the clocks get kicked back an hour - Don't Forget!!!

I was also greeted with frost since it was 30°F and it didn't take long for my knees and rear to get cold. Just overnight the small pond along the trail froze completely across. It will melt today, but it's certainly a sign of what's coming.

Tomorrow, I'll have to switch to warmer pants from my zip-off nylons. If you are interested in forecast and historic weather info for your location, I've found that wunderground.com is a good site. If you use a different site, let me know.

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Ah, you all know that you're winners in my book, but Lucie and Michelle are special winners today.

Michelle was selected this morning to receive the ClassB.com $50 coupon and Lucie got the $25 ScoutStuff.org gift card. Congratulations, ladies!

I appreciate the rest of the 1500 entries this month and in just 30 days you have another chance to win. So, visit the contest page and enter.

Chris sent me an email last month letting me know the August gift card was spent on some advancement items for a Bear den in Pack 582. I'm glad BoyScoutTrail could help out.

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BOO

Watch out for goblins, gremlins, and ghosts on your way home from work tonight.

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Here's my sleeping bag replacement for my long hikes starting in the spring. It's a quilt rather than a bag, well, it will be a quilt when I finish.
Right now, it's just instructions, a bunch of black yarn, some thread, a few yards of silver grey nylon fabric, and a big bag of polyester insulation. It's up to me to turn it into a 28F sleeping quilt.

Making Your Own Gear (MYOG) is a great way for scouts to reduce the cost of camping equipment, resulting in better, lighter gear. It's a great way to be Thrifty and self-sufficient, as well as learn sewing. Making gear can also be a great patrol or high adventure crew activity.

There are a few items, such as stoves, that aren't acceptable to be homemade in the BSA, and a few other items, like shoes, that don't make sense to MYOG. But, everything else is fair game. I hope to make my own quilt, shelter, pack, food cozy, water pre-filter, and maybe other items for my upcoming long hikes. It should cut about 60% out of my gear cost.

Sleeping quilts may be new to you - they are to me - but if you think of how a sleeping bag works, quilts make sense. You crawl into your sleeping bag on top of your pad and zip up the zipper. The insulation between you and the pad is now squished flat, resulting in no insulating effect. If you were to completely unzip your sleeping bag and lay it over you like a blanket, it would work just as well but would be way too wide.

A quilt is just like a sleeping bag except the heavy zipper is removed and the underbody portion is removed. This results in a much lighter item that lasts longer. It lasts longer because you are not constantly crushing the insulation every time you use it.

Similar to sleeping quilts are top bags which are sleeping bags with insulation only on top and a plain fabric layer on the bottom, or possibly a sleeve into which your sleeping pad fits.

This is my first MYOG project and I'll keep you posted on the results.

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You never know what animals, scenery, and cool stuff you might see while hiking or camping. I get excited with the anticipation of seeing something new each morning of a campout, especially when I'm up early before the bugler. It might just be crystals of frost or a foggy sunrise, but there's always something - if you look for it.

On highly used paths around communities, it's usually just the squirrels and small chirping birds that I see. They don't really care about humans, but other animals tend to like their privacy and you rarely glimpse them.

The path I hike most mornings is busy. Lately, with the later sunrise and colder temperatures, I've had more time to myself and have seen much more wildlife - a raccoon, buck, red fox, and now an owl. I try to keep my eyes open and I noticed the owl perched on a limb about 40 feet off the trail.

After watching him awhile, I continued on and saw two women walking towards me. When they got closer, I pointed out where they might see the owl if they were interested. I saw that they stopped at the owl for a bit and then continued, so I assume they saw it.

Another group of four very talkative women, two bike riders, and three runners passed me. I didn't bother mentioning the owl to them because they were intent on their own little world, whether that was conversing or covering ground quickly. I expect they were getting what they wanted out of their time on the trail and didn't care if they missed one old bird.

Being out with scouts hiking or camping provides the opportunity to experience many such animal sightings as well as sunrises, scenic vistas, and caterpillars. Often times, a scout group will be more like those people in their own little world - chatting about stuff so loudly animals disappear or zoning out just waiting to get to the end of the day.

That's when a friend (like you) might find ways to share the excitement of what's around. A dead frog, the last leaf hanging on a branch, some bird flying too high to identify, the buckthorn that's the last green bush left before winter, all are small things that could be used to prompt conversation or at least contemplation. "I wonder how long that leaf will hang on?" "How do you think that frog would have survived winter if he didn't get squished?"
Maybe offer a challenge to have each person make up a story about where that high flying bird is going or a legend about 'Why Buckthorn Stays Green'.

Scout hikes allow you to experience a lot, but you have to reach out a bit to find it. If you're hiking along and notice that you're just looking at the ground coming towards you, stop and look up! You're missing out! Well, I'm off to hike 6 miles now - I wonder what I'll see?

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Have you seen this sign before?
It's the ILCOR approved universal AED sign. It indicates the presence of or direction to an AED. ILCOR = International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation. AED = Automated External Defibrillator

Keep your eyes open for these signs whenever you enter a public building and see how many you find. There's a good chance you won't find many in the USA or UK. That's because other signs have been adopted already and are more common. Hopefully, that will change so a universally used symbol will actually be universal, or at least global.


This is the sign you will likely see to identify AED locations in the USA.

This weekend, I got to help out a bit at the council's Campmaster Training session. I was asked to speak about recent CPR changes and AED use. All the council camps have AEDs, but there were lots of questions about where to locate them, annual maintenance, and policies.
We also discussed some first aid questions and recent directives about what first aid kit support was required by the camps. I'm afraid I wasn't much help with directives and policies, but the CPR and First Aid discussion was fun.

All adult BSA volunteers should get CPR and AED certification. It's easy and sends a good message to the families in, and considering joining, your unit.

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