[Philmont] Lemme get the record straight

Thanks for being the 'tagonist and all else you do for this list John. My opinion departs from yours on occasions but I do read every word you post with interest and file those tidbits away for future reference. I have a tremendous respect for all the 'old guys' on here that do countless good by passing on the experiences and knowlege gained over the years. I do have a 'plastic buckle' story as well but mine didn't end nearly as neatly as yours did. As a quick aside, as product design engineer for a company that manufactures TV reception products (including about 50% or more of the Dish Network satellite antennas many of you may have and the 'batwing' antennas on most of those 'tin-tipis' you see rolling down the highway as you backpack along) a large part of my job is being the 'injection molded part expert' for the company. Just like you, I love plastic parts when they work, and they work MOST of the time if designed right and not abused, but they are prone to accidents and also subject to being less than adequate if molding departs from the correct settings. Anyway, I digress.... In 2003 while strapping on my pack behind logistics where we had loaded our food in CHQ before heading for the Welcome Center to wait on our bus to the Cito turnaround, I grabbed the waist belt tensioning tag ends and gave them
 both a 'firm' tug and *SNAP* the tensioning buckle on one side blew apart. So there I stood, jaw agape, the color I'm sure coming to my face, my heart sinking as we were scheduled to be on the bus in about 30 minutes (or less if the bus was there/ready) with a non-functioning waist belt. I gathered my thoughts, took a couple deep breaths to keep myself from loosing out a string of very non-scoutlike muttering and headed for the Welcome Center in overdrive. After dropping my pack in the pack line, I ran (literally) to ToTT looking for something to repair or rig the belt with to get me through the next 10 days. Unfortunately for me, the buckle that broke was a 'figure 8' buckle that was sewed into the waist belt with a loop of 1-1/2" webbing. Not 1" or 2", 1-1/2". #1, even if ToTT HAD the buckle I needed, there would be no way for me to replace it because of the stitching and time frame involved and #2 while there is a ton of 1" and 2" webbing stuff and
 even some 3/4" stuff, the 1-1/2" is apparently a little odd. The only 1-1/2" 'fitting' available was a snap together, 2 piece buckle so I went into 'engineer' mode and started grasping at how I could use that buckle to get where I needed to go. I ended up with one of those small, souvenier carabiners through the web loop where the adjusting buckle used to be, with the belt looped back through the 'biner and then on the snap buckle to make it adjustable. The arrangement didn't allow me to tension that side of the belt after it was on but I could tighten it and do all the adjusting with the other side of the belt. Not ideal by any means but definitely servicable. The biggest problem I had was that the carabiner would roll from the wide way to the short way if I wasn't careful, this bunched up the webbing and loosened the belt slightly as well as putting the 'toy' carabiner in position to stretch open. At any rate, my jury-rigging got me through the trek
 and after I returned home, a call to Jansport yielded me a brand new replacement belt for my pack (which was pretty much new at the time anyway but has a lifetime warranty.) I have been much more careful to make sure the webbing is not bunched through the buckles and also have been careful not to jerk on the straps to tension them (I'm not so sure that having a little adrenaline pumping through my veins at that partular moment when heading to the bus didn't play a little part in it.) Anyway, bad things can happen with any piece of equipment, I'm not sure whether my failure was due to me being too agressive with tensioning the belt or if it was a substandard part but it always pays to be on the safe side and this was just a tough reminder for me. Kevin Mineart ----- Original Message ---- From: John LeBlanc <philmontjohn@yahoo.com> To: Philmont List Member <Philmont@troop47.com> Sent: Friday, August 17, 2007 9:48:36 AM Subject: [Philmont] Lemme get the record straight Several have hit the nail on the head. We do have choices. Good choices and not so good choices, but we have choices and that is where the rub comes in. Choosing! I was walking down the container isle at our local WalMart the other day and looked at all the "storage containers" available. Good grief, there must have been 500 different shapes adn sizes of plastic boxes. It's a sign of the times. We have too much stuff! But I like that because I work for a company that produces ethylene and propylene adn those two petrochemicals are the starting blocks for virtually ALL plastics. Buy dem boxes folks!!!!!!! I appreciate it when someone writes either on or off list and thanks me for a suggestion to a frustrating issue. Quite often it is on stoves and I want to say that I've probably been there, done that. From my posting on Seldens list on stove repair, I get at least five requests for additional help from people all over the world. I enjoy that, it's what a good Scout should do and at 62, I'm the proverbial Boy Scout or is it perpetual? Doesn't matter. When my wifes bosses secretary asked her about our upcomming Autumn Adventure she said "isn't Philmont for Boy Scouts?" to which my wife said "well, yes" Then she added "I'm been married to a Boy Scout for thirty-four years so it's about time I went too". Like when I got snowed in at the deer lease last January by myself. No electricity, no running water, just me adn the beautiful white countryside. That was fun for this Cajun who rarely sees snow. A friend asked me "John, you can't even fluch the toilet" to which I laughed. I said "Pete, the septic tank isn't frozen, I just colledt about 2 gallons of water dripping from the roof in a bucket and poof, flushed. Pete, I'm an Eagle Scout, I'll be just fine, don't worry". Some of our skills carrys us for years adn we don't even realize it. Teach those skills to your Scouts so they will carry them for years also. While a science teacher, I used Coleman stoves and lanterns to teach the gas laws and the conversion from liquid to gas to light and heat energy. My students disassembled and reassembled Coleman lanterns I had collected over the years and when they finished the gas law unit could rebuild a Coleman lantern with their eyes closed. That unit taught much more than just gas laws. Packs. Yes, I'll concede there are more than one type and advantages and disadvantages in each. I'll also concede with great pride I may add, that on this list my role is the eternal antagonist, protagonist and just plain tagonist. My job it NOT to take a crew to philmont. My job it to stimulate the ones who do th cross all the T's and dod all the I's and line up the ABC's and look out for the XYZ's. That is my sole purpose of being here. To help make your trek a better one. Not necessarily an easy one, but a better one. There are many ways of doing this adn I try to be inventive adn roll with the punches and sometimes just wake up[ with a new brainstorm idea, good, bad or ugly. True confession. Right now I carry a Kelty Trekker 4200, a 2001 version I took to Philmont in 2002 with great success. My daughter used the same pack and two other crew members did also but we did not conspire with them on the choice. My one complaint on ALL packs today is the convenient modern plastic buckles and slide togetehr fasteners. I hate those thingys. Well Sometimes I love them where I'm using them and they work properly which is most of the time. I hate them when you pull the pack out of the luggage compartment in the bus and opne of them snaggs on anotehr pack and W_H-A-M-M-O an immediate explosion of plastic shrapnel! This very thing happened to ME when I was unloading MY pack from the bus VERY CAREFULLY to prevent it from happening and it STILL happened. I looked at the damage adn thought "well, parachute cord adn a knot will fix it for this trek. Then by chance I looked in TOTT and low and behold, in a neat little plastic envelope for about $3.82 was a "buckle repair kit" which contained the exact buckle part I needed. What luck! Well, it really wasn't luck at all. It was GOOD MANAGEMENT by the TOTT manager Shelly because she knew Scouts adn Scouters would need them. Thank you Shelly. And now before I close, I promise to keep on antagonizing this list to stimulate thinking and collective wisdon for as long as I can and you can stand me. It's when we share ideas that the Scouts adn Venturers benefit and that's the purpose of the game. Sincerely, John LeBlanc Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Building a website is a piece of cake. Yahoo! Small Business gives you all the tools to get online. http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/webhosting

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Received on Fri Aug 17 10:52:27 2007