Troop 281 Cincinnati, OH

For the weekend of November 19th-21st, the weather may have been growing colder, but the level of competitiveness was only growing hotter by the second, for it was time for Color Wars: Fall 2010! One of Troop 281’s major “signature” events, the various patrols spend a weekend competing against each other through various challenges all in order to claim bragging rights of being the best patrol in the troop…until the next color war, that is. War was officially declared between the patrols Saturday morning after Flag Raising by the start of one of the most infamous aspects of the campout: flag stealing (where patrols try to steal the flags from other patrols and sneak them to SPL Alex to score a point). Flag stealing was allowed during the entire campout on Saturday, but that wasn’t the only way to win Color Wars. In addition to the ongoing flag stealing, there were periodic challenges that the patrols had to face in order to win points and beat out the other teams. The first set of these...

At the meeting for November 9th, there wasn't all that much to do for the scouts. The most important thing that was on the "to do" list was that the scouts needed to finish the planning and equipment sign-out for the upcomming Color Wars campout. The sheets for these actions had run out before the previous meeting, so more needed to be made. When that was done with, the next activity was something of a surprise: it was the first event for Color Wars! This event was simple: each patrol would be a team, with all patrols competing against each other in a relay. However, instead of simply running around a track with a little stick, here the objective was to tie a specified knot in front of a "referee" before running back to the rest of the patrol and tagging the next person to go off. While one would have expected the oldest scouts, the Duct Tape patrol, to have easily won the challenge, there were only two scouts who actually ran the relay because all the other mem...

The first Troop meeting for November coincided with a sudden drop in temperature outside, so in the interest of keeping warm, the skill session for this night was firebuilding. Led by Avery Reynolds and Steven LaCount, the skill session once again largely served more for the benefit of the younger scouts since all the older scouts should know everything that was spoken about in the lesson. That only makes it more amusing that one scout (who will not be named for Internet security reasons) tried to look like a brainiac of fire building when he began reading directly from the Scout Handbook section on firebuilding, even though the skill session was not "open note" so to speak. When firebuilding lessons were over, the meeting shifted into planning for the infamous "color wars" campout. The main focus of Color Wars is for an intra-troop competition between all the patrols to see who is the best and is worthy of associated bragging rights up until the next Color War. Th...