Oct 042009
 

Friday our Gypsy Gathering rally ended, and after the morning coffee and donuts, I walked over to Dave and Jean Damon’s fifth wheel trailer, where Jean, a professional masseuse, gave me an wonderfully relaxing massage. Jean was trained in the Philippines, and by the time she got done kneading and prodding my sore, tired muscles, I was so relaxed that it was all I could do just to walk back to our motorhome.

Besides her massages, Dave and Jean were also selling 303 Products at the rally, and they did very well. We first met this nice couple when we were all vendors at the FMCA rally in Bowling Green, Ohio, and struck up an immediate friendship.

Back at the motorhome, Joe and Vicki Kieva stopped in for a chat, and as they were leaving a long series of visitors arrived at our door as rally attendees came to say goodbye before they hit the road. I tried to be good company, but I was so relaxed after my massage that I’m afraid at times it was all I could do to hold up my end of a conversation.

Friday night a bunch of us all went to the China Wok Buffet here in Celina, which I rate in the top percentile of Chinese buffets we have ever visited. It is so good that this was our third visit in the two weeks we’ve been in town!

Here is a photo Miss Terry took of some of our group. That is Nancy Hazelton on the left, and beside her is Mike Loscher, myself, Ron Speidel, and Ken Barker. On the right is Orv Hazelton, and in the background is Brenda Speidel. Elaine Loscher was camera shy, so you can just barely see her arms next to Orv. Billie Barker was off checking out the buffet line when this picture was taken. We all stuffed ourselves, and don’t be too surprised if Miss Terry and I don’t sneak back one more time before we leave Celina for good.

After a busy week of getting up at obscenely early hours, working hard to keep everything at the rally on track, and getting very little sleep, Miss Terry and I played lazy Saturday morning and slept in. Once we woke up, we lay in bed a while, just enjoying some much needed quiet time together, and talking about the week just past.

Once we were up, things got busy really fast. I had no sooner opened our front window curtain and the window shades before somebody was knocking at the door. We had a ton of paperwork to catch up on, as well as settling our account with the fairgrounds for the rally rental, but I’m afraid we didn’t get much done. But that’s okay, we wanted to be sure to spend some time with everybody we could.

Sometimes we feel pulled in a dozen different directions at one time, and we had to tell some people “I’m sorry, we just don’t have the time,” but there are just so many hours in a day. We love visiting with our friends and readers, and we really hate to be rude, but sometimes we have no other choice. We just hope that they will understand.

Today we will drive 215 miles south to Lexington, Kentucky, where I have my annual appointment at the V.A. hospital on Monday morning. As soon as that is over, we’ll turn right around and come back to Ohio and spend a week or so gathering stories for the next issue of the Gypsy Journal, which we need to get printed and mailed before we head south for the winter

Thought For The Day – Everywhere is within walking distance if you have the time.

Nick Russell

World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!

  3 Responses to “Post- Rally Activities”

  1. Maybe you should make a sign for those times when you can’t greet your public. Maybe it should say “Bad Nick is in… come back later”.

  2. Hi Nick — I totally understand how you’d be ready for some privacy after this week! That’s why, when I passed you walking my two whippets Friday morning, I just said “Hi” and didn’t try to pursue a conversation that I’m sure you’d heard 1,000 times during the past week! When we get time, I’ll update our blog and rave about the rally on it!

  3. Cec and I really enjoved and learned a lot at the Gathering. The educational seminars were great. The only problem was that we wanted to go to several at the same time, ah (blinding light, slapping forehead) the reason for going to next years rally. You sly fox!!

    Glad to hear, on the last day there, that the grandson was OK.

    Thanx for the hosting expecially with all the other conerns. Great on the clean bill of health at the VA.

 Leave a Reply

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

(required)

(required)

Notify me of followup comments via e-mail. You can also subscribe without commenting.