Soaring

My son's Eagle Project is finally falling into place. I've been badgering him to get to it for three years, now. True to form, he waited until the month before his birthday to get started. To his credit, he's in three different choirs, the school musical, art club, swim team, and loads of church activities. He's not a lazy boy--just busy. Luckily he's fairly tractable and he gets things done cheerfully when he finally puts his mind to it.

The project has been fraught with problems from the start. First, the man who said he had a project down at the church ballpark strung him along and never got back to him, so this one was his back-up.

The people in charge of Colossal Cave park are often out of town or otherwise unavailable. They also sent over the wrong hinges for the gate and several of the fence posts were substandard. Several times they have canceled scheduled workdays without any notice, which meant that people were confused about when to come to help out.

Getting the right supplies has been interesting. Because the hinges were different than they previously indicated, the latches for the gates don't meet very well and we had to jury-rig something to make them fit. And the existing gate posts canted so far outward at the top that we had to shim the gates to make them even work, which meant that the wheels we bought don't work and we'll have to take the gates back off and remove the wheels. We'll do that when we get the cables for them.

Through it all, my son has been grace under fire. He kept people doing what they were doing, for the most part (a great feat in itself), and has been pretty good at trouble-shooting. I think he has earned this Eagle.

That said, now I have to go clear out there and put on a latch and a cane bolt to finish it off. I can't say I'm looking forward to it, but a mom does what she can for her eagle chick. Anything for a chance to see my son join that fantastic brotherhood.