Day 12

The last day for the scouts has now come and gone. Most of the troops spent the afternoon and evening breaking down their campsites and getting ready to depart first thing in the morning. Some of the equipment trucks are either is some state of being loaded or waiting to be loaded in the morning. I hope it doesn't rain tonight because we have a lot of scouts sleeping under the stars tonight. We started picking up our computers and other equipment and hopefully can complete that job tomorrow. We still have to box all of the equipment up and prepare it to be shipped. We are responsible for almost 400 laptops and lots of all-in-one printers, laser printers, other networking equipment and lots of cell phones and radios. We have a good crew and hopefully we can knock this out in a couple of days.

One of the sponsors of Jamboree is AT&T. They have installed about $10 million in equipment in order to have WiFi accessible to all campsites as well as great cell phone coverage all over camp. One of the athletes that AT&T sponsors is the snowboarder Shaun White. Well he was here today at the Mountain Boarding Activity Area to sign autographs. We were out working this morning and came over this hill and all of a sudden there were thousands of scouts in the Mountain Boarding area. Well, they were lined up to get his autograph. I wonder how many he signed.

The other highlight today was that I was given a Southern Region commemorative Jamboree coin. BSA is broken up into 4 regions and Circle 10 is in the Souther Region. Me and another of our group went to the Southern Region HQ to find out when we could pick up their computers. The regional director is a former Circle 10 Scout Executive. We started chatting while we were waiting to get an answer about when we would get the computers. He reached in his pocket and pulled out the coin and gave it to me. WOW! He also gave my work partner one. I was reading in the Jamboree Leader Update and found that the JSP (Jamboree Shoulder Patch) that won the JSP contest was Troop 1643 from Circle 10 Council (see picture). Congratulations Circle 10!

We did have one "accident" today. I don't know if I have mentioned that Chevrolet is a sponsor of Jamboree and they provide us lots of vehicles to drive. Our group has several Silverados, several more Colorados, two 15 passenger vans and two cargo vans. We have used the four vans to patrol the west and east sides of camp to be in area when trouble calls come in. The Jamboree is large enough with all of the vehicle and foot traffic it can take almost an hour to get from certain places in camp to another. We have a 10 MPH Speed Limit set throughout camp while the scouts are here. There are also a ton of school buses that scouts, leaders and staff can jump on to get places. You don't have to walk everywhere. Well, one of our younger guys ran into the back of a school bus today. No one was hurt but the van is damaged enough that we can't use it any more. It was one of our two cargo vans which will make it more challenging to get all the equipment picked up but it isn't a tragedy. I feel really bad for Chris, the driver. It was pretty devastated. I think he is about 21 years old. The person that he is paired with is a very nice and patient guy and always let him drive. We have MPs directing traffic and Carl said he thinks that Chris was paying attention to the MP when the bus in front of him stopped quickly. Darn it all...

Well, that covers the events of the day. Tomorrow morning the camp will be all a buzz with the scouts loading up and heading out and by noon everyone will be gone and we will be down to a skeleton staff that will finish up as quickly as possible. Different staff will leave at different times depending on their jobs.

The Winning JSP!!!

The front of the Southern Region Coin

The back of the Southern Region Coin