Day 891 -- Scout Cam

With the Interstate 90 in Wyoming utterly failing to provide good photo opportunities, I decided to post a photo from real life. Here you see a photo from the Blackhawk Area Council Cub Scout Day Camp, 2009. These are the Tigers. If you've been reading for a year, you may remember that last year, I helped out in a small way. This year, I jumped in with both feet. I am the leader of the Tiger Camp.

The main camp has kids who have already been in scouts for at least a year. They have a kind of a rotation. A couple of people do crafts, and they rotate each group through, the same craft, seven times. Then someone else does nature, and they rotate each group through, the same lesson or project, seven times a day. Someone else does BB guns, and they do the same thing seven times a day, and seven more times tomorrow, and seven more the next day, and so on, forever, because it doesn't take any planning to do BB guns. You just keep an eye on the kids and make sure that they don't shoot each other's eyes out.

The Tigers are different. These are kids between kindergarten and first grade, who will be in scouts for the first time next year. Rather than mix them in with the bigger kids, they shunt them over to the side. The leader (that's me, remember) then has to do crafts and nature and rubber band guns (no BBs for us) and games and more crafts and more rubber band guns and more games and more rubber band guns. Since they have a five minute attention span, and camp is six hours, I need 72 activities. OK, it's not that bad, but I needed more than I had prepared. Nothing seemed to take as long as I had planned. So we had to keep throwing in activities. "OK, let's see who can be quietest the longest!"

It was approximately 1,000,000 degrees out. We had a canopy, but half the activities took us out from under fairly often. And even under, it was still 9,999,900 degrees. Three of the Tigers burst into flames. And it's not going to be any cooler all week. At least I have water games planned for tomorrow, which will help keep us cool.

I did run this morning. I could easily have taken the day off, but I figured I needed my endorphins to face the day. I think that's probably wise. It was a long slog, but not nearly as long as it would have been if I had skipped my run.

Three more days. Three more days. Three more days....