for those of you who don't know. i have been home a couple of days now. i have been really lazy so i didn't bother posting anything. now i am leaving for gainesville for a couple of days to move out of my apartment. i will be back in naples sunday.

I am finally on my way back home. Right now I am in the van typing this out on my dad's laptop. For those of you who didn't know I have spent the last two weeks at Fort AP Hill working on staff for the Boy Scouts National Jamboree. A bunch of people I know through scouting were there and we formed the ice distribution team. We were responsible for stocking the ice machines all around the camp at night. It kinda sucked because we would work all night and then sleep during the day. So I never really had a chance to even get out and see what was going on.
I am still undecided about the whole thing. They have four years to prepared for the damn things yet it was still poorly organized. Some of you will think I am crazy when I tell you this next part. We didn't get paid a damn thing. In fact, we paid to go and be on staff. Keep in mind that this is Boy Scouts. The check-in process was horrible. It took us two and a half hours just to check-in and when we arrived it was only staff checking in.
There was supposed to be three shows. One of them was canceled. The first one, which was just for staff, was short and really crappy. They were two hours late feeding us because the food trucks were running really late. It was a really bad start and they were treating staff like shit.
The second show which was supposed to be the opening show got canceled because of the weather. The whole thing was such a mess. I don't know if any of you saw some of the news coverage of the event. It was not good. So many people were having to be sent to the hospital because of heat exhaustion. The idiots didn't know how to stay hydrated. I was pissed that they canceled the first show because the president was supposed to speak. The president didn't help the situation. Since he was coming to speak the secret service was there locking the place down. It was bad enough that we were already experiencing a heat wave, but then the secret service came up with the bright idea to tell everyone that they were not allowed to bring water. They said that they would provide the water inside the arena, which they did. The problem was the huge line the get into the arena. Since the kids weren't allowed to bring water in they didn't bring any water with them while they were waiting in line. They had to take a bunch of kids out by helicopter.
They did managed to pull off the third show which was supposed to be the closing show but wound up turning into the opening and closing show. This time around they eased up on the security a bunch and allowed people to bring in water. The stupid thing is that the main crowd wasn't allowed any where near they stage so I don't know what they thought was going to happen. It was cool that the president was able to make it back for the closing show. He gave a pretty good speech. The main show was really gay. It was supposed to have four acts, but they cut out the fourth act on the fly since so many people were booing the show. The fireworks display at the end was ridiculous. The fireworks display was actually too long. I know some of you are probably saying that isn't possible, but trust me this show was long. It was awesome though. They were firing off the same fireworks from two different sides of the arena so you had stereo vision of fireworks.
I am pissed because we didn't get a chance to go into DC. We had to constantly work so there was never a day when all of us could get off to into town. I really wanted to see the Smithsonian and some monuments.
In the end it was a really cool experience. It is one of those things where you are glad you experienced it but don't want to do it again. I really wish I had gone to the Jamboree when I was younger. There were a lot of cool things for younger scouts to do. They offered a ton of merit badges, archery, skeet shooting, bmx bike tracks, repelling towers, army obstacle courses, and just a ton of other cool shit. One of the cool ideas what this bikathalon thing they had. You would ride a bike through this course, stop at a pellet gun station and shoot at a target, then bike to the end. One of the only things I actually did was go through the army exhibits. I got to see a lot of the equipment that the army rangers use. I don't know that I like the new uniforms that they are switching all of the army over to.
There was so much crazy stuff that went on, but I don't feel like typing any more right now and this is pretty damn long already. I didn't even get to touch on the people that died there. Most of you probably heard about that on the news. I may add to this later. Just in case you are curious the ice team of 24 people put out 127,000 7 pound bags of ice in 10 days.