Day: August 1, 2013

By the middle of the week, the kids were starting to get worn out.  After the late-night Kung Fu and all the physical activities, the kids were showing some signs of fatigue.  I was getting worried that they weren’t having much fun on Wednesday, but by the end of the day, they had perked back up.

I had a lot of trouble getting Tommy and Ryan out of bed.  In fact, they barely made it to the morning formation.  I guess they were up half the night goofing around.  I remember those days when I was a kid when you could talk all day to your best friend about nothing and just have the best time.

We did finally make it to formation and breakfast.  The kids had some trouble with the powdered eggs, but again, I thought they were okay — particularly for camp food after a strenuous day.  After breakfast, we were off to high COPE.  Normally, they would have done a second day of low COPE, but since many of the Venturers had other activities scheduled for Thursday and Friday, Scott wanted the kids to get a taste of high COPE.  The kids all got to do three events, while taking turns belaying and helping in other ways.  The three events were the giant’s ladder, which was meant to be a two-person, cooperative event, a traverse of a two-rope bridge, and a zip line.

The first two people up the giant’s ladder were Maddie and Sammy — the shortest kids in the group.  While they both struggles somewhat, they helped each other get up the ladder.  Sammy was actually able to shinny up the cable between the rungs!

 

Erin did a very nice job helping her partner up the ladder.  He was struggling a bit, but Erin didn’t seem to mind the height and helped push him up to the next run.

I don’t know if the kids appreciate these scout experiences.  I didn’t get to do things like this until I joined the Army.  How much easier Beast Barracks and the Infantry Officer Basic Course would have been if I had had these opportunities!

The instructors said that to be an instructor you have to be able to traverse the giant’s ladder solo.  Tom basically negotiated the ladder himself while helping Ryan, who has an injured shoulder.  Tommy and Ryan were trying to set a record pace for the day.  Tommy really made the ladder look effortless.

Looking a bit tired after two and a half strenuous days and a big lunch.  Instead of climbing, the kids elected to go back down to the waterfront to sail and perhaps ride the giant float/tube again.

Because the floats were both broken, the scouts decided to get in these little two-man sail boats and sail into the river.  Left alone on the dock, without even a buddy with which to swim in the bath-warm water, I elected to ride in the power boat with two scouts who were trying to learn to ski.

After both of the scouts had several tries, coming close to getting up on their skis, I was able to get in the water and ski myself, which was fun.

After dinner we set up some cones in a big field and started our own nine-player ultimate frisbee game.  The teams were Mike, Tommy, Sammy, and Michela vs. Jamie (Michela’s dad who joined us for the day), Ryan, Maddie, Erin, and me.  Our team got stomped 10 to 3.  We were hoping to attract other interested players so that all of us could play on the same team, but most of the Venturers were at the pistol range.  It was an intense game, and I think everyone had a great time.  I was once again reminded that I am no longer 20.  Following our game, we all sat around joking.  I picked up blade of grass to put between my thumbs as a reed to make noise.  All the other crew members started doing it too.  Ryan went for loud and ugly, nearly coughing up a spleen.  Maddie could actually play notes and did a pretty good job of emulating “To the Colors,” the bugle call used at morning and evening formations at Broad Creek.

As we were getting ready to take a shower, “Bongo,” one of the camp commissioners, told us that they had set up a camp fire in our camp site and wondered why none of the Venturers were participating.  As I mentioned earlier most of the Venturers were at the pistol range, so this was just a matter of one too many simultaneous events.  We told him we were going to take showers and then would join the program; however, they were filing the pool, which meant there was no pressure in any of the showers, so we just wandered over to the camp fire.  As we all had an early morning ahead of us, we all elected to go to bed before 10:00 PM.

 

Tuesday began with an early wakeup and reveille formation.  As we were getting ready, we thought these tents were on fire, but then we realized that it was just the condensation re-evaporating in the morning sun.

People like to complain about prepared food.  We live in a society of critics who have never done anything themselves but like to complain about the deeds of others.  (Google the “Man in the Arena” by Teddy Roosevelt to wind your way to it on the politics and humor area off my main Web page.)  I thought all the food was good.  It was generally tasty, and there were almost always extras for seconds.  In addition, they always had out the ingredients for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the most finicky eaters.  My philosophy is that if you complain about hot meals three times a day, you just have never been hungry enough.  In any event, I thought Broad Creek did a good job with the meals each day.

Tommy, Candy, and Michela “getting down” with the post-breakfast sing-along.

Tuesday morning we returned to COPE for what is almost always my favorite event of these COPE weeks:  low COPE.  Low COPE doesn’t have the drama of climbing the “giant’s ladder” or walking a two-rope bridge 40 feet in the air, but I think it is a much more interesting and fun experience.  Much like the leadership reaction courses used by the Army for decades, low COPE involves a series of problem solving events that stretch the creativity and teamwork of the group.  On Tuesday the Boy Scouts working on a merit badge were separated from the dozen or so Venturers from several crews.  The combined Venture crew, calling themselves “The Super Velociraptors” after 15 seconds to come up with a name, went through the events together all morning.

The now-sentient Super Velociraptors trying to escape from the evil mad scientists lair so that they could eat all humans.  The first challenge was to get across a acid lava spikey pit of doom, but only the plastic disks could touch the lava.  Also, if the disk was in the lava without also touching a velociraptor, it would be incinerated and lost.  After a few minutes of planning — and even a rehearsal or two — they set out on their journey.

This involved the lighter scouts riding on the backs of the heavier scouts as they slid and inched their way across the acid lava.  There were 14 or 15 kids and only 6 of the protective, floating, acid-lava-resistent disks.

Throughout the exercise the kids demonstrated good communication and problem solving skills.  I was quite proud of our kids.

Another event involved getting a tire off of a pole without the tire touching the pole or any of the scouts touching the pole.

A physically strenuous event involved getting all the kids up and over a wall.  In the picture above the staff in the black shirts were not helping get people over the way, but were merely spotting for safety.

The scouts quickly realized that the heaviest kids needed to go over the wall in the middle of the pack, while the lighter kids needed to go toward the beginning or end.  Here Maddie is pulled and pushed over the wall.  Scott was so impressed with this group that he gave them another challenge: to get him over the wall, but he would be a limp body and not help at all.  This involved a fair amount of risk — and no small amount of pain — on his part, but the kids came through with flying colors.

This event, called All Aboard, had an obvious solution.  The rules were that in order for the teleportation pad to teleport the super velociraptors to their next challenge, each person needed to get one foot on the pad, one foot in the air, and no feet on the ground.  The obvious solution involved slowly adding people in a balanced way around the pad; however, Erin came up with this unique solution, which solved the problem quickly and with little effort.  Scott, the instructor, seemed pleased with the unique solution.

The final group even of the day involved passing the entire group though the tire, representing a hole in the wall.  The rules to this event changed several times during execution.  At first they had a pair of glasses that they could pass back and forth that enabled the wearer to touch the tire without being incinerated.  After one or two people made it through, the glasses were stuck on one person’s head and could no longer be transferred.  Then later, they could only talk in velociraptor language.

Again the kids did very well during this and all the other events.

On Tuesday the kids decided not to go to climbing in the afternoon again, but instead relax for a couple of hours and then head down to the waterfront to ride the big float being pulled behind a speedboat.

During the siesta, we again played some volleyball.  The boys seemed oblivious to the fact that we were playing with three, pretty, teenage triplets.  They were more interested in the game.  Sigh.

Zzzzzzzz.

We linked up with transportation to the waterfront about 1600.  The direct route to the waterfront is not fully paved yet, and so we took a circuitous route to a public peer and then took a speedboat to the waterfront.  The goal of this journey was to ride the float being pulled behind the speedboat.  Unfortunately, only six people were allowed on the boat at any one time, so all the adults had to sit on the shore.  The water, heated by the Peach Point nuclear power plant, was like bath water.  Even if we couldn’t ride with the kids, it was relaxing to just float in the water.

Eventually both of the floats broke, coming back to shore as wilted pancakes.  The aquatics director took a few of us out on the boat with a knee  board.  I didn’t quite get the hang of it, but he said that Sammy was the best knee board rider all Summer.

Maddie managed to get up on the knee board, but like me, she never quite got her knees fully into the divots in the board and so didn’t have a smooth or long ride.

We missed dinner because of the late events at the shore; however, they set aside plenty of turkey, mashed potatoes, and corn for the 20 or so of us who came back late.   We watched the pistol range safety class while eating, because the kids were interested in shooting on Wednesday evening.  Then we took some late showers and played a game of Kung Fu Fighting (a card-based game) before hitting the sack.

 

Monday morning began with formation, flag raising, and announcements.  One by one, the various units were released to the chow hall for breakfast.

The first morning we had french toast and bacon.  Neither were terrific, but they weren’t terrible either.

All meals at scout camp end with a staff-led song.  I don’t remember what song this was, but everyone was “getting down.”

After breakfast we met some of the instructors for COPE.  COPE is challenging outdoor personal experience.  It seems to consist of three phases.  Day one consists of games and activities centered around getting to know the other participants.  Some of these games were just fun, like Ninja, but others were team-based problem solving exercises.

In this exercise the scouts stood in a circle holding onto handkerchiefs.  Then in a series of moves, the instructors moved handkerchiefs from one hand, through the center, and back to the scout.  This created a pretty intricate “Gordian knot.”  This used to be done holding hands as a “human knot,” but apparently someone dislocated a shoulder, so they have gone to this technique.  The scouts worked for a better part of an hour trying to step into and out of handkerchiefs to untie the know without letting go of the handkerchiefs.

The other half of our kids participated in an exercise to get their whole group across an acid lava spikey pit of doom,  The only object that could touch the acid lava without being destroyed were the two four-by-fours with ropes attached to them.  It was interesting to see how the kids from our crew took charge early in these games.

The obvious solution is to stand on the boards and coordinate walking with them.  This is difficult, but possible.  Maddie came up with the idea of using them as balance beams instead, getting as many folks as possible on one beam and then passing the beam from behind them to in front of them. In the end, the group ended up using both techniques as some of the scouts were more comfortable with one technique than the other.

After a morning at COPE, we went back to the chow hall for lunch and then played volleyball against some of the staff during “siesta” time.

They have a very nice volleyball court at Broad Creek with well-marked boundaries.  We joined the staff, who were playing after lunch.  I was having a particularly good serving day.

Tom demonstrated some of his JV volleyball prowess — and getting angry at the lack of rules being followed.

Erin scored a few points with her serves.

Maddie did well, also; although, she might have done better with her eyes open!

After siesta we headed back to the COPE area for climbing.  All the kids took a turn at the climbing wall, most twice.  The consensus was that the rock bits were easier to climb that the 2×4’s.

The kids all seemed to have a really good time climbing the tower.  We left the climbing area in time to make it back to change into Class A shirts for the flag ceremony and dinner.  After dinner we participated in a conservation project.  Our project was to use hedge cutters and scythe-like weed whippers to clear portions of the yellow trail which had become overgrown.  Tom, Ryan, and I spent a fair amount of time trying to cut trees that had fallen across the path with two inappropriately-small hand saws.  It was good for working off a few dinner calories but was not the most effective way to clear the trail!

Sunday, just before noon we rendezvoused at “Scout Hall” to take five of our eleven Venturers (one would be joining us later that evening) to Broad Creek for Venturing Week.  This was a week set aside by the scout camp for Venture crews.  The turnout was much better than last year, but there still weren’t enough to fill the camp, so additional Boy Scout troops attended as well.

We drove up in two cars full of kids and baggage, arriving just as registration began.  It was a little disorganized, and we weren’t sure where to go, because there was no one to meet the Venture crews and orient them.  Eventually we figured out that the girls were in one camp and the boys in another.  We unloaded bags and occupied tents.

We wandered down to the pool area, where we all completed the swimming test — all passing.  A couple of the youth leaders gathered the Venturers for some team building events and game, including Captain on the Deck.

Another activity planned by the youth leaders was tie dying shirts.  For those crews that didn’t have Class A uniforms, the tie dyed shirts were meant to suffice for V-week.

Everyone then got into their Class A uniforms for evening retreat ceremony on the parade field, followed by dinner in the chow hall.

At dark the camp staff put on a terrific campfire show, including a number of really humorous skits, many of which I hadn’t seen before.  The camp director, Hank, gave a stirring rendition of a poem with all the lights turned out.

The show concluded with the camp staff singing the Broad Creek song, and we all filed back to our tents for some shut eye.