December 1996

Fun things to do with your tribe

It’s about time I wrote the Cheyenne’s contribution for the Smoke Signals. The Tallykeeper has been patiently waiting for me for a month to wake up! The Cheyenne’s contribution this month deals with ideas for tribal outings.

Most local pizza parlors will allow your tribe the run of the kitchen where you can make your own pizzas. You have to give them plenty of advance notice and it’s best to pick a day that’s kind of slow for them; mid-week is best. Also, certain times of the year are worse than others. For example, the beginning of soccer season is not good as there are a lot of team parties. The best is to pick a time between sports seasons, if you can.

Walking tours of the Bolsa Chica Wildlife Reserve are fun, especially during daylight savings time. There are a few points of interest and you can read about the wildlife at Bolsa Chica and some of the history surrounding the area, going back to World War II. A few weeks back, we had a simple outing for ice cream at Ruby’s on the pier. The Cheyenne are a large tribe with just under 40 braves and princesses. If you want to see the look of wanton terror on the face of diners, take the entire tribe out to Ruby’s upstairs for a snack. I thought everyone was going to get up and start jumping out the windows when our girls and dad’s trooped upstairs like the Red Army. To their credit, the girls behaved very well, befitting the Indian Princesses. If anything, it was the dads who were the problem.

The plant tour of the Los Angeles Times is good, particularly if you have quite a few more senior princesses; this tour might not be quite as meaningful for the kindergartners. The Orange County facility is one of the larger printing operations in the nation, producing over 1.1 million copies per day. They have interesting things to see like presses that can make 1000 color copies per minute, and “tuggers” that can pull sixteen rolls - or 32 tons - of paper at one time. The Times - Orange County is at 1375 Sunflower in Costa Mesa.

Probably the best idea we’ve had for an outing was one presented in the Smoke Signals several months back, and that is Camera Day. We’ve done this in both our Guides and Princesses tribes and it’s a lot of fun and a great way to meet new people - but only briefly. This is a timed game where the tribe breaks up into two or more teams, depending on how many people you have. Points are given for photographs taken of the team in various situations. For example: our team had our picture taken shaking hands with strangers in front of as many strangers as we could assemble (at a local restaurant with indoor-outdoor seating); with a priest; in a pool with water up to our waists (my team didn’t do that one, thank you); with as many neighbors as we could find; with shaving cream on our faces, etc. At the end of the hour or hour and a half, you go out to lunch while the pictures are being developed, total up the scores and look at the photos later. If it sounds strange - it is, but it’s also a lot of fun. The pictures are a great addition to your tribal album - every tribe should have one to pass along to subsequent tribal members.

We like to break up our monthly get-togethers into meetings - at our members’ homes - and outings - activities like I’ve mentioned above. We find that this provides some variety in our monthly activities. Regardless of whether you have meetings, outings or whatever, our goal in the GHV is to spend time with our daughters and strengthen the bond between Brave and Princess. As far as that goes, it really doesn’t matter what we do, as long as we do it together.

Noonway!

Blackhawk of the Cheyenne