Nashville Troop 3

Hello Fellow Troop 3 Scouts, Family, and Friends,

We are exited to announce (one of ) our amazing troop’s newest Eagles, Lubos Koudelka! Lubos had his Court of Honor on Saturday, November 4 at Shelby Bottoms Nature Center, a great place for an outdoorsman like him.

Libor, Helen, and  Antonin were obviously very proud. So was everyone else.  Lubos’s band teacher, Scoutmaster Tad, and Mr Tim spoke, and plenty of good stories were told.

Lubos has been a great mentor and leader to very many scouts, he will leave a great mark on Troop 3. He has done so much for our troop and we all look up to him.

After the ceremony, there was a great feast of gyros. It was a nice night to eat outside and celebrate our newest Eagle.

Next up… We will celebrate Owen and Matthew!

I LOVE these kinds of trips-very fun and informative. We started off by getting to the church at around 7:30 AM on Saturday, then we arrived at the lake at around 9:00. We picked our kayaks, and headed out. We had a good time paddling though Bear Island on to our lunch spot, on Hole In the Wall Island. During lunch we realized that our patrol (patrol b) was missing our camp kitchen! This could have been bad, but we decided to improvise and use our own utensils for prep work and a bandanna for a cutting board. From there, we agreed on a campsite.

We set up camp and gave ourselves some free time before kayak instruction. During instruction, Lubos taught us how to capsize, get out of that kayak, and how to rescue it. After that, we had huge fun playing capsize wars.

By then, it was time to start dinner, we had pepperoni pasta and cheesecake in a cup (a personal favorite). After that, we had campfire (riddles! jokes!) and got to bed. Next morning, we had breakfast, packed up camp and got on the water at about 10:30. we boated around a good bit of the lake, and had lunch at a small island. it had been a while since we saw the other patrol, so it was good visiting and having some time with them.

We were about 45 minutes to an hour from the little island to the marina, so we wanted to get there fast! When we got to the marina and packed up the boats, we were all happy we went on this trip! We then drove back to the church. tired and happy.

It was a great day for a water themed trip! We started off by meeting at the church around 7:15 in the morning, left the church at around 7:45, and got to the lake at around 9:00 Am. When we finally got there we unloaded the cars, got changed and divided into groups. My group went on to the surfing and water boarding boat, while the 2nd group got on to the water skiing boat. Raleigh demonstrated how lake surfing works, and he made it look very easy. However, when most of us tried it, it turned out to be very difficult, thank god we all survived. After that, the two boats met up for a swim break, and desisted to switch boats. When we were on the other boat, only a couple people could ski due to time constraints. I sadly wasn’t one of them, but it looked like a blast. We then got ashore for lunch, thanks to Tomato Fest, we had plenty of left over hotdogs,  fruit, chips, and dessert for lunch. It seemed like a lot of food, but swimming made us all starved and we ended up eating it all. The groups got back on to the boats and we went far out into the lake to have a little free time. They asked us what we wanted to do and most of us wanted to either ski or swim. I swam and had a good time out in the middle of the lake with friends. Sadly, after about an hour or so, we had to go to group again, and get prepared to go back to the church. In the end it was a very exiting, super fun, and short trip. I would definitely do this again!

Although we only had 6 scouts there was much fun and adventure had by all, whether the scouts were in the challenging white water school or went on a 5 mile hike to a secret swimming hole and funyaking everyone had a blast.

Troop 3 is excited to let everyone know that Leo Spadafino passed his Eagle Scout Board of Review recently.  Many congratulations to him and his family, best of luck at UT Knoxville. Thanks to many boys and adults who help him with his Eagle Project building school benches.

Huzzah!

Few pictures from Shrews Backpacking Patrol. More stories and pictures to follow soon.

Today during feeding the hungry, Mr. Howard Allen talked with us about the homeless life. He is doing a documentary about homelessness and wanted to talk with us about our thoughts as scouts. We asked questions like “Where would you find a safe place on the streets?” and “Do homeless people without families have funerals when they die?”

Mr.Howard answered all of our questions, and what he had to say was pretty interesting. He said, “There really isn’t a safe place for the homeless to stay” and “There’s a cemetery at – where they have a part of the field for homeless.” While I was relieved to know that the people who die on the streets at least got a burial, it was sad to think of them being buried alone.  Homelessness seems like a lonely way to live, and die.

I learned a lot from Mr. Howard and I’m glad we talked with him. I think it made us all appreciate what we have.

Although it was pretty hard leaving turkey leftovers and a warm bed on December 27, winter camp was pretty fun this year. It was my first time at Latimer, so it was nice going to a different place. Latimer was a different experience from Boxwell, which I liked.

I think overall we could say that the food, bath houses and classes were nicer than Boxwell. Since Latimer is only a few years old, everything seemed to be fresh and new.

Unlike our Boxwell experience, we spent most of our days in one single class. We had one approximately seven-hour class a day. When we weren’t at class we were generally at camp, hanging around at the dining hall, or at the trading post.

One notable class was Climbing. Climbing was pretty thrilling (to my standards at least). In this class we learned how to rappel, climb, and belay. The bluff was decently tall (about 60 to 80 feet).  A couple of people decided that this wasn’t the sport for them, and went back to camp. I really can’t blame them, it was pretty scary having to trust someone you don’t even know to not let you fall off a cliff and onto your head! Those of us who stayed were glad that we had in the end.

(Although this isn’t a photo of the cliff, this is what it felt like!)

Over all, our experience was pretty great!