Cadets spotted washing planes at Grissom Air Museum

[Eclipse]

The previous iteration of the GLR Staff College took place on Grissom ARB until 2009, two
of the extracurricular activities were going to the Grissom Air Museum http://www.grissomairmuseum.com/
and attending the Peru Children's Circus http://www.peruamateurcircus.com/ (don't get me started about that).

Icenine (who is no longer in CAP) and I, along with Capt_Redfox30 and a bunch of others from the Region attended the last year there.

Anyway, Adam The Woo, who is currently traveling from his former home in California to stay temporarily
with his sister in Indiana, featured the air museum on today's vlog:

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Grissom footage starts about 4:28, and and if you jump to 7:14 you will see UAV footage of some CAP members washing a plane.

He also went through Peru, and visited the Circus Museum.  The street he is on was running a city fair the
day we attended the circus, but I don't remember going in the museum (we did see $1.00's worth of strange, though).

Although the circus isn't in the video, the museum is on about the same scale as the circus in regards to the Heisenberg Creepy Scale.

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Thread from 2009 on the RSC here: http://captalk.net/index.php?topic=8393.msg151674#msg151674
Kinda funny that Hartigan liked the circus, wish I had remembered that when I saw him in person in April, could have been a lively conversation.

[Robert Hartigan]

The circus was a fun, unusual and an interesting study in teamwork. Heck, it was entertaining, too. Who doesn't like clowns and acrobats? Besides, it will always give you a baseline to reference. You can always ask yourself: Is this CAP event run better or worse than a circus? 

[Eclipse]

I'd been "warned" about the circus by previous participants.

Up until we got there, I thought we'd be getting a tour of the backstage, operations, talk to the people running it, etc.

As it turned out, we just went to watch, and since we straggled in without being identified as any sort of "group",
and were in civilian clothes, it was just a bunch of creepy old dudes attending a children's circus together, without families or kids with them.

I'm pretty sure I saw Chris Hanson scouting the location.

The primary "teamwork" lesson we received was working together to figure out how soon we could scram without being noticed.

[SMWOG]

Let me get this straight,you went to RSC and some one pitched the idea that going to a circus would be a team building exercise? You get there and you just watch the show? Sounds like the cadre just wanted to go to the circus.

[Eclipse]

Let me get this straight,you went to RSC and some one pitched the idea that going to a circus would be a team building exercise? You get there and you just watch the show? Sounds like the cadre just wanted to go to the circus.

Not "pitched", required. This was an official extracurricular activity of the RSC.
There were one or two people who raised objections and they were told they would not
receive credit if they did not participate.

This was not an anomaly, this was a tradition, and one the cadre was quite proud of.

Adam's video today shows the full fair and goes into the circus...

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Jump to about 6:12 for the Peru Fair and Children's Circus.

This was / is Peru Indiana's "thing" - apparently at some point, for whatever reason, a number of circus' started wintering in
Peru and the surrounding area (never got that - why wouldn't you "winter" where it is warm?").

Anyway, this is nothing against the circus itself, kids 7-21 spend weeks practicing and then put shows on in July, it's like
circus camp.  The cadre that had been doing RSC at Grissom forever thought it was the best thing since sliced bread, talked about it
incessantly during the week, and made a huge deal about going.

There wasn't any connectivity to the lesson plans, no attempt to connect it to adolescent leadership, nor did we meet anyone
from the organization or the performers.

We just went to the circus.

The tapestry that makes up one's CAP career is "colorful" to say the least.

[SMWOG]

I would have been upset,take time off work,spend money and to be taken to a circus. No real valie there. They should have just said"Hey guys,there is a circus and many of us staff types like it so we are going and you can tag along. If you dont want to go thats cool,go out and explore the area! Oh go check out the golf course or local brewery!"

When I went to RSC,we went out once to a BBQ joint that supposedly wad  the greatest  thing (meh). I am not one for mandatory fun.
I have rathered saved the money and ate at the DFAC for three bucks. I will say that we did some great team building exercises in the day room as a seminar. I draw the line when they want students to put on the same polo and go outin public looking like tourists 

[Robert Hartigan]

100% agree there was no tie in with the RSC curriculum. It had all the tell tale signs of being a great idea and was probably tied in at one point and it was probably brilliant...    ...then likely the original curriculum writer left CAP and the legacy information to the reason why you should attend the circus  was lost only to be picked up by someone who  thought they knew all the answers and the end result was bastardized. I think the same thing happened with the warm fuzzy and cold prickly stupidity.

[Eclipse]

the warm fuzzy and cold prickly

Memories...