Philmont Expedition 727-E1-1994 – 26 July 1994: Pizza Problems / Day -1: In the Clouds

Pizza Problems

In 1993, I attended the National Boy Scout Jamboree as part of Troop 1015 (one of the Hudson-Delaware Council’s two troops). The other members of the troop were mostly strangers; Lee was the only other Scout from my troop and I knew my Patrol Leader and Assistant Patrol Leader, plus at least one of the senior leaders and one of the adults, through JLT and OA. So the bus ride down to Virginia was largely an exercise in getting to know everyone else and learning how to work together.

At least, that’s how it went until we got to the hotel. Before leaving the bus, we were given our instructions for the morning. The time for breakfast, be in full uniform, etc. One final warning came seemingly out of nowhere – under no circumstances was anyone to order pizza. The reason for this was never explained. In fact, it hadn’t even occurred to us that ordering pizza was an option. But now we knew that it was.

Of course we were going to order pizza. I didn’t particularly care, but Lee and the other two kids in my room were all for it. We went in on a medium pizza and called in an order. Meanwhile, our patrol’s other room, with our Patrol Leader, Assistant Patrol Leader, and their eventual replacements after leadership relieved them of their duties a week into the Jamboree, decided to have some fun at our expense. It began simply enough with them knocking on our door, running away, and repeating. The adult leader in the room next to us was not amused and got angry at us, as if we could do anything about it. And then the pizza came.

As it turned out, we weren’t the only ones who ordered pizza. Or the only ones who ordered pizza to our room. In addition to the medium pizza we legitimately ordered, four individual pan pizzas showed up at our door. It wasn’t hard to figure out who ordered those. We paid for the medium and refused the others, figuring at least that the excessive order would give us plausible deniability in the case that someone found out.

After eating the pizza, we were left with a conundrum – what to do with the box? There was a dumpster on the other side of the parking lot, but nobody wanted to risk being caught running out to it. And for all we knew, it might be locked. I didn’t even really want the pizza, so I sure wasn’t going to take responsibility for disposing of the evidence. Someone came up with the brilliant idea to rip up the box and flush it down the toilet, a plan that was thankfully abandoned almost immediately. And so the pizza box remained after we left.

And was found by leadership during an inspection of the rooms. At least one other room was also caught, though we knew several others had violated the nonsensical rule, probably even the very person who made the rule. But we were the ones caught, so we had to be punished.

For our crime of ordering a pizza, we were sentenced to hard labor (carrying the materials for our underwhelming entryway from the bus up to our site) and one day of house arrest (we weren’t allowed to leave the site except to go to the toilet facilities). We did our time and took very long detours on the way back from the bathroom to go patch trading.

If there was a lesson to be learned, it was that people in power will set arbitrary rules that serve no purpose except to give them an excuse to punish people. We lost all respect for our leaders and made no effort to take part in the patrol activities (mostly standard team building exercises) that served no purpose that we could see, which resulted in our Patrol Leader and Assistant Patrol Leader being replaced near the end of the Jamboree. It was a complete failure at every level of leadership.

Day -1: In the Clouds

Still in Colorado Springs, we had a lot of ground left to cover if we were going to make it to base camp the next morning. Next stop: Pikes Peak. Getting to the top of Pikes Peak is most easily accomplished via the cog railway, one of the few examples of such in the world. We boarded the train in the morning and made the ascent to the 14,115′ peak, higher than anything at Philmont. Once at the top, we were treated with stunning views of… Fog. Fog in every direction. And so we explored every inch of the visitor center while waiting for our trip back down the mountain.

Lunch today was at an all-you-can-eat buffet, one of several we would stop at over the course of the trip. We were warned by the Dutchess County Council leaders to make sure that we ate everything we put on our plate, something that didn’t sit well with me at the time and hasn’t gotten any better in the years since. Sure, we should reduce waste whenever we can, but lots of this food is getting thrown in the trash anyway. And while you don’t want kids eating too much, that’s not the message that comes across. Quite the opposite actually. Cleaning your plate is a bad habit to get into and nobody benefits from this approach. Plus, it clearly establishes the adult leaders as antagonists, setting arbitrary rules for your own good, regardless of whether they actually accomplish anything positive. It was clear that other troops were run very differently.

From there, we continued across Colorado and stopped at Bent’s Old Fort, a reconstruction of an 18th century adobe fort. It was a pile of mud and sticks. Sure, there was some history there, but it was really feeling like we were just killing time. And in a way, I suppose we were. Base camp at Philmont is at over 6,000 foot elevation (higher than Mount Washington) and the highest point reaches past 12,000 feet. At those altitudes, the air contains 60-80 percent of the oxygen found at sea level. If not properly acclimated, strenuous exercise at altitude can be dangerous. Not that a couple of days is going to get you all of the way there, but it’s better than nothing when you’ve spent your entire life at sea level.

Our final destination for the day was the Koshare Indian Museum. We weren’t sure of exactly what was going on here because we arrived a bit early. So we got to spend some time doing team building exercises… Our entire contingent got together and, one by one, we all had to introduce ourselves with our first name and a descriptive adjective starting with the same letter before it. And then each person had to repeat all of the names that came before them. Luckily, our group got to go first so we didn’t have to learn the names of anyone else there. For mine, I went with Marching Matt because I couldn’t think of anything else that starts with M. 25 years later and I’ve done nearly 200 parades, precisely 0 of them as a marching participant. So I’m not sure what that means. Of the others, I only remember Rambling Ron and Kinky Keith.

For a while, we had the museum to ourselves. I think we had dinner there (or somewhere nearby) and we were the only ones there. But other Scouts gradually filled the place in to capacity. We were then treated to a performance of the Koshare Indian Dancers before spreading out on the floor to sleep. Tomorrow, we would arrive at base camp.

Next: 27 July 1994: On the Rocks / Day 0: Calm Before the Storms