Home Defense Presentation

This was the presentation I gave at our inaugural Manrichment event.  As I state in the DISCLAIMER in the presentation, I am not an attorney.  I am not currently involved in law enforcement.  I am not an accountant, nor doctor, nor constitutional law professor.  Everything here is my informed opinion based on my extensive research into this topic in preparation for this presentation.  I hope you find it helpful.

NurtureShock Presentation: Surprising Findings about Modern Parenting and Children

Below is the PowerPoint presentation I put together after listening to the excellent Audiobook NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merriman.  I dictated notes to myself using my phone as I would drive back and forth to work over the course of several weeks.  I was so impressed with the content of the book that I decided to arrange a new Manrichment activity to share this fantastic material.  One of my complaints with the book was that it was not organized in the most user-friendly manner when it comes to taking the information and applying it to your parenting.

This was my goal with this presentation: To take the information from this book and present it in a more streamlined and application-focused format.  I hope that I achieved that with this presentation and that you will find it helpful and insightful in your parenting.

I left off the last two sections on language development and gratitude due to time constraints though I would certainly recommend them for your consideration.  I will try to briefly summarize what I felt were the main points of each here in text.

Language Development:
1) Baby Einstein videos were found to actually have a detrimental effect on children's language development for one primary reason: Children need to be able to SEE people speaking the language rather than just hearing it.
2) Children who progressed most quickly with language acquisition had parents who provided frequent and regular feedback (a smile, a touch, a verbal reinforcement or even just acknowledgement) to their children's vocalizations.

Gratitude:
1) Studies found a number of positive effects from having college students keep gratitude journals for a month.  However, when they did the same with middle-school students the results were mixed, including a number of negative outcomes for some students.  Further investigation found that adolescents--who are very sensitive about their feelings of independence and budding adulthood--actually tend to feel worse when they kept gratitude journals because almost everything they have to be grateful for--a house, food, an education, clothes--they receive from their parents or other adults.  This directly conflicts with and undermines their fledgling sense of independence and produces negative effects.  So while it is important to teach children gratitude it must be done in a way that protects their sense of independence and aspirations to adulthood.
NurtureShock - Presentation

Hells Canyon Float Trip - July 2010

While this was not an official "Manrichment" activity for our ward, it was nonetheless very manly and is consequently featured here on the blog. While there were many other people on this trip, and many adventures had by them, I will primarily be dealing with my adventures on the trip because those are the ones I know most about. Plus, I've barely found the time to put together a post on my adventures and haven't the time to go into all the others. But without further ado, here begins the account of Hells Canyon Float Trip, July 2010.

We put in at the ramp near a large dam (the name escapes me) and the Hells Canyon Creek visitor's center. I was on a raft with all of the young'uns and I dare say that as a result we had a few more adventures than most. About 30 minutes after starting down the river, we rounded a bend and saw a mother brown bear with her two cubs standing on a cliff about 20' above the river. We floated past, whooping and hollering, and she moseyed off into the bushes with cubs in tow. As far as wildlife goes, during the rest of the trip we also so a mountain goat resting on some rocks, about 5-6 bighorn sheep, a lot of deer and some antelope, a skunk (too close for comfort), and a rattlesnake or two.

For a minute, it looked like this sheep was going to hitch a ride down river.

We hit the biggest rapid of the trip, known as "Granite" on the first day. It was pretty gnarly and totally dumped one of our rafts, sending all five rafters into the drink. Our brave vessel made it all through intact, despite our two teenage point men forgetting that you have to keep paddling through the rapids. (They would always quit paddling right when maintaining our speed was most critical and we gave them no end of guff for their negligence.) Below I've posted a video that was taken by our EQP's younger brother who works on the river. We're grateful to him for capturing this great moment of the trip on video for us. My boat was the second red boat to go through...the one where we all came out cheering, rather than swimming.

"The Red Raft of Victory" (not to be confused with "The Red Raft of Getting Owned") - Click to enlarge

We set up camp on this beach and a lot of guys went fishing for trout, bass, and catfish along the shoreline. They had some good success, and some even had fish for dinner. For the rest of us, there was steak, BBQ chicken, potato salad, macaroni salad, red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, and apple pie. Holy cow! The food was amazing! I've never been so well fed on a wilderness adventure.

I was on a survivalist kick so I decided to spend the afternoon trying out some of the shelter building skills I had been watching on Man vs. Wild. I hiked up a path above the beach and followed a fork over to this nice rocky overhang that I felt would give me good shelter from any rain that may come during the night (I had been unable to fit a tent into my dry bag with all of my other stuff). The area looked like it had been quite heavily trafficked and was flat and broad enough that people had probably camped there. So I set about finding some deadwood to use to start my lean-to. Unfortunately, all of the dead wood around was full of these horrible burrs and stickers that came off by the hundreds with even the slightest shake. I spent about 45 minutes picking them out of my shoes after I was done. I then tracked down some great (and plentiful) broad-leafed plants to use for my rainproofing. In the end, I had a pretty decent shelter and was quite proud of myself, though I had learned several important lessons that would surely have improved any subsequent shelters.

"What a fine looking lean-to, old chap." "Why thank you kindly!"

No subsequent shelters were to be made. The next morning, a new group of adventurers beached at our camp and started hiking about to see the sights. While breakfast was cooking I decided to head up and pack my gear to be ready for when we set off. As I was loading my dry bag, a tour guide with about 15 people in tow started heading my way. Naively I thought, "Maybe he's coming to check out my shelter and tell me how impressive it is." Wrong! He proceeded instead to dress me down in front of his followers for building a lean-to on top of ancient Native American cave paintings. Say what?! Honestly, I didn't even notice them until I was going to sleep and shined my flashlight on the wall, and I still didn't really know what I was looking at. Well, he let me have it: "Didn't the cave paintings tip you off that this is not somewhere you should be camping?!" "So you just decide it would be a good idea to build a lean-to on a Native American archeological site?" "Destroying a bunch of native vegetation is not something I can condone either." I could only say "I didn't know" and "I'm sorry" so many times, but it really seemed like this guy had decided to make an example out of me. I finally was able to get the rest of my stuff together and scamper out of there with my tail between my legs while he proceeded to rip apart my shelter. I got down to the beach and a couple of people came over to me and I told them the fate and offense of my lean-to. Everyone got pretty riled up and couldn't wait to give "Nature Boy," as he came to be called by our group, a piece of their mind. Well, Nature Boy came back down to the beach a while later and proceeded to tell our group leader about my myriad offenses against the gods of the canyon and threatened fines and legal action if he didn't bring our group in line. Then he shoved off and I snapped his picture, because he became something of a running joke for the rest of our trip. "Don't step on that rock, it contains an ancient animal spirit" or "Don't touch those plants, that's the an endangered indigenous stupidweed" and such were popular conversation starters among the campers for the next two days.

Do you see anything that looks like ancient Native American cave paintings? I sure didn't.

"Nature Boy"

The rest of the day was more fun. We hit some more rapids, practiced our "circle of trust" through some of the smaller swells, and took a pit stop at this old cabin with a raging awesome creek near the beach. This creek was a great time for us young'uns. The water was FREEZING cold coming out of the mountains and it was really raging for how small it was. We tried to hike up the river against the pounding of the water, and it was a beast. We'd get knocked down, bashed against the rocks, and pushed downstream as we tried to get a grip on the slippy rocks. We had so much fun playing in that river that we politely requested (some said we "whined") that our next camp site have a creek nearby if possible. It did, but it wasn't nearly as awesome as the one from earlier in the day, though with our labors, we left it more awesome than we found it.

"The Circle of Trust," a.k.a. "The Circle of who's-going-to-be-the-first-to-start-pushing-everyone-else-in"

During the second day of floating we found some great cliffs for jumping. In the spirit of oneupsmanship, the first jumps were about 15' high, then 25', then about 35'+ for the final jump. That was the highest I had ever jumped but I decided that I wouldn't get scared until after I had jumped and was in mid-air. It worked to get me off the cliff, but it about scared me silly on the way down. It was a great rush!

As our last evening in the canyon drew to a close and the sturgeon fishermen returned empty handed, I bedded down under the stars on my $5 and 1/4" pad from Wal-Mart for a night of restful sleep. Since we had seen bears around and since I was sleeping on the outskirts of the camp, I was sleeping with my folding shovel in hand. I had been laying uncomfortably on the ground for about thirty minutes or so when I heard a rustling in the grass on the other side of the dirt road about 15' away. I opened my eyes, gripped my shovel, and watched. After a few seconds, a small black-and-white creature emerged from the grass and started scurrying toward me...a skunk! I was petrified! "This is almost worse than a bear" I thought, believing that with a weapon and some courage I could possibly scare off a bear if it got too close. But a skunk! If I so much as moved I was sure it would startle and blast me good. I lay as still as a rock praying for it to go past an far, far away. It went past me, over in the direction of where I had spit out my toothpaste, and then down to the river. After about an hour and no signs nor sounds of it returning, I finally tried to get back to sleep.

I had been so uncomfortable during the night that I rose early and decided to go on a hike up a rather impressive looking, but not overly high, mountain nearby. I struck out before anyone in camp was awake, save one, who I told what I was doing so he could report me missing to the others should I fail to return. It was a somewhat miserable hike, through endless dry weeds that covered the mountainside. Every step I took would send dozens of grasshoppers leaping and flying through the air, effectively masking any other noises I might have otherwise tried to listen for (like the rattle of a snake). The mountain was incredibly steep, especially on the back side where it dropped vertically down to the valley and small stream below. I made it to the top before the sun hit the peak, and then made it back down to the bottom before the sun hit the valley floor.

When I returned from my solo hike I discovered that I had missed some commotion in the camp. A rattlesnake had slithered into our camp and met its end thanks to some paddles and a shovel. A few people asked me if, in keeping with my Man vs. Wild survivalist theme, I was going to eat the rattlesnake. I decided that now would be as good a time as any to try my snake eating skills out, so we grabbed a camera, I got into character, and we made it memorable. To my surprise, everything pretty much worked just like on the TV show: the skin came off right in one piece, and the guts also; the green grass I used to tie the snake to my green wood spit didn't burn and the snake cooked up right nice.

We put in for the final stretch and decided to pull out all of the stops. The young'uns raft decided that we would try to flip our boat by all piling either into the front or to the back. It didn't work, but it did make things interesting that last day.

"Let's flip this raft! Everybody in the back!..."

"...now, everybody in the front!"

We finished up at Pittsburg, loaded everything onto the trucks and had sandwiches for lunch before making the 4 hour drive back to Boise. What a great trip! Thanks again to all of those who organized it and did everything to make it possible.

Hell's Canyon Snakeater

I finally worked out the issues with Microsoft Movie Maker to where I was able to put together this video of one of many memorable events from our EQ Hell's Canyon trip in late-July of 2010. I will be doing a second post with pictures and other videos of the river trip, but until then, enjoy this educational video.

Manrichment Run'N'Gun - June 2010

Collage of Manliness (Click to enlarge)

A beautiful day greeted us on Saturday, June 19th. We met at the EQP's house and headed south on Cloverdale and then east on Hubbard until we reached our destination: public land where we could let the bullets fly. We set up tables and targets, had our safety briefing, applied some sunscreen, and prepared to run the first course.

We pretty closely followed these plans, with the exception of turning the Shotgun Press course into a two man event by orienting all targets to one side to avoid crossfire. We also did not get to the Sledgehammer. Most courses come from or were inspired by the excellent weapons and shooting guru, Nutnfancy.

The first course was a combination handgun/rifle course. A 20 yard dash to the orange cones, followed by five handgun shots on the silhouettes at 10 yards. Then, a dash to the next station where you would swap your handgun for a .22 rifle to fire 10 rounds at steel targets at a range of about 25-30 yards. We had a total of 30 points possible on this run, with shots inside the "A-zone" worth 2 points each, and shots inside the "B-zone" worth 1 point each. The group started off strong on this run with five of the nine shooters earning perfect 30s. But the winner--with a perfect score and the shortest time of 40.23 seconds--was Scott C (yours truly)! Second place was Jon at 45.23, third was Jared H. at 1:03.00, fourth was Dwight C. at 1:52.28, and fifth was Nathan H. at 2:10.00.

We then adapted the course for use with shotguns. A 15 yard dash to the orange cones, followed by five handgun shots at 15 yards. Then, a dash to the next station where you would fire two shotgun rounds at cans, reload, and fire a final round at a can on the fencepost. The reloading aspect really separated contenders, though this was only a shadow of difficulties to come. Only one contender shot a perfect 16 on this course: Daniel H. Four other contenders shot 15s: Scott C. (31.47), Gabe C. (33.00), Steve H. (37.68), and Jon (39.84).

Our third course involved a 100 yard engagement with firing at four different stations. A sprint to the 75 yard cone where contenders would shoot 5 rounds of .22 rifle onto the silhouette down range. Then, while running to the 50 yard cone, contenders would perform a moving reload (ideally) and then put five more .22 rounds onto the target. Then they would swap their rifle for a handgun and run to a 25 yard cone to fire 5 rounds on target. Then, a final moving reload down to the 10 yard cone at which point they would close in on the target firing their final 5 shots on the move. Overall, I was really quite amazed at how well everyone did. Almost everyone landed 18-19 of the 20 shots on target. No timing was involved for safety reasons (to avoid having one contender moving down range while another was still firing). Out of a possible 40 points, the high scorer on this course was...Scott C with 36! Second place was Jon with 35, and third was Gabe C. with 33.

Our fourth and final course of the day was a running shotgun course. Two shots were to be fired at each station. For the first three stations the contender had to choose one of two cans to shoot before firing on a nearby milk jug filled with water. For the final station the contender would close on a flat metal target firing two shots. This is where reloading really became a problem for people. Having to reload a shotgun on the move is something almost no one had had any experience doing, and it showed for many of them. There were two perfect scores on this run, but the one with the shorter time of 37.28 seconds was Jared H. Second place was Daniel H. at 41.23, and third place was Ryan B. with 9 points (at 1:48.55 - he had some reloading troubles, but made his shots count).

Overall, the winner for the day with 88 points was Jon. Scott C. and Daniel H. tied for second with 87, but Scott C. had the fastest time for the day with 110.13 total seconds. Below is attached the score sheet for any who want to see the breakdown for themselves.

Here's a video mash-up I made of all of the runs I recorded during the day. I apologize to Steve H. who I didn't get any video footage of, though I did get some good still photos. The video is about 7:30 long. Enjoy!



Thanks to everyone who came out with us! We're sorry that not everyone could make it who wanted to. We'll see you next Manrichment!