[Philmont]: Philmont Report - A Few Followup Remarks

Greetings to All.

Having now plowed through just under 1800 emails, I am sort of caught
up. A few followup remarks, again in no particular order:

* Trash Compacting - Was not required anywhere, and was requested at
only a few camps on our trek. We compact our trash (it takes all of a
minute or two to do so), and the respective staffs always expressed
appreciation for our having done it. Suggest you do the same.

* Backpacks as Oversized Luggage - As many of you will recall, we
enclose our backpacks in large seed bags, closed with a heavy-duty
telephone tie. I have never had any airline balk at their size. That
is five different American carriers, and two European carriers, and
roughly 20 High Adventure treks.

* Use of Desitin (or equivalent) and Flushable Wipes - For the first
time in my career, I had a tough time selling the use of these items to
my Crew during our shakedown hikes. There was a collective "None of
that baby stuff for me!" teenage attitude going. Major attitude
adjustment occurred at Philmont, and I now have another Crew of true
believers. No one wants or needs a sore butt and crotch when you're
hiking 100+ miles. Seeing a fellow trekker limping to Six-Mile Gate
with the inside thighs of his hiking shorts stained red-brown, early in
our trek (just as I predicted they would see), changed a lot of minds in
a hurry. The obvious and nearly immediate effectiveness of both items
also didn't hurt.

* Poorly Trained Crews? - In my opinion, the overall level of Advisor
and Crew competence was down a little versus my last year, 2002. We
also noted a few surprisingly weak Rangers, too. Perhaps this is a
result of the Jambo, hard to say since I wasn't there (i.e., at
Philmont) last year. I am not a Jambo guy, for a variety of reasons
which I will not bore you with here, and it seems to me that most of the
Jambo guys in my Council are *not* Philmont guys, and vice versa. It
did seem to me that there was more of a selfish/liberal attitude among
many Advisors this year - the demands for the staff to prepare coffee
anytime the Advisors wanted some, the strident requests to charge cell
phones, etc., and the overall attitude that if you didn't agree with a
rule, it was obviously stupid and you were fully justified in ignoring
it, consequences be damned. Hopefully this was an aberration, not a trend.

That's it for tonight. Best regards to everyone.

- Dr. Bob

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Received on Tue Jul 26 23:17:44 2005