Braised Boy Scouts

So the weekend after the “Bacon and Poo” meeting we had a two night campout planned. 

The reason I say braised is that when I woke up at about 2am Saturday morning it had to still be in the mid 80s with 110% relative humidity, and no matter how much of the Nylon tent I unzipped no air was moving.  I didn’t sleep.  I braised in my own sweat.

But, I digress.  There was a two fold purpose to the trip. 

One was for me to get a few of the first years together Friday morning and go shopping for food for the weekend.  Well that didn’t work out so well.  I had some family stuff planned for Friday morning that ended up running over.  Instead, after everyone was gathered for the trip to the camp site, we divvied up the money and ran to the farmers market.  Boy scouts are suppose to be thrifty, BUT trying to feed 14 people, 5 meals, with an average of $20 per meal isn’t thrifty.  It’s cheap.  So we got the farmers market, divided the kids into 5 groups of 2, and gave them each $15 for their assigned meals with $30 for Saturday night dinner.  The menu plans was:

Dinner 1: Hot dogs, buns, ketchup, and watermelon.

Breakfast 1: Eggs (two dozen), Bacon (1 pound, so yes one strip per person, oh, and it got burnt), and Sunny Delight (two bottles, cause apparently the scouts who did this meal, really like Sunny D),

Lunch 1: Sandwiches.  Two slices bread, one slice of lunchmeat, and one slice of cheese, no condiments, but we had chips!  Doritos and Cheetoes!  

Dinner 2:  The big one! Uh. Bratwurst and dump cake?  Really that’s it?

Breakfast 2: Pop tarts, mini-honey buns, and Oranges.

The other main purpose was to get the first year boys to finish their fishing merit badges.  All they had left to do was to catch, clean, cook, and eat one…

They caught enough for everyone,

But they were too small to fillet. So instead they got de-scaled, gutted, and beheaded.

Some liked their fish, but most of them ate as little as they could get away with.

Another theme of Boy Scouts is to give back to the community, aka service projects.  In this case it was using nearby native material to build up a crossing point on a creek for the farm’s small tractor to get across with the brush hog.  As the scout discovered it easy to get things stuck, and buried in the sand

The tractor got stuck going across, thankfully not too terribly, we got it free in short order.  It did not get stuck on the return trip.

The boys got a lesson in “you get what you pay for” Saturday night.  They didn’t want to spend the time to gather dead wood for the camp fire.  So the camp fire didn’t last long, which was fine with me.  Camp fires when the day’s high had been in the upper nineties aren’t all that fun.  There were some skits and a scary story by the Scoutmaster.  The scary story really came out of left field.  It was a story of the great economic meltdown of 2008 and pending monetary meltdown.  The story seemed to be based from the perspective of “hard money”, and I didn’t agree with where the story said things were headed.  After a long day in the sun, and a bad night sleep I figured that the scouts weren’t really listening (or understanding if they were listening) to a story of high level macroeconomics, so I didn’t say anything.

All in all it was a sweaty, hungry, sleepy, dirty weekend.  Just the way it should be!

Musical Heresy

I read a column in the online version of the local newspaper all the time.  “The Life Sherpa by Joe Holleman.  Sometimes I agree, sometimes I don’t: this one though upset me.  Marginalizing someone’s, anyone’s, death isn’t very, Christian, nice, human, whatever.  Either way the comparisons he makes in the article are so off base.

Amy was 27 when she died.  She lived the “rock-n-roll” lifestyle and it caught up to her.  She released 2 studio albums the last one topping out at number two on the US charts and had one top 20 single.  At the end she was booed off the stage for being “under the influence” while performing.  She was made out to be the bad guy for failing rehab.  Without her we wouldn’t have Adele or Duffy.  Even Lady Gaga has given Amy credit for opening her door to success.

Is there a good comparison for Amy out there?  Why yes.

He was 27 when he died.  He too lived a “rock-n-roll” lifestyle and it caught up with him.  He released 3 studio albums the last one topping out at number one on the US charts and had one top 20 single.  At the end he was cheered on stage for being “under the influence” while performing.  He never even tried to rehab.  He didn’t break ground directly for anyone, but still was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Any idea who yet?

Jimi Hendrix…

One is vilified, the other idolized.  Why?

Bacon and Poo

I hosted a patrol meeting the other night to cover some second and first class requirements prior to the next planned camping trip.  I think it went well.  We could have called it the “Bacon and Poo” meeting.  The boys had fun, and may have even learned something.  The scouts each got a blank copy of the food pyramid and I read the different categories (fruits and vegetable, dairy, etc.) to them and they filled in the blanks.  I managed to keep them mostly focused by throwing dark chocolate covered raisons at them.  We then went back and talked about where everything should have been.  I didn’t make them erase, they just drew arrows.  They all knew that, in the words of one scout, that the stuff at the top was “The good-bad like McDonalds.”  I noticed that some of the boys were abbreviating instead of writing it out, and I asked them if they had written down enough that if the scoutmaster asked them to explain what they had written if they could.  They assured me that they could. 

After the ground work was done I told them, using the pyramid, write a menu for breakfast lunch and dinner.  I’d say they fall into three groups.  Ones that sort of pay attention to their food, ones that want familiar things, and ones that probably wouldn’t eat if you didn’t tell them too.  They each took a turn explaining their meals to the group, and I learned something new. 

Ants on a log.  It’s a celery stick, filled with peanut butter, and topped with raisons. 

I asked if anyone wanted to explain the importance of good nutrition.  Someone immediate said, half under their breath “You need fiber so you can have Mr. Henke the Christmas Poo.”, which is one of the few South Park Cartoons I’ve seen.  I then had the embarrassed “I didn’t think anyone heard that” scout explain why fiber is an important part of your diet to the rest of the patrol, and moved on before THAT got out of hand.  All the lists had Bacon and Fruit so we talked about how to properly store, transport, and prepare them, and what could happen if you didn’t do it correctly. 

Each of them had created a patrol menu that included three meals of which two needed cooking (no one wanted to cook lunch).  One list included a good selection of foods from the pyramid so I got each of the boys to talk (all at once, but at least they were on topic) about why it was good to have a variety of foods.  Then my 8 year old showed up with a whoopee cushion.  

We then resumed after the whoopee cushion break with “How you going to cook that bacon?”  Having this discussion shortly after summer camp was a bit of good luck.  Their experiences cooking at camp were fresh enough in their minds that they flew through it in no time.  They even did it correctly, and though I didn’t ask they talked about cleaning up afterwards too.  I then moved from cleaning the pans to dealing with garbage, leftovers.  I reminded them of leave no trace and that if we bring it in we have to bring it out.  We talked about what is appropriate to put in the composting bucket, what can be used as fire starter for the next meal, and what should be thrown away.  We talked about storage and handling which started as “you’ll got hungry if it goes bad”, to “we’d eat it anyway”, to, “if you do”… yep.   We ended up on poo, again.

In the end scouts that showed up did several more advancement requirements, and more importantly no body got hurt, especially me!

On Open Letter to America regarding your Birthday Party

Dear America,

When I was younger I used to really love your parties.  There was swimming all day and soft-serve ice cream at the public pool.  It was a day of grilled hot dogs and pie.  The parades were full of fire trucks and scouts and marching bands and even shriners on their funny little motor bikes. 

What happened?

Now the day is filled with cheap prepackaged ice cream at the carnival.  You know, the carnival; the physical embodiment of your no longer hidden insatiable capitalist need, with hideously expensive rides and over priced BBQ.  There are still hot dogs to be found, but you have to try to find them.  The parades still have fire trucks, and scouts and marching bands, but they are mixed up with political action committees floats, and politician containing convertibles.  The shriners may even still be there, but I can’t bring myself to watch them anymore.

It seems like I’m not the only one suffering birthday party burnout

Is that all that’s left?  Rides and cheap toys.  Please tell me there is more to your birthday than this?

I hope their memories of your recent birthday parties are better than mine…

Achtung Baby!!

I was playing around with the blog statistics and found something fun:

Page views by Countries:

United States 279

Germany         10

Singapore        2

Moldova          1

10 page views from Germany – how cool is that!

It must have been the mustard post...

Tuesday Night

So, last night I got Matthew to read a book that he needed to.

It was time.  I left him with it, with the “let me know if you have any questions” remark.  Of course he didn’t have any questions.  When he was going to bed I asked him if her learned anything from the book.  At first he said no, then paused, and said yeah, the real names for some stuff.  I smiled.  Not the ones you heard on the playground were they?

It’s called blacktop dad…

Jacob was in fine form also.

Me:  You know Jacob you seem to go to sleep faster when you help yourself.

Jacob: No dad, you’re not talking me into helping myself to sleep.

Me: I have a job interview on Thursday

Jacob: what would you do?

Me: Tell people what they could flush down the toilet.

Jacob: what would you do?

Me: No, really, tell people what they could flush down the toilet.

Jacob: like paper?

Me: No, some businesses have really big toilets.

Jacob: does it pay more money?

Me: yes.

Jacob: YEAH, then you can give more to me, and Matthew, and mom!

Me: Jacob, please go to sleep.

Kids are funny.

BSA Summer Camp

Part of the saga that is “Steve - Assistant Scoutmaster” was the week long adventure of summer camp.  I had no idea what to expect.  I never made it to boy scouts; when I was a cub scout moms weren’t allowed to participate from second year weblos on up.  I was told this policy was changed in 1982.  From what I can tell Boy Scouts as an organization, still have problems with the three “G”s.  Girls, Gays, and God.  I digress though.  Back in the late 70s when I was told my mom couldn’t participate anymore; I was like that’s not fair.  If she can’t do it, I’m not going to either.  Though neither of my parents said anything I found out much later that my Mom was really proud of me.  My Dad, to this day, has never said anything, but he and I did lots of camping and fishing anyway so I always assumed he was less than thrilled. 

Now, I’ve had my official BSA adult leader training and I know that Hazing amongst the scouts is not tolerated.  Apparently it doesn’t work that way for the adults.  I felt like I was driving the party wagon to summer camp as I had all 6 of the 1^st-years that were going with me.  I don’t know which level of Dante’s Hell 90-minutes in a minivan full of excited, adrenaline pumped, 11-year olds is, but it was right up there with daycare “McTeacher night” that we attended once.

We made a quick stop on the way down for lunch and our last chance at porcelain for the week.  Thankfully whatever colored the Patrol Leader's tongue got wasn’t contagious or fatal.

Now, the last time we stopped for lunch on the way to camping at S-F one of the 1^st-years managed to drink two and a half 44oz sodas, and ended up doing the potty dance in the back of the minivan.  On talking with his Mom this seems to be his modus operandi.  Thankfully we didn’t have that problem this time.

So we got to our campsite within Camp Famous Eagle on Sunday.  Now as I understand it campsites are normally drawn via a lottery system; Random week, random campsite.  We avoided that as our Scoutmaster volunteered to be the camp doctor for the week.  The trade off was that we got the best campsite, Stark, right down on the lake. 

The thought had been that the boys could do a bunch of fishing.  The lake is loaded, and catching a fish can be the hardest part of earning the fishing merit badge.  So of course, no good deed goes unpunished.  None of the kids were interested in fishing.

We had planned that the 1^st-years could go from Woodcarving, to Fishing, to Swimming.  It seems though that they are more of an arts and crafts than fishing kind of kids.  Half of them stuck with the plan and went to fishing, and the other half instead headed to leatherworking.

The morning of the first day it poured. No its not blurry, just raining really hard.

This was of course the day I followed the first years from merit badge class to class to make sure that they stayed focused.  Before we left that morning I asked them all of they had everything. You know, like raingear.  Of course even with the reminder none of them took any, and being 11 they didn’t seem to care that they got soaked.  The rain cleared out by noon. 

It’s a beautiful picture of what stormwater erosion can do to water quality.

It was fun watching the 1^st-years try to figure everything out.  They managed to feed themselves, though they needed a morning wakeup call.  

Sometimes though it was hard to tell what the food was.  This is a “ham steak”.  I’m sorry but I’ve never seen any part of a pig that cooks and looks like this.  Parts are parts I guess, and at least no pigs were hurt in the production of this “ham steak”

I even have proof now that mine can in fact clean things.

Thursday night was parents’ night.  So it was time to bust out the Class “A” uniforms – or at least the parts of it they could still find.

We also got to import food of our choosing for the special occasion.

Look Ma!  A pizza wagon!  Really…

Butterfly break

Service projects are also required.  There is a power cut that runs through camp and along the edge of the cut there is some significant erosion.  Somehow it was decided that using local materials to help control erosion would make a great service project.  Local material, like you know; dead trees.

That’s our scoutmaster, beloved by all, on the right showing us the lumberjacking skills he learnt in medical school.

The adults got to live just like the scouts did, mostly.

Except that if we wanted to walk about half a mile we had access to shower stalls and flush toilets.  Honestly, I think that the adults were probably more difficult to deal with than the kids.  Myself included, or maybe especially.  Hopefully Barbara will forgive me pushing her over (that’s her story and she is sticking to it), and the “moo-moo” jokes.

Now for something completely different; random pictures of Matthew.

Stuck in the middle of a canoe.

First time shooting a rifle

Matthew had a hard time coming to terms with being right handed and left eyed.  I have to admit that it looked awkward to shoot that way.

And finally moments before the “dry fire” incident.

A dry fire is when you pull the bowstring without an arrow and release.  It does really bad things to this type of bow.  Matthew knew he messed up the second it happened.  Normally when he is embarrassed and you jump him for messing up he reacts very, very badly.  He deserved to be chewed on, which he was, and it was done perfectly.  He got the point without going postal, managed to file it as a lesson learned, and moved on to having fun the rest of the day.

Late Friday night we had a campfire that was planned by the 4^th-years.  I must say that the four of them put on a campfire program of truly EPIC proportions.  The top 25 list of dumbest things they heard that week at camp was good, and yes I was on it.  The real star though was the campfire song.  They managed to poke fun at everyone there, including themselves.  18 people.  The song took about 35 minutes.  It was…  Well I can’t say enough good things about it.  I will say though that if the 4^th-years put as much effort into their scouting as that song they’d all be eagle scouts by now.

Matthew had a lot fun, because remember, scouting is fun with “U” in the middle!  Oh, he also earned 2+ merit badges; Swimming, Woodcarving, and all he has left for Fishing is to actually catch, clean, and eat one. 

As for me, I was reminded why I hate ticks (especially between the toes). Oh, and you don’t mess with Dad!

I haven’t shot in 20 years, and managed a quarter sized grouping at 50-feet.