Historian

05/29/2010

This trip, which was organized by Robbie, is becoming an annual spring event for our troop and is so popular that we needed to separate the troop into two groups, one going on Saturday and the other on Sunday.  Your historian attended the Sunday archery trip, which started with car pickups at around 10:00-10:30 am to drive to the facility in Dedham for an 11:30 am reservation.

Once we had all arrived, an instructor told the basics about how to knock your arrow and the safety instructions. “Knocking the arrow” means taking an arrow and attaching it to the bow so it is ready to be fired. Then we all received our equipment.  There were three commands for us in the process of shooting the targets. The first was “strattle the yellow line” which meant to walk up to the line and face down range holding your bow.  The second command was “begin” which meant we could take an arrow from the quiver knock it and fire. The “quiver” is a bag attached on your wasteband/beltloop that holds many arrows at a time. The third command was “clear to retrieve” which meant we could then walk down the range and retrieve our arrows.

At the very end we had some competitions with balloons on the bull’s eye and whoever hit their target got candy. The first person to hit would receive 3 candy bars and 5 dollars, the next 2 candy bars and 3 dollars, the next 1 candy bar and 2 dollars, and then there were no more prizes. We did three rounds of this competition. Not everyone hit their mark, but those who did enjoyed their candy and counting their winnings on the way home after a really fun archery trip.

Respectfully submitted,

Adam Benson

04/24/2010 – 04/25/2010

On Saturday, April 24, 2010 seventeen scouts had committed to participate in ‘Advancement Weekend’ at the Boy Scout campsite within Wheelwright Park.  The first order of business was to load up all of the camping gear including tents, stoves, and water containers and cooking utensils from The Locker at Deer Hill School.  Mr. Hill’s trailer and Mr. Hillman’s van were loaded by the scouts and brought over to the North Main Street entrance of Wheelwright.

This particular Saturday was also a work day for the Trustees of the Lightkeepers Cottage where Troop 28 holds Eagle and Court of Awards ceremonies.  Mr. Avery asked whether scouts were interested in earning services hours for advancement, so many of us delayed starting on the campout so that we could help spread mulch in the beautiful gardens around the Lightkeeper’s Cottage.  With so many scouts assisting, the job was completed quickly and we went on our way to Wheelwright.

The scouts participating in Advancement weekend were: Robbie, Brodie, Evan, Adam B., Andrew, Jake G., Wyatt, Jack O’B, Nick, Dylan, Quentin, Patrick, Connor, Ryan, David, with Derek as the scout in charge and Tucker assisting.

The main objective of the campout in Wheelwright Park was to get the newly crossed over scouts involved in skill building and learning the basics of camping.  We began with everyone meeting at the entrance to Wheelwright and hiking in with our backpacks to setup camp. The day continued on with scouts working in their patrol groups doing various activities from earning Toten chips to navigating throughout the woods using a compass.

A few interesting things happened during the campout. On a small hike led by Jack O`Brien to the rock formation known as ‘the Lemon Squeezer” which is a traditional first year Tiger Scout hike.  Some boys figured out that they can’t fit through the small openings in the rocks anymore.  Your Historian just happens to be one of the scouts who took the narrowest route, made it through but ripped his sweatshirt along the way!

Tucker assigned a five scouts with time on their hands a challenge of building a shelter capable of fitting all of them into it and sleeping in it. The structure was made of sticks, pine needles, and leaves to provide protection from the rain and wind. It worked but nobody slept in it and it was taken down shortly after.

A campout dinner is usually one of the most treasured times of the campout.  This held true for on the advancement campout with spaghetti and red sauce for dinner, and egg burritos/ bagels for breakfast.  For dinner Dylan, Nick, and Adam C. did a fantastic job of using the stove to boil water and make pasta, and warm the red sauce. Dinner was served in order of who was ready first, making an organized line to be served.  All went well and the food was good.

For cleanup, we did the traditional three bucket system. A bucket of cold water, soap warm water, and bleach water. It went by fast one a man on each station and one drying the utensils of fellow scouts.

A game of manhunt was organized and playing during the night hours after dinner and cleanup. Manhunt is a game with one seeker and many hiders continuously running from the seeker and he chases them down. Once tagged you help the seeker find people and tag them. The last person standing is the winner.   Lights out was around 11 pm

We woke up the next morning around 6am to go on the hike.  We started out by leaving the campsite, and walking to the North Main Street parking lot near the baseball fields.  Then we took a trail that ended up at an old cabin that girl scouts used many years ago. The cabin was full of old furniture – maybe they were antiques — and artifacts and is badly in need of a cleaning with all the dust and dirt in it.  I think this will be one of our projects over the next few months.  From the cabin, it was a short distance back to our campsite.  We packed our gear, cleaned up to leave no trace, and headed back to the parking lot for our rides home.  This was a very successful campout where many new scouts learned the joys of camping.

Respectfully submitted,

Adam Benson, Historian

02/05/2010 – 02/07/2010
Bretton Woods

Every winter in recent history, the scouts of Troop 28 eagerly anticipate the scout ski trip.  This year we were able to return to Bretton Woods, NH ski area.  In years past, the troop was loaned the use of a Boy Scout cabin on Broomstick Hill Road in Littleton NH.  I hear that it’s a cool cabin — rustic, with a wood stove, no running water or plumbing, and accessible by an unpaved road.  Take a look at our website to see photos of past ski trips to get a glimpse of the scout cabin. The troop hasn’t been back to the cabin since 2008 because our troop has grown so much in the past two years that the cabin is not large enough to accommodate everyone in the troop plus the adult chaperones.  So last year, the troop tried the ‘scout overnight’ package at Waterville Valley.  We skied two days and stayed on the floor with our sleeping bags along with two other scout troops in the Conference Center at Waterville Valley.  We had a great time, but everyone wanted to get back to Bretton Woods.

So on Friday February 5th 21 scouts including Christian, Morgan, Alec, Julien, Adam, Reagan, Derek, Nick, Dylan, Robbie, Jack T, Sasha, Andrew, Jack O, Thomas, Luke,  Evan, Levente, Sam, Julian, Brodie came home from school, and hopped into the cars of our generous adult chaperones to make our way to Bretton Woods.

The troop had made arrangements with Bretton Woods to say in their Rosebrook Recreation Center, which is a very short walk through the parking lot to the Base Lodge.  The Rec Center had Ping-Pong and billiard tables, squash/volleyball and volleyball courts, a big kitchen and eating area, a widescreen TV, showers, and a pool which were all constantly in use by the scouts.

Mr. Ackley was our Adult Leader and Derek was the scout in charge of leading the activity.  Derek got lots of help from Christian and Mr. Ackley and considering how large a group we were, everything seemed to run smoothly.

Most of us got to the Rec Center on Friday night between 7pm and 9pm.  Scouts and adults who needed to rent equipment went over to the Base Lodge if they arrived before 9pm, to get their gear.  It was tough settling in that first night.  We were all tired but we were really excited about being there and going skiing.  Some of the adults — Mom! — Wanted ‘lights out’ to happen sooner rather than later.  It took a while to set up our mattress pads and bags and find a comfortable place to sleep on the floor.  After a brief troop meeting, we watched the first half of the ‘Terminator – Salvation’ movie, played cards, and played ping pong.  I don’t think we slept much that first night.

On Saturday we had all agreed to get up at 5:45 am so we would arrive at the Rental Shop by 7am because some of us still didn’t have their rental gear and we were told that a group of 100 British students were scheduled to arrive to get their rental stuff.  A number of scouts set their cellphone alarms and we woke to a chorus of beeps.  Needless to say, we were the first ones at the rental shop and at the Food Court in the Base Lodge.  Mr. Ackley handed out vouchers and we ordered our breakfast sandwiches, pancakes and other good stuff.

We had another brief troop meeting to remind everyone that we wanted everyone to come in for lunch at 11:30 so we would all eat together and get a head count.  We made sure that everyone had a buddy that was of the same skiing level.  Then we set off skiing on some of the easier trails to warm up our legs and refresh our skills of skiing. At 11:30 most of us were there and Mr. Ackley gave us the lunch vouchers. After lunch some of us played cards and a group went out with Mr. Benson to start their Snow Sports Merit Badge.  Later, another group of scouts went out with Mr. Jackisch to do work on their badges.  A video clip of Mr. J’s group will soon be up on the website – stay tuned!

We all tried to get together for a group photo at 3pm at the top of one of the lifts, but not everyone could find the spot.  So we stayed out skiing till around 3:30 on some harder slopes and then we walked back to the Rec. Center.  The plan for the night was to have a pizza dinner party at 5:30pm in our upper floor lodge space in the Recreation Center.  So we played around doing various activities for about 2 hours before we ate.  Brodie had secretly asked Mr. Ackley and Mrs. Benson if the troop could get a cake for his dad who was having a birthday.  So Bretton Woods made a humongous chocolate cake for Mr. Jackisch. There was another Boy Scout troop from Newton, Mass. that was also skiing at BW.  They came over to use the pool and billiard room on Saturday night.  We shared our cake with their whole troop because the cake was that big!  Afterwards we watched the end of Terminator Salvation, while some of the scouts played cards.  After all of our activity during the day, we were all zonked and fell asleep pretty easily.

So on Sunday morning, we woke up at a more civilized hour and ‘broke camp’.  We packed up our sleeping bags and gear and stacked everything in a corner of the kitchen.  We figured it was easier than trying to pack up cars now then trying to unpack to put the skis in after we were done in the afternoon. We then headed over to the Lodge to buy breakfast and we decided to make another attempt to take a group picture just outside of the Base Lodge.  After the photo, we got with buddies or groups and spread out throughout the mountain tackling hard or easy trails.  At lunchtime, we talked with our adult drivers about when we were going to get off the slopes and leave for home. Most of us decided to leave between 3:00-3:30pm. We hit the slopes again for our last runs, and before we knew it we were in our cars driving home to Cohasset all too soon.

The ski trip is one of the best trips of the year and there were no scouts who didn’t love where we were staying or the mountain we were skiing on. This was only my second ski trip with the troop and I didn’t realize what a strong tradition card playing and cribbage was during scout trips.  We have to remember to bring out cribbage boards and cards to Squanto or the Jamboree this summer!  Everyone said they are looking forward to next year and hoping to have just as good or better of a time.

Respectfully Submitted,

Adam N. Benson, Historian