- Delaney

Collaberation Bead

       The materials committee has one of the hardest jobs on the trip. They must work every day to maintain the tents, constantly fixing zippers, patching rain flies, and assisting with the set up and take down of tents. They also take responsibility of fixing vans and other necessary camping equipment. The real handy men of the AGLP family, the materials committee has had a rocky start for the first time in a while.
This year, Ishtar decided to save time and money by storing the tents here in Alaska instead of shipping them back and forth every year to Michigan. This, however, presented a particular problem for the materials committee, as they are required to become experts with the correct techniques to put up the tents. Instead of practicing with the real tents, they were forced to substitute with a similar tent.
         At the participant training, instead of practicing putting up a tent, they learned by demonstration. Because the eighth graders were only shown how to set them up, we had troubles the first couple of nights with the tents. Many were not quite sure how to put them up, which resulted in leaks and a slow setup. “ I think in the beginning, people didn’t know how to set up the tents as well as they could in previous years,” said a committee leader, Ryan Tobin, “ I still see people doing it wrong. One thing I had to do was go around and show them how to roll it up and stuff it in that tiny bag.”
         The materials committee has been able to pick themselves up by the bootstraps and are now back on their feet. No matter what challenges they face in the future, the hardest has already past and they feel they can handle anything. “ As long as they treat the zippers right, everything will be fine,” said Ryan Tobin.