Jacks Math

In our school, heads of department and the principle and vice principle were allowed to dispense corporal punishment. We called them "jacks". Depending on the teacher, they used a long thin cane, a thicker paddle, or one of those wooden rulers. The paddles and rulers were not really an issue, but the cane could mete out pain in prodigious doses.

If my mother is reading this, I never got jacked, all this is absolutely hypothetical...

Human beings have a habit of trying to find patterns in chaotic data, and we were no different when it came to Jacks. There were many theories floated about the best way to take jacks, what hurt the least, and how best to recover. They ranged from keeping your pants tight across your buttocks (ostensibly to absorb some of the kinetic energy by the cotton fibers stretching, or something) to what underwear to wear (sometimes you knew you were getting jacked even before going to school).

The Principal, a Mr Gouldie, and the head of the english department, a Mr Watson, were the most feared of the teachers allowed to administer discipline by the timely application of pain. They both use a springy cane and could leave you unable to sit comfortably for hours if you got more than one or two lashes. What was worse was when Mr Watson gave you the choice to have him jack you, or get sent to the principal. It was a tough decision. Mr Watson gave much more painful punishment, but if you went to the principal, the punishment went on your record. Mostly we chose to take the more painful, but temporary punishment.

They also tended to give mass punishment, where an entire class or group would line up and then, one by one, would step forward, bend over, and experience activation of the pain receptors in their buttocks, usually a single shot.

We developed, by experimental evidence, and sound scientific and psychological theories, a theory of the best position to be in a line of boys getting caned. Going first had it's temptation, you got it over with fastest, and could get back to whatever behaviour that caused the problem long before anyone else had finished. Going last was also tempting. It had the disadvantage of anticipation, but the advantage that it was possible the teacher was tiring by the end of the line and you might not get hit as hard.

Experimental evidence disputed the last position hypothesis. It seems that caning does not require a large expenditure of energy, it appears to be mostly in the wrist. Experimentally, we found that going second resulted in the least pain, and going first was normally the most painful. This was verified in a number of clinical trials. It took us a while to formulate a good theory.

Our theory states that the first in line gets the brunt of the teachers frustration or anger. The teacher, realizing that he has gone a little overboard, possibly because of the expression on the face of unlucky #1, overcompensates for #2, giving them the lightest jack. Realising their mistake, possibly again due to the expression on the face of #2, they then settle down to a middle road approach for the rest of the students.

I have no idea what the teachers thought of the scuffles that would ensue when we were asked to line up for jacks. It must have been a bit counterintuitive to see kids coming forward eagerly when you were about to punish them.

 

The anarchist scout's cookbook

In my years as a scout, one thing captured our imaginations more than anything else. Fire.

Fire was a mystical, yet practical tool. We spent many hours learning how to create it, how to kill it. We tamed the beast and made it work for us. Fire provided us with food, with light, and with a place to gather around at night and sing campfire songs and tell stories.

Being good scouts, and budding scientists, we would experiment with the boundaries of this tool. What burned longest, what burned fastest, and what was the best way to build a fire. This led to some amusing consequences. In general, if you asked one of use to build a fire for cooking on, you would get something that burned so hot for the first hour, it could not be approached closer than a meter without protective clothing.

We experimented with chimneys. We found that if you took all your old sisal rope, coiled it inside a 44 gallon drum with no top or bottom, set the drum up on bricks so it had a good draw, and set fire to the rope, you could get 25 feet high flames.

Our curiosity extended also to the best methods for starting fires. We had matches dipped in wax, we had flint and tinder, we had liquid firelighter (colloquially known as "BP Spirits"), we even had the old favourite, the firebow.

And then we had chemistry. Boy did we have chemistry. Many many household chemicals can combust beautifully when mixed in the right way. Homemade incendiaries were fun and instructive. We cooked up batches of smoke bombs using sugar and saltpeter. We made black powder, we even corned it. We mixed brake fluid and HTH, although the resultant chlorine fumes lowered this solution's usefulness. Touch powder (Nitrogen Tri-iodide) was a staple, although not useful for actually making fires, just hilarious practical jokes. And making large iodine stains on the carpet. My parents still complain about that.

The holy grail of our fire making, however, was something you could carry around in your survival kit, had multiple uses, and could reliably start a fire. Bonus points if it was obscure. Strike anywhere matches were dangerous, and lighters are right out. Our solution was Potassium Permanganate (KMnO4). It was light, safe, you could use it to sterilize your drinking water or treat a blister, and when mixed with Glycerine, it bursts into a joyous flame. Both were easily accessible in any pharmacy, and are completely safe chemicals when kept separated.

It was useful too because it had a built in timer. You could drop the Glycerin onto the pile of crystals, and then you had a few seconds to find safe harbour before the show started. We used it to light firecrackers, and the aforementioned barrel of rope. With the addition of magnesium shavings, it became a good way to light home made thermite. It could be combined with other chemicals to make different coloured flames.

We didn't just dabble with the elements, we pulled up chairs to the periodic table and feasted on it's contents. By "feasted", I mean "set fire to". I learned more about chemistry, at least in the limited field of exothermic reactions, in scouts than I did in school, and still today I fondly recall most of those experiments.

My favourite bases

It’s tough deciding which bases I enjoyed the most. All of them were valuable, and I learned a lot.

The electronics base was fun, not because of the electronics, but because we were visited by a large boomslang who decided to investigate our table. It was like a scout explosion, it’s amazing how fast people can move when they’re motivated.

I enjoyed the shooting base, because I turned out to be good with a shotgun, despite the first shot knocking me over backwards. I got the highest number of skeets, and, as a reward, got to shoot a .303 scoped rifle and pulverise a rock so far away we could barely see it.

Rock climbing (pictured) was a definite favourite. Especially the abseiling down.

Water base was enjoyable simply because it was water, and we were very hot. I managed to windsurf all the way across Clanwilliam Dam before I realised that I had no idea how to tack against the wind. I had to be towed back by a motorboat. Parasailing was the highlight of that base.

I think my all time favourite though was paintball. Crawling through the bushes, creeping up on your opponents, and giving them lovely bruises. It was most enjoyable.

When we got to the base, we found that a rival patrol who had been dogging us for a while was slated to be our opponents. They had a couple of egotistical folks, and they’d been doing the cederberg equivalent of trash talking us for the last couple of days. As a bonus, there was a journalist there who would be taking pictures, and he had brought his 11 year old son with him. He asked if his son could join in. The kid was a little overweight and geeky, so our opposition passed. We happily welcomed him onto our team, since we were out to enjoy ourselves, not “win”.

Our pistols had a “feature” where if you carefully uncocked it, you could pump a second charge of gas into the chamber and essentially double the velocity of your paintball. A couple of us, while waiting around, had also “accidentally” left some of our paintballs sitting in the sun, which has the unfortunate habit of reducing the chance of them breaking and getting you a kill, but also produces the most amazing bruises when fired from a double cocked pistol. It also hurts like hell.

The game started normally, a standard “capture the flag” scenario. At this point, the opposition team discovered, the hard way, that a number of our patrol were excellent stalkers. They also discovered, to their dismay, that the 11 year old kid somehow could not miss. He racked up an impressive amount of kills. We were donating ammunition to him because he could single handedly hold a choke point while the rest of us would sneak over, steal the flag from behind, and take it back to our base.

We won handily, and it was a dispirited, and very black and blue, patrol that left the base with us. There was no trash talking for the rest of the hike.

Expect the unexpected

Photo by stuckincustoms

In a previous post, I detailed some of my packing thought processes. In particular, I mentioned that we didn't pack any tents. We had no lightweight hiking tents, and the weather in the Cederberg is generally pretty dry in December. Nothing to worry about, right?


The hike had been going well until then, we stopped at a dry riverbed to set up camp for the evening. We made dinner, I accidentally tried to pick up the camp stove before it had cooled (I still have the scar), and we rolled out our mattresses on the lovely soft riverbed sand and went to sleep.

Sometime later, I was awakened by a huge rain droplet hitting me smack in the face. A look up confirmed that the cloudless starry night had turned into some very angry looking thunderclouds, and we were going to be in for a hell of a storm. We woke everyone and, as the downpour started, we all crawled into our survival bags, pulled our backpacks in with us, and went back to sleep.

We didn't, however, think about getting out of the riverbed.

Some time, and one flash flood later, everyone got the hint and moved up to higher ground. We didn't lose anything or anyone, and all in all, we were in reasonably good spirits when morning rolled around. The rain gave no indication of letting up, so we hunkered down, built a mostly waterproof fort out of emergency bags and tarps, and made breakfast.

It rained for a while, and I no longer recall what we did to get to the next base, but so much for it never raining in December.

The way to a scout's heart

Changes depending on whether you have your first aid badge or not.

Oldest biscuit in the world. Proton biscuits looked
suspiciously like this. Photo by Paul Cziko

Oh, right, the food. Food at my Cederberg hikes was a mix of "just add water", a lot of glow in the dark egg substitute, MREs and the surprise hit for our group, "Proton Biscuits" (cookies for you Americans). We think they were called that because they were made of byproducts from the Koeberg nuclear reactor. If you've read much Terry Pratchett, think Dwarf Bread. They were provided to us in old shopping bags, and I have no idea where they came from or what their nutritional value was. Most patrols thought they were a joke, and used them as currency in the swap boxes at bases.

Our patrol, purely due to having boys who would literally eat anything, discovered something amazing about the proton biscuits; after you've had about ten of them, they somehow become delicious. Less than ten, and you'd rather eat the shopping bag, or one of your patrol mates, but once you reach around ten, you simply can't stop eating the things.

This was lucky for us, since at every base we stopped, the swap box was literally overflowing with bags of Proton biscuits left there by patrols who had obviously not eaten the magic number. We capitalised heavily on their lack of fortitude and would grab any bags we came across, leaving behind anything to do with powdered eggs.

By the end of the hike, the supply started drying up. I believe the other patrols had finally hit critical biscuit mass and discovered that they weren't just made from recycled cardboard, or toilet paper. I still think fondly about those Protons, but since I never found out what they actually were, I have never managed to find them outside of Cederberg. They must have been quite nutritious though, we basically lived off them for a week.

Outside of the food you carried with you, there was the Dutch Oven base. This is a highlight in a week filled with radioactive eggs and collapsed matter biscuits. With a bit of preparation, and some patience, you can make delicious confections. I think we skipped it the second time around though. It was overshadowed by other, more important, bases. And we didn't want the Proton Biscuits getting jealous.

The Packening

So you're going to be in the mountains for ten days. What do you take with you?

In our case, it was "as little as possible". A couple of pairs of jeans (despite the heat, I still prefer jeans for hiking), some shorts, underwear, tshirts, a pair of flip flops.


You need a sleeping bag. When I was doing it, materials science wasn't as advanced as it is now, so you were very lucky to have a high tech light sleeping bag. Mine was a pretty good one. Tent? Fahgeddaboutit. It's December! It never rains in December! We'll sleep under the stars. One of those sleeping mats is essential. As is a survival bag. On my first trip, I had an external frame backpack. It was useful, but not the most comfortable thing to hike with, and it made this clinking noise with every step. Drove me nuts. clink  clink  clink. Duct tape would probably have fixed it, but for some reason, we neglected to bring any. I see nowadays it's recommended. Probably due to some clink related death previously.

On my second trip, I had upgraded to a lightweight internal frame backpack. It was a dream to use. About the only thing bad I could say about it was that it makes your back a bit sweaty.

Into your backpack goes all your clothing. If you've done it right, you still have a lot of space left. some toiletries and a small first aid pack get added to that. The sleeping bag gets strapped on top or stuffed in, depending on your sleeping bag and backpack. And your mat straps on the bottom. Then you weigh it, mentally double that for the food you'll be carrying, wince, and wonder if you can hike naked. You can't.

The food. I'll talk more about the food in future posts, but essentially, you have to carry it all with you. I think they give you one drop point that you can make a package to resupply, but that's about it. At the start of the adventure, they give you this pile of food, and it's your job to make sure you don't starve. So you portion it out amongst you, weighted to the older folks and go from there. Pots and pans are irrelevant. You have a combination pot-bowl-plate-cup thing that also holds your utensils, weighs very little and is probably about 15x20x10 centimeters. It'll do. There's always the Dutch Oven base.

Cooking is done on those tiny camp stoves. We carry a couple of them and a few refills.

I agonised for days over what I was packing and what I needed. In the end I think my backpack (both times) weighed about 20 kilos, or over 40 pounds. For someone not yet 15, this was considerable. If I fell over backwards, I was like a turtle and had to be helped up again. It's not as bad as it sounds, because a good backpack puts most of the weight on your hips, but you better be fit, and you better have worn your hiking boots in.

The hardest part

One of the routes for the 2010 adventure.

There are many things about Cederberg that are hard. You have to be fit, because you're going to be hiking up and down mountains, with deadlines. You have to be prepared, because lots of unexpected things can happen, and you have to come to terms with the fact that you won't be able to attend all the bases.

The hardest part, from my experience, is choosing which of the thirty odd bases you won't be attending.

All this happens long before you get into the mountains. You sit down as a group, and find a way to decide which of the bases you want to go to the most. Tally that up, come to some consensus, and then try to work out an itinerary that most closely matches your wishlist. They've simplified it a lot in recent years, it seems. When I was doing it, there were literally 50 itineraries in the booklet, and you put down your top 3 in the form, and if you were lucky (and quick to return the paperwork) you'd get the one you wanted.

For our group, some of the choices were easy. Everyone wanted the water activities (Parasailing for the win). Diving and Rock Climbing were close contenders, and paintball was a definite yes. It was much harder finding an itinerary that matched our wishes. We gave up things like Archery so we could fit everything we had to have in.

The first time around, we did the water activities near the beginning. The second, we made sure that the water activities were near the end. It's pretty much the only bath you get in the ten days you're there...
The problem is twofold. You only have ten days, and each base takes a goodly amount of time. The Water Activities base, for instance, can only handle about two patrols a day. There are 50 patrols. Some other bases, like paintball, accommodate two patrols at a time, for 4 patrols a day. And others can essentially take care of any amount, limited only by the number of helpers.

Combined with some low-throughput bases being very popular (Electronics, Water Activities, Rock Climbing), this makes for an exciting and tense time from when you send in your paperwork until you find out if you hit the jackpot and got the itinerary you wanted. I think our first time we got our second or third choice, and the second time we got our first choice. We knew what we were up against, and we planned ahead.

In the end, it doesn't really matter which bases you go to. They're all interesting, and you're guaranteed to get a few amazing ones in any route. Some of these will stick with you forever. You may not remember the names of the people you went with, but you will remember the things you did.