Travois competition

[MattR]

We're going to have a travois segment of a Coulter's run at a camporee. Has anyone done anything like this before? Hints?

Here are my plans.

If I have time I will go find some small lodge pole pines for poles. If not, I'm going to rip some 2x4s. There will be two long poles, a cross piece for the load at the bottom and a cross piece at the top for pushing against. The patrol lashes this together with provided rope. A scout hops onto the load pole and holds onto the long poles while the rest of the patrol picks up the push pole and pushes the scout the requisite 10 or 20 yards.

I'm wondering if the push pole even needs to be lashed in. Rather, lash the other three in the shape of an A and just wedge the push pole through the top of the A.

[Eagledad]

You will find a lot of information and videos under Boy Scout chariot race. This was a common patrol competition when I was a scout. The only difference was we used 6 eight foot poles. Four were lashed in a square with the other two lashed to the four corners in a cross.

Im not sure I understand your question of using fewer lashings since tying lashings is the point of the race. 

Barry

 

[MattR]

5 hours ago, Eagledad said:

You will find a lot of information and videos under Boy Scout chariot race. This was a common patrol competition when I was a scout. The only difference was we used 6 eight foot poles. Four were lashed in a square with the other two lashed to the four corners in a cross.

Im not sure I understand your question of using fewer lashings since tying lashings is the point of the race.

This is only one segment of the race. But I'm still glad I'm going old school

 

[JoeBob]

Sounds fun!  Ripped 4x4s (2x2s?) would worry me for their splitting potential.  If available, Bamboo would be ideal: lightweight, strong, and good lashing points at the section rings.

We expect a report!

[MattR]

2 hours ago, JoeBob said:

Sounds fun!  Ripped 4x4s (2x2s?) would worry me for their splitting potential.  If available, Bamboo would be ideal: lightweight, strong, and good lashing points at the section rings.

We expect a report!

Well, a 2x4 is really 1.5 x 3.5 and split is more like 1.5 x 1.7.  Anyway, 2x3's are $2.50 apiece. I'll try those. Run a planer down each corner to get rid of the splinters.

But you know what this means? I need to make one and jump up and down on it. That's a video I won't take because, well, it could go viral.

[MattR]

On 9/23/2018 at 9:47 AM, JoeBob said:

Sounds fun!  Ripped 4x4s (2x2s?) would worry me for their splitting potential.  If available, Bamboo would be ideal: lightweight, strong, and good lashing points at the section rings.

We expect a report!

It was fun!

We ended up using two 8' 2x3's along with two 4' round fence poles (about 2" diameter) we found at camp. Turns out lashing rectangular lumber together is really hard so we suggested making a pointy ladder instead. 2 scouts pull and one rides. All of the 2x3's had nice rounded ends by the end of the day. A lot of scouts also learned the difference between tight lashings and not. Some learned that a diagonal lashing without fraps is close to worthless. Only one scout that was riding got run over by his own pullers (the lashes fell apart). We ran 4 patrols at a time and there were about 4 more stations to do after the travois. We had 15 out of 29 patrols do the race. Given how busy they were until that point that was fairly good. (At 6:50 this morning there was nobody awake.)

In the morning there were 10 different events that each patrol could do to collect points. Archery, tomahawk, fry bread, first aid, even climbing for scouts with higher ranks (we have real rocks to climb on and we ended up finding a handful of climbers to resurrect our council climbing committee). Anyway, the points they collected in the morning was used to deduct time in the race. The competitiveness was really great. I took some nice photos of the travois jockeys.

The only down side was the competitiveness was overwhelming for some older scouts in my troop. They gamed the system, picked the younger patrol that got the most points in the morning and then volunteered to win the race for them. I figured that one out and had a talk with them, the SM, and the other ASM's. Unfortunately the scouts never figured out that this might not be scout like. It was amazing. Four adults trying to explain how rearranging patrols to win for the troop was not ethical and the scouts just not getting it. They said all the troops did this so I went and talked to SM's of patrols in the order they ranked to find 3 that didn't cheat. Turns out I just had to talk to the first 3. That was the good news. Now I understand why I was so burned out as SM. Two of the four adults had scouts involved in this. It's really a case of one self centered, outgoing scout that created this. This kid is about to age out but he's been a pain for a long time. I honestly feel sorry for his dad. He was frustrated.

There was another patrol that was fairly sure they got a bad deal with the scoring. But they were very polite and asked me. So at 10pm last night I was waking up adults to get to the bottom of the story. Turns out there was a misunderstanding in some numbers this patrol saw. They were disappointed but respectful. I'm thinking of making them an extra award ribbon just for being very scout like in a tough situation. I told them they showed a lot more character than the scouts in my troop that whined and complained and argued with the adults over what was fair and what wasn't.

Some adults warned me about having patrol vs patrol competition and the ugly stuff that would come up. It certainly was a headache for me (look at how long this story is!) but it was also a teachable moment and a lot of fun for the scouts that didn't worry so much about the award. All in all, we'll keep doing it.

[qwazse]

Love the story. Don't be discouraged by the competition hassles. It's part of the character building process.

Regarding your difficult scout, refer to my recent post in Scoutmaster Minutes. (Which by the way, I shared with the troop last Monday. I think they took it in the positive light that it was intended. At least I hope no mischievous 1st year is having bad dreams about looking up from the bottom of Mr. Q's latrine.)