A Scout is Loyal

homes. In this way the boxes will be beneficial for multiple species. Since the boxes are premade and ready for habitation, the owls will be able to move right in.
On the first day of the project several scouts and parents measured and cut the wood to designed lengths to prepare for actual construction. The second day, several more scouts came and, after some instruction, built the boxes. Using drills, screwdrivers, and saws, the scouts and parents built 15 boxes.
Overall I think the project was a complete success. Mr. Young, my contact with the county, was very pleased with the boxes and was grateful for the help. The scouts enjoyed themselves, and with the help of some pizzas brought for lunch, finished the project ahead of schedule.

I would like to thank all of the scouts and adults who participated. Without their help I would never have been able to get this done.

Building Houses in Mexico
By Eric

On April 14, 1 went with a group of people from Los Altos United Methodist Church to build houses in Mexico. We stayed that night in San Diego, crossing into Mexico on Sunday. We set up camp at a site provided by AMOR Ministries, the organization that arranges for the house building. The campsite was a dusty rock quarry on the outskirts of Tijuana.
For the next four days, I worked with a team of 20 people building a small, two-room house. The house had a slab floor, a slant roof, two doors and two windows. Everyone, including me, helped with all phases of the house building. That included: scraping the ground to prepare for the foundation, digging a trench to stabilize the slab, mixing and pouring the cement, assembling and installing the walls and roof. We also nailed on tarpaper

and chicken wire in preparation for stucco. We were only able to apply one layer of stucco, leaving the supplies for the house owner to complete. The owner was better at applying the stucco anyway.

The family we built the house for consisted of parents and 4 children. They were very grateful for the new house. The house that they were in before consisted of plywood sheets nailed together. On Friday we returned to San Diego and flew home.

Shark Patrol
James

The newly formed Shark patrol had a lot of fun at the Camporee. We competed against other troops in events like A-frame relay, orienteering, and first aid. We received an Award of Merit and Honor at Camporee. I think we learned a lot of useful skills and next year we hope to win 1st or 2nd place.
This year has been a busy year with all the changes. The new Shark patrol consists of Jake, A.J., Michael, Brian, Alex, Simon, and Bryant and me, James. I haven’t scheduled many patrol meetings since the creation of this patrol so we haven’t been working on many requirements, which are needed for advancement. Next year, I hope to schedule patrol meetings, at least once a month to help everybody progress in their ranks. I hope the “Sharks” are having fun and learning a lot of useful skills. There are a lot of exciting outings planned for next year. I hope all of you will be able to attend summer camp this year is at Marin Sierra. It’s a lot of fun and you can earn merit badges there. Some of the merit badges are only available at camp, so check over your list and have fun choosing the ones you would like to attend. I hope to see all you there. I have one favor to ask all of you, if we all cooperate and work as a team we can be the “Best Patrol” Troop 463 has ever seen! Go Sharks!!!!

The Camp-o-ree!!!!
5/19/01-5/20/01
David

At the camporee, there was good news, and there was bad news. First of all, thanks to a wonderful flyer, we had near perfect attendance, which is (almost) unheard of on this outing! (well, not really, but it makes me look good if I say that) We even got a few Webelos to come with us. That was a good thing; not only did they get introduced to their friendly, caring, guiding patrols, and see the fun, exciting, competitive environment of the camporee for their very first outing, but, on a side note, ourpatrolsalsogotextrapointsforthem. (Of course, that was not a reason at all why we wanted them to come with us… no really…) Moving right along, another good thing was that we got (almost) all of the points for the campsite inspection, another first in our troop’s history (um… kinda); the only place in which we lost points was “distinct patrol areas!” Thanks to the patrol leaders, James and Derek, and our quartermaster, Karl, we had all of the stuff we needed, including a flagpole, posted duty rosters and menus, signs saying “No Flames In Tent,” buckets full of water and dirt, a first aid tent (in which, incidentally, the leadership people played cards afterwards), and, of course, the official bribes – patrols got 4 points for each can of soda they brought for the staff. On to the bad news: the only piece of bad news was that, in the actual competitions, we didn’t do as explosively spectacularly enormously fantastically outstandingly amazingly fabulously incredibly extremely tremendously staggeringly resplendently gloriously brilliantly well as we had hoped. (I love the thesaurus :) However, we did do well for a troop with a high percentage of newer scouts, some of them having only three meetings to learn the necessary skills! Therefore, we were not disappointed, since we were competing against some patrols full of older scouts; next year, we can expect to do very well when all of our new

Snow Camping
2/13/01-2/15/01
Eric

David Ho, Brian Thurgate, and Eric Garcia left with Mr. Thurgate on Tuesday morning for the Sierras, to a spot right next to Bear Valley. The destination was a stretch of highway, which gets snowed over in the winter. We arrived there before noon. After Mr. Thurgate showed us the basics of cross-country skiing, we put our packs on and started off towards the campsite.
After a couple hours of cross-country skiing through deep powder, we stopped for lunch. It was getting late in the afternoon and we wanted to set up camp soon. We didn’t think we could make it to our planned campsite. Luckily just around the next turn we came upon a satisfactory spot. We decided that our snow caves would have a common entrance and each of us would have his own ‘room’ which branched off from that. We spent the next couple hours creating the structure. Finally it was time to have dinner. After dinner we all went to bed except for me, because I froze all night. The floor of my snow cave was slanted and I kept sliding into the corner where I got wet.
In the morning after breakfast we put on our daypacks and skied 2-3 miles to a lookout point where we had lunch. Unfortunately the fog obscured the view and we could see only about 100 yards. After lunch we skied back to our campsite. We spent another couple of hours refining our snow caves because during the night they had begun to cave in. After dinner we went to bed.
The next morning after breakfast we donned our packs and skied back to the car. It was challenging because it was snowing so hard that I could barely see Brian’s tracks and he was only a couple minutes in front of me! After we reached the car, we practiced on our cross-country skiing form and went home.