Troop 281 Cincinnati, OH

This scout meeting the skill session was supposed to be about flag etiquette. The SPL, Alex R. who was going to lead the skill session had a car crash, was in the hospital.* The patrol leaders decided to have game night instead. We played gauntlet and soccer. Gauntlet is this totally awesome game where there are two people, one on each side of the gym, throwing dodge balls at you as you run in between them. If you are one of the last two people to get hit, you are the next thrower. Joe S. Historian [*While serious, Alex was released that evening and will make a full recovery. Ed.]

With winter break having ended and everybody going back to work, school, or whatever it is that they do during most of the week, life was starting to settle back down from the holiday hubub. That also meant that Troop 281 would start meeting up again and begin the usual Tuesday schedule of first doing troop business and scout-related activities, then secondly playing dodgeball. The meeting started out like normally but with some special guests: Cub Scouts who were attending a troop meeting to see if they wanted to come to this troop once they get their Arrow of Light. After the usual repeated sayings of the Pledge, Scout Law, and Scout Oath, there was a lot of business to cover because of the missed Tuesdays during the holiday break. After the mountain of announcements, news, and what-have-you was dealt with, SPL Alex had the scouts form a semi-circle of benches so that he could lead the night's skill session. The visiting Cub Scouts were called out of the session early while the r...

As the sun began to set on the Anderson Hills United Methodist Church, the scouts of Troop 281 were once again packing up for a campout. It was clear from the massive amounts of food being loaded into the trailer that the campout in question could not be anything other than FeastFest; another one of Troop 281's 'signature' campouts. With FeastFest, it is a celebration of, well, food. Each patrol (Staff included!) is in charge of some aspect of the giant setup of food that in some cases could be considered a second Thanksgiving, only without the Turkey or other major Thanksgiving staples, but more on that later. Going back to the start of the campout, the usual challenge of getting both troop and personal gear to fit inside the trailer, things already had gotten off to an unusual start. As it turned out; the church was holding a big play that same night, so the parking lot was parked up and forced the scouts to load up the trailer from the curbside under the giant columns. W...

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...

At the most recent Troop meeting, it was time for the Personal Management skill session. Personal Management is an Eagle required merit badge that does take at least 3 months to complete (and it can't be rushed like other, simpler merit badges), so it's best for scouts to earn it early on to get it out of the way. To earn a merit badge, one requires a merit badge counselor, and former Assistant Scoutmaster Bill Ossman is a counselor for that badge, the original member of the "Mooseheads" (the nickname given to the Assistant Scoutmasters) and an all-around awesome guy to know. Mr. Ossman returned to visit to the troop and presented the skill session for the scouts. Keeping the atmosphere constantly filled with an air of humor with his duck jokes, Mr. Ossman nevertheless stressed the importance of the badge and covered all the basics that a scout needs to attain it, such as how small expenditures on small snacks and "girlfriend-things" can turn out to be a ve...