Life protip Leukotape and crutches

One of the several pains of using crutches is blisters on the base of your hands.  There’s a surprising amount of friction at the end opposite your palm. (The other major pain is how much motion planning you have to do. That and not being able to drive.)

It turns out that one of the tricks I learned to inhibit blisters, a medicated anise-smelling tape, leukotape is well suited to solving this problem. A patch over the sore spots makes life more bearable. I suppose you could use other athletic tapes, but this is (for caucasians) more or less skin-coloured and designed for this purpose.

I learned this from section hiker and have told my scouting buddies about it. Mind you, I’m not sure they all listened, but that’s their problem.

Youth Protection.

I just finished redoing my biennial scout leader youth protection training. Well worth doing if you have children or work with children. It has changed since I last took it to reflect changes in the legal responsibilities and the threats.

  • No one on one contact and two-deep leadership. Remove the opportunity to be an abuser.
  • Respect privacy. Changes include confiscating a camera or electronic device that might have been used to take inappropriate pictures, as well as reporting it to the scout executive asap.
  • A big section on cyber-bullying and similar things.
  • An expanded section on ‘normal’ (as if there was such a thing) bullying. 

All in all improved from two years ago and focused on how to keep both leaders and scouts safe.

http://myscouting.org will get you there.