It was a cold, wet, dark night....

When we held our Program Kick-off. For those who read this regularly, you might recall an earlier post where I was frustrated over the location and format of the annual program kick-off. In the end I relented and we continued the tradition of holding it at camp. Enter Mother Nature. If you haven't seen a radar map lately there is a big swirling stationary front over Lake Michigan that keeps sucking up moisture and dumping it on WI. It has been rainy (over 1.5"), windy (gusts to 50 mph) and cold (41 degrees F) most of the day. In these conditions we headed to camp for our event. Note that the dining hall is not in any way heated so it was cold in there. This was livable, it was the next item that made it interesting. About a half-hour before the presentations were to start the power went out. Great. We had time so every one just sat chatting in the dim twilight soggily coming through the windows and a few flashlights. There was still no juice at the time the presentations started so we did them without the PowerPoint presentations to go with them. More fun was the round-robin to all of the stations in the dark and handing out packets. It was great. Brian and I are going out tomorrow to finish cleaning up since that was not practical given the situation. It will definitely be a memorable event.

As far as the weather goes, it is supposed to continue through the weekend with the rain slackening by Saturday night. Guess what we're having this weekend...Spring Camporee. Soggy sunshine here I come. I don't particularly like camping in the rain, but I can deal with it. What suprised me were the calls asking if the event would be cancelled. I was flabbergasted. Of course its not being cancelled, what is a Scouting event without rain? I understand the concern about unprepared Scouts, but that is what the leaders are here to teach these boys. As I have said before, Eagle Scouts and veteran Scouts in general aren't any smarter than the average person, they're just better able to deal with challenges and make the best of them. Some of the strongest memories I have of camping are of the soggy weekends. Some were certainly miserable, but they were great learning experiments. With that in mind, I have trouble being sympathetic to those asking about cancellation. If it were a Cub event, I would consider it, but Boy Scouts come on. I'll probably hear about it especially since I was not so tactful about it. Oh well.

I'll write again after being a swamp rat.