[quote]Bujo wrote:
Then I didn’t miss much. Funny how all the guys that jockeyed for council positions never seemed to get their hands dirty. I could always find them by the lodge or the cafeteria, never saw them in the woods.[/quote]
As someone on a council, that’s the truth. I wasn’t so into that.
I served as service chair, and my job at service weekends was not to work. My job was to make sure everything was going smoothly. That meant running around, not working. Stupid, and everyone resents you. Especially those doing their ordeal.
Did anybody participate in Explorer Scouts? It was Co-Ed, 16-21 year olds only, usually set to pursue one particular interest (career or special interest related). Mine was focused on “high adventure”, mostly serious backpacking, but we did other things like water skiing weekends, and trail rides in the Davis Mountains of west Texas.
Its called venturing now and it is more or less the same thing. Has green uniforms.
Did it for like 6 months then thought it was dumb. Crew wasnt serious. Kept the uniform thou
[/quote]
Too bad. My crew was small but sharp. Plus two of the girls had big tits and liked going out into the woods (not that we were suave enough to make anything happen).
Yea with those service type weekends. Upper level people “supervised”. Our lodge chief just took pics. It was pretty lame. I sumtimes go up to help during service weekend and ordeal weekends. I often get to lead a service project group to to my experience and having worked at the campin facility for number of years. I love working with those little bastards and showin them what real work is
I made a butterfly garden for Hermann Park in Houston, where schoolkids could go on field trips and learn up-close what the life-cycles of insects were like.
I didn’t get too involved in OA. I did my Ordeal, and while I was on it busting my ass one of the overseers (foremen? the guys who coordinate the thing) was mocking the fact that I was working hard. The exact words were:
[quote] Dipshit said:
Dude, why’re you pushing yourself? You’re acting like best worker gets a blowjob![/quote]
Now, in hindsight, they guy was fifteen and had probably just learned what a blowjob was, and wanted to use it in a sentence. But it really turned me away from the the OA organization. I figured that any place where there were people like him were not places I wanted to go.
OA was more annoying than anything to me in retrospect. Too many people took it too seriously, it was strangely cultish (t ome at least). I made it to “brotherhood” or whatever the second level was, but that was just because I worked at a scout camp…wouldn’t have done it otherwise.
Don’t get me wrong, the service aspects were cool of course. But some of the rituals…weird weird weird. I barely remember any of them now, just the sense that I didn’t really understand why we needed all the intimidation during the ceremonies. OA was kind of like the special fraternity of scouting - just like a college frat it attracted all the douchebags who got off on hazing and intimidation and weird ceremonial bullshit.
I preferred plain old scouting - doing stupid shit with knives, learning how to tie knots, starting campfires, camping in january in the snow, etc. That was badass.
I made Eagle in 2000. Got everything done like the night before my 18th birthday. Did the same as a lot of guys have already mentioned, made Life pretty quickly and then procrastinated finishing up Eagle. Glad as hell I did it though. Aside from jobs, college applications, etc… It’s just a nice feeling thinking back on all the fun I had and hard work I did to get it. I was in from Tiger cubs all the way through Eagle, then went back and did a few trips with the troop after that too, as an Assistant Scoutmaster. Taught a bunch of boys how to rock climb a couple times, that was a hoot.
For my project I designed and cut a mile and a half walking trail (loop) on some land that had been recently donated to the town Parks and Rec Department.
I also did a trek at Philmont. Was supposed to be a 75 miler, but due to some navigational errors it ended up being more like 85. One of the guys in our group was a bit slow (some sort of mental handicap, not sure what) and he wanted to navigate one morning. His father was on the trek with us and was helping him with the map so we figured we were ok until we walked into the wrong camp! Had to backtrack like 5 miles to get back to the spot where we’d gone wrong (one of the resupplies) and then hike the 7 or 8 miles we were supposed to have done that day. Got into camp well after dark that night having done like 17 or 18 miles that day instead of 7 or 8.
I was in OA, but our lodge never did much as far as I recall.
Overall scouts was awesome for me. I was in one of the most active troops I’ve ever seen or heard of (we did at least one trip every month except January, and even then we sometimes did a winter camp out). I got to hike, climb, ski, backpack, camp, or just plain visit all over the northeast, saw west point and anapolis, rafted the Kenebec, Hudson, and Arkansas rivers, and spent a week every summer for 7 years at Yawgoog (third highest rated scout camp in the country after Philmont and Maine Hi-Ad). I couldn’t even begin to list all the stuff I learned from scouting.
I also did a trek at Philmont. Was supposed to be a 75 miler, but due to some navigational errors it ended up being more like 85. One of the guys in our group was a bit slow (some sort of mental handicap, not sure what) and he wanted to navigate one morning. [/quote]
LOL. Navigational Errors.
Been there, man. Took the wrong fork on a trail and went down a steep hill. Then had to turn around climb back up.
We had two guys get lost. They wanted prove how bad ass they were and left us behind on the trail. They were so bad ass they got lost and came into camp 4 hours after the rest of us.
People took OA was mixed for me. I think too many people got in that should not have gotten in (at least in my lodge and troop). once you turned 13 and were First Class, you basically were in. But most people dropped out or never got involved.
The other half were people that took it WAY too seriously. The were just there power hungry nerds that couldnt do anything outside of OA, so OA was there thing.
