Alas, I return!
I forgot to keep a journal…bad me. (If you’ve read any of my future posts, you’ll notice this happens often…) I had slight problems sending a letter to Sara…again, bad me. This could be a long post, I will try to do it in some form of chronological order. God!!! things get redundant when you go to yawgoog for your 7th year. For instance, “When I shout swim, you will loudly shout back qualifications and then you will be dismissed.”
Although we brought at least 400 feet of rope to camp with us, I managed to cause a rope shortage in only one day. Under my leadership (of course), we made a cargo net between 4 trees behind my tent. We had at most 5 people on the net at a time. It showed no signs of breaking, and the sag was minimal. As I later learned, It was not a good week to use all of the rope, we had about 5 guys taking pioneering and the instructor was a really arrogant, 12-year-old-looking 15-year-old jackass(James McCarthy)! Enough about him for now though. I believe it is time we go into the scrabbit and the chipmunks, but first a little fuzzy-nuts background. My first year at camp, I became obsessed with capturing/killing/torturing a chipmunk, who was somehow (different story…) given the name “fuzzy nuts.” I took a picture of him that year. We never really had chipmunk or even squirrel problems that I can remember, but this year was an exception. It was not uncommon to walk behind a tent and see 5 squirrels just sitting there, never mind the chipmunks! Now, if this has you excited, keep reading! It gets worse. We saw a Squirrel with no tail!!…It conducted itself like a rabbit, and looked like a hybrid between a rabbit and a squirrel. It quickly was named “the scrabbit”. I have a picture of the scrabbit, which I will post when I get around to it. (one year later: oops…) Usually, we have been able to leave food out during the day without worrying about the mini-bears. It was the skunks at night that we were worried about. Turns out mini-bears will eat just about anything, including:
- Toilet Paper, even 2-ply!
- Twizzlers
- Hot chocolate
- Doritos
- Bread
- cookies
- What Don’t they eat? (Fusilli)
John and Al both arrived slightly before dinner on Monday. Moving on to Tuesday, the only thing I can really think of at the moment is troop tournament…It was baseball with a tennis racket and a tennis ball. I made three outs by catching some really far balls. We lost to a troop that is about 4 times our size….get to them later. On Wednesday, we had a challenge with Abby’s troop to a game of water dodge ball, which was changed to water polo. John and Al were on Abby’s team, but Jerry Labonte, the waterfront director, who hails from my town and troop was on my side. Within the first 10 minutes, I made 4 goals, but they soon caught up. If I correctly kept score, we tied 4 to 4…there was already another game scheduled for Friday. Thursday is when everything happened. My friend Mike, who hails from Burrillville’s other troop works at Ashaway. It was nice talking to him. I meant to take kayaking BSA on Thursday, but why bother? I own kayaks…..and I have access to a lake…so I took 2 hours and did two merit badges, I made a dagger for wood carving and wrote a report for orienteering, which I had a partial for carried over from the 2001 national jamboree(all they offered for orienteering was a partial.) Thursday brought me up took 26 merit badges, enough for a bronze palm. Now back to that other troop that we lost against. They stay in the campsite right next to ours. Every night they were VERY Loud….at VERY late hours. On Thursday night, their insanity was stopped—forever! Our SM and ASM, John, went over there and told them that they were loud…apparently they had no idea. We also notified our P.C., Lou Persigen, who threatened to take Honor Troop away from them. Now, Leaving Thursday for Friday…Picked up my woodcarving blue card….that is an easy 1 hour merit badge. The highlight of Friday came at 7:30–our final game of water polo with campsite George Washington. This would decide who would leave Yawgoog as the losers and who would claim victory. we scored 5 goals, the final score was 5 to 0. Their scoutmaster played rough. I was swimming for the ball, when all of a sudden, he grabbed my bathing suit and swam right over me—It was all in good fun though. I am now the second scout in the history of my troop to get a palm and I plan on going all the way to silver.(where no Scout of 102 has gone before!) I might to fill out an application at Yawgoog this year. I think being on staff might be fun…I just wonder why I didn’t decide to apply earlier.
I would be quite remiss if I didn’t mention my most unpleasant experience at Ashaway. Five of my friends and I went kayaking one day, and had a Kayaking war. We flipped each other, and saved each other, etc. ( I am told that I was the only one who didn’t flip. ) We were unaware that as we had our fun, the lifeguards at Ashaway were watching us. When we left the roped in area two by two, the Lifeguard at the buddy board accused each scout of jumping out of the Kayak, saying “YOU JUMP OUT OF KAYAK!!!”. Each scout, of course, denied having jumped out of the Kayak. Unfortunately, I was the last person to leave the roped in area. I was busy putting gear away for the lifeguards (I’m just that nice…). Everyone else having denied jumping out of the Kayak, the lifeguard was positive that it was me. As I walked up to the buddy board, he roared “YOU! JUMP OUT OF KAYAK!”. After denying this, the Large, Jamaican Lifeguard retorted “NO!!! I SEE you jump out of kayak!”. Feeling quite defeated, I admitted having jumped into the water, but also provided a reason. I told him that I had to help my buddies T-Rescue as they were too weak to lift water-logged Kayaks. He seemed reasonably satisfied with this and sent us all on our way back to camp.
Edit: How could I forget? The dress parade was cancelled. apparently there was thunder in the forecast, we have had it in rain before. I live only 40 minutes away and It is a bright sunny day still..no sign of thunder…not even a drop of rain since I left the reservation.