And even more scouts! – Day 5 of WSJ

Another early alarm, another snooze. I got myself moving, fathered up my gear, and headed to breakfast. From there I grabbed lunch items, and headed off to catch a van to “work”.

There were beautiful clouds in the sky, but by 7:30 AM they started raining on us. Pretty soon the volume of buses also picked up, and we got down to the business of getting scouts into the World Scout Jamboree.

All of the youth in from the over 150 international contingents arrived within about 24 hours. There were some steps we needed to complete for each bus before we could allow them to drive into the Summit. 40,000+ people means a lot of buses.

Rain and unpaved roads combined with lots of buses equaled lots of mud. We had some challenges with getting the buses in, and we may have caused a four mile long line on the highway. I did hear that we got through said four mile line in an hour and a half.

After my actual shift was over, I stayed to help out. One big motivation was to see the Finnish Scouts. I didn’t have any information on when they might arrive, just guesses based on driving time from their pre-Jamboree trip destinations. I kept thinking “with my luck, if I leave now they’ll be here in 30 minutes”. Then, due to the traffic caused by the buses, the transportation back to Echo got backed up (I even heard mention that it was suspended for some time). So even if I had wanted to go back, I wouldn’t have been able to. My wait was worth it though, some of the Finnish contingent’s buses finally showed up, and I had a chance to welcome them.

Once I had achieved my goal of meeting the Finns, the excitement wore off quite quickly, and I was suddenly drained. I looked later and saw that I had walked close to ten miles in that parking lot. I let my team know I was heading out, and did so. I stopped inside Ruby Welcome Center and ate dinner there. The awesome Food Team brings food up, so the people working there don’t have to journey back to Echo.

That turned out to be a good decision. I got on a bus, and we were told that there was a small contingent that needed a ride to their campsite. Being helpful scouts, we were ok with that plan. We waited for them to get on the bus and got under way. Due to the condition of the roads, and the number of buses on those roads, and dropping the contingent off, we were on that bus for an hour and a half. By the time we got to Echo, I was glad I had already eaten, and just headed off to my tent and went to bed.