Newsletter March 12, 2002

Falcon Patrol
Derek

The Falcons are ahead of the game. We are managing to stay ahead of competition in all respects, except through the leadership’s advancement. In competition we dominate, in attendance we are just above or so it seems. In younger scout advancement compared to the sharks there is some controversy. Overall the Falcons are soaring high. The patrol is becoming more spirited than before. The only things standing in our way for honor patrol are the occasional major advancements of the Sharks that cannot be avoided.
Overall the advancement of this patrol is progressing increasingly in skill and knowledge. They are learning quickly and only need to learn to cooperate more efficiently with the older scouts. If the scouts put a little more effort in I’m sure that would make a tremendous difference, not that they aren’t already doing great.

A Scout is Loyal

Portola Redwoods State Park
11/10-12/01
Brian

The November outing was a backpacking trip to Portola Redwoods State Park. It was a whole lot of fun. We backpacked in about five miles to our wonderful camp in the redwoods. We then had lunch, followed by a day hike up to a ridge down the trail a little past our camp. The hike was a little odd since on the way some of us played a game of risk. When we got to the ridge, it started raining and continued forever (about one minute). After returning from our day hike, we played risk some more and hung out around camp. We played with our ultra-cool light-up footballs, even as it got dark.
The next day our group, Mr. Thurgate, Mr. Ho, Mr. Lind, myself, James, David, Eric, Alex, and Karl, split up, since David and Alex needed to go home for school the next day and Mr. Ho needed to drive them home. The rest of us went on a day hike to a nearby river and redwood grove. The hike went well and was a lot of fun. We were hiking through a beautiful redwood forest, which, partly due to the rain the day before and the clouds, was very moist. It drizzled a little on the hike, but for the most part it was just cloudy or once in a while, it was even sunny! The trail ended in a mile loop and after finishing this, we had lunch next to the river by a huge fallen redwood. Upon getting back to camp, we once again hung out, and played catch.
The following morning we had a very . . . uh interesting breakfast. Karl and Eric refused to try it, so James and I got to eat a lot of our chocolate pancakes. Although they weren’t the best, they were still pretty

good. After a late start, we packed up and hiked out in the rain. It was very wet, but still a neat experience. We got to the road slightly off from where we had intended, but that was no problem for it wasn’t far along the road to the car. The storm that we were in was apparently so strong that it had knocked out a tree, which took out a power line. Shortly after passing around this obstacle, we arrived back at the car and drove the short distance home, concluding our best backpack trip of the year (also our only but it would have been the best anyway).

OA Update
Bryant

Hey everybody! This is what will probably be my LAST OA REPORT!!! Why, you ask? Well, your friendly OA rep is moving on to bigger, better things- patrol leader. Then again, there are only four OA members- occupying the positions of patrol leader, SPL, ASPL, and JASM; someone’s got to go to those meetings. Since each of our OA members are invaluable to our troop (don’t deny it!), it will be hard to find someone to go to these clandestine OA meetings. So who, then, will go? Weellll- if we had more 1st Class scouts *hint hint*…which you have to be to be eligible for OA…then our problem would be solved. So to our many young scouts- get 1st Class ASAP!!! In other OA news…everyone at OA is working hard for the upcoming camporee…so everyone train hard for it…also; I helped out with Troop 466 OA elections…our troop’s elections will be here soon! The bottom line: get 1st Class- and if you have it, run for OA!

Giving Tree
12/22/01
David

For my service project, and this December outing, we went to the Giving Tree to sort gifts for needy children during the holiday season. It was pretty fun, although the staff clearly had way too many volunteers (which was probably good for them, but they were sometimes overwhelmed and couldn’t find enough things for us to do). The warehouse was big and gray concrete - dusty, too. But inside, there were thousands and thousands and thousands of ultra-neat toys. We moved stuff around and put various things in various places. Since our shift was one of the last in the season, we also cleaned up. In fact, since sweeping was not an option because of the fine dustiness, we had to pick up a bunch of pieces of Styrofoam.
One of the funnier incidents started when they told us to move these carts into a corner. There was a bag of toys in the corner. We didn’t want to move the bag, because we thought, “Hey, it’s there for a reason. Better not disturb it…” We didn’t think of it for the rest of the time, but then some firefighters came in and asked for the bag of toys marked with their fire department’s name, so that they could distribute it to the kids in their area. Everyone searched all over the warehouse, but nobody could find it. Then, we looked in the corner. And, sure enough, the fire department’s bag of toys was there. They thanked us profusely. Funniness indeed.
At the end, the organizer/coordinator person gave a speech. It turns out she had only started the Giving Tree as a college project, but it expanded hugely in only a few years. She took wishes from children and put them on trees that she had set up around the Bay

Area. It started with one tree and a few children, but each year, she dreamt a little bigger dream, and now her organization serves tens of thousands of children - a very inspiring story.

Mt. Madona
1/19-20/02
JamesEnomoto

The last two years, I have had the pleasure of being in charge of what I like to think of as one of the best and most fun outings you will ever go on with the troop. This is a very relaxing car camping trip, where you can get many important cooking requirements done. On this trip, we had James Melendez and Alexander Tan who tried to get their cooking requirements signed off, along with many other requirements. Other than just getting requirements signed off, we saw many animals like deer and other animals. If you just want to have fun, they also have some big fields that you can play football on. One thing that we have done the past couple of years is a service project. This year, we filled up holes with wood chips. The holes were formed by trees that the park rangers needed to chop down. It was a lot of fun and we will probably do something like this for years to come. If you ask anybody the one thing that makes this one of the best trips, it is the archery range. You get to shoot at many targets at various distances and in many environments. The one target that is a favorite to all of us, has to be one that you shoot at a target from 60 yards away while you are at the top of this hill. Even though you are bound to lose many arrows, it is a lot of

we are able to entertain the Webelos and catch the attention of their parents. At West, the scouts showed all the Webelos around and spotted them while on the Monkey Bridge. We cooked for them and socialized with them and made them feel welcome. We let them know some details of our troop and showed them how our troop worked. Over all it was a big success and we may be looking forward to possibly doubling our troop next year.

Habitat for Humanity
Derek Webb

My service project was split into two portions; the first was in the fundraising for habitat, which was a race. The second, I spent almost 8 hours working on one of the houses the fundraising had brought money in for. The first portion of my service was in the Stanford College area.
There were two races, a 10-kilometer and then 5-kilometer run around the Stanford Stadium in about 2-kilometer radius. There were about 20 teams competing in this event, most of who gave donations to habitat and paid their entry fees for the race. I helped to set up the race in the morning for about forty minutes. The race began a couple hours later when I was posted on a corner of the course to direct the runners in the correct direction in which the course was headed. I was supposed to cheer the runners on at the same time. This was only to last a maximum of 20 minutes even though I was out there for at least 2 hours.
My help was much appreciated especially since

in a form of vacuum. The heat had to be applied right or the solder would become messy. The joint was then sprayed and wiped down. This work was not that difficult and after some time I got to be rather exceptional at it. Lots of obstacles would come as to how the piping was to be placed. My supervisor would be mistaken once in a while and we would have to go back and undo a couple of joints. It had to be perfect.
After work on the tubing was done, the insulation crew needed some help and I decided to give it a try. Insulation installation was less demanding than I had first figured. The process was easy; I later learned that this was a new style of insulation installation. First the crew took black plastic netting and stapled it to the southwestern edge of the house. It was rolled up to the eastern edge. The netting was a bed for the installation in between the floor support boards. The netting was spread loosely between the boards and the insulation laid in it. The netting was then stapled to each board. This netting kind of installation is much easier than someone having to go underneath it and staple it there. The insulation had to fill up every crevice of the floor and had to be cut around all sorts of tubes poking up and the netting stapled around these things. After a while, this process became very annoying. Other than that, the installation is made of fibers of fiberglass and is very itchy when gets on your skin and in your pours. Everyone was itching at the end of this.
At the end of the day the pipes of the first house were testes by air pressure to see if there were any leaks. It turned out to have a slow leak. The crew then went around to each of the soldered connections and sprayed them one by one with soap. They found one cause of the leak in a joint that had been done by someone the day before. The soap is used to cover any hole in the bond and if the air pressure is leaking out there, then the soap will form bubbles.
I found most of this work to be satisfying seeing how much the houses had progressed in just one day made it look like they may be done in a matter of months. The hardest part for me was to lie across skinny boards to reach the middle of the netting to staple. I rather enjoyed this experience almost as much as going to Mexico to build much more crude houses in four days.