Klondike Derby 2013

Holy cow and am I behind on my blog posts! Sorry everyone, but I didn't realize that I hadn't updated in almost a month and a half.

Let's go back a little in time here and focus on the major events that I managed to not update you all on, starting with the Annual Klondike Derby for Ramapo Valley District.

As usual, we find ourselves on the frozen tundra that Sheppards Lake in Ringwood State Park turns into every year for the Derby. As always we had troops from all over our district, and judging by the amount of troops involved, we have a rather large district! The expected turnout for the event this year was somewhere around 1000 participants - that's not including the staff that is running the place, the leaders that show up to keep an eye on their troops, or the members of council who show up to...um...do... whatever it is that people from council do at these things.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure what they do in their own offices, nevermind wandering around the Klondike Derby looking cold. But, I digress...

So, the theme this year was "zombies" and of course, almost everyone showed up as "zombie slayers" as oppose to "zombies". Though, one troop did show up as Jedi Knights, which makes me wonder if they even got the memo... or were they zombie Jedi? As we saw when we went to the Asbury Park Zombie walk, I guess anyone and any profession can be a zombie - Jedi included. Irregardless, T101, having already done the zombie thing in previously, decided to go as slayers (mostly because the makeup would have taken too long) but also because we all seem to be fans of the show "The Walking Dead" and wouldn't you know it, we actually have accurate portrayals of all the main characters? One of our Scouts even made a "Merle" arm. (If you have no idea what I'm talking about, use that little text field in the upper right corner of the screen and type in "The Walking Dead" and see what comes up.)

In the overall standings we did about average - I think our Scouts just haven't had enough practice putting the book knowledge into hands on work - and that's my fault. However, I am happy to report that if one troop hadn't closed up shop early, we would have actually gotten to ALL the stations - which hasn't happened in I don't know how long. (Some people just have no tolerance for the cold.)

All in all I was pleased with the results - they did the best they could for a troop that for the most part has only been at this two years. Using this as a lesson, we will be taking measures to rectify that situation immediately.

Pictures can be found here.