Scouts Discover Surfing!

submitted by Sally LaSalle

Recently Desirae (Desirae Beaumont) and I had the enormous pleasure of being approached by the Discovery Scout Group of Second Life for a fairly impromptu surfing field trip.

Scout Leader Violet Steamweaver brought a troop of 6 young scouts Zabby, Zyon, Nina, Raine, LittlePexie and BabyMickie over for a one hour surf lesson at T'ai beach.

We had hoped to use Archipelago, but SL was not co-operating with us on the day, with a little too much lag for a large group. The young scouts, a mixture of mostly girls but one boy as well, were really sweet, fun, and enthusiastic. All were very polite, well behaved, and quick to learn the basics of surfing. We rezzed a loaner board for each of the kids and took them out to take on the fluffies and Cortes waves on T'ai. The scouts had enormous fun catching the waves and doing a commendable job of some nice surf riding!!

We slowly introduced a few tricks ... using C to crouch and E S for the flip much to the delight of the kids :) The emphasis was on pure fun and keeping it simple and enjoyable. Everyone was invited to join the SLSA of which most with free group slots did :) So we hope to see some of these kids as rising stars of the future. The kids were well impressed when we told them that the reigning SLSA champion is also a boy scout!! *winks at Foo :) (MarkFoo Waverider) Scout Raine said .. "I wish Kels came back she would have liked this I think" BabyMickie chimed in with "me jus ride dat wave all da way!"

Scout leader Violet had a lot of fun too and said the kids all had a great time. We gladly accepted her request for return visits with maybe a new batch of scouts next time. This was a wonderful and rewarding surf day for all involved and reminded us of the pure joy of surf and unifying nature of surfing and the draw of the big waves on the human spirit.

All the kids were given a rashie sets and looked soooo cute wearing them :) We all had soft drinks and a bbq at the end .... before the kids headed off to an Alice in Wonderland Fancy Dress party :)

Violet will present all the kids with their surfing patch and I'm sure many will be back to surf some more!!

We thank Violet and the Discovery Scout group for coming over and encourage all those with young kids to contact Violet Steamweaver and sign up your young one with the group that does some wonderful activites :) The next Scout Sign up will be February 25th to March 5th.

Sally LaSalle & Desirae Beaumont

(T'ai and Ch'i surf sims)

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