Miss Terry was out of bed by 4 a.m. yesterday morning. She could have slept in a little bit longer, but she said she woke up and just couldn’t get back to sleep, because her mind was already going full speed ahead. So she got up and started her day early.
I was lazy and didn’t get up until about 7, and when I stepped outside, this rainbow greeted me. Actually, it was a double rainbow, but I’m not sure if both arcs will show very well in the photo.
By the time I got down to the Junior Fair Building, there was a crowd of people there, munching on donuts, sipping coffee, and visiting with friends new and old. I spent some time chatting with folks, and did my part to help reduce the donut surplus. Then, at 10:30, I presented my first seminar of the day, Gypsy Journal FAQs, in which I share the history of how we started the paper, how and why we do things the way we do, and what our long term goals are. Then I take questions from the audience. This is always a popular seminar, and people seem to be genuinely interested in our operation.
After lunch, I did my 90 minute long Highway History And Back Road Mystery seminar, which is based upon my book by the same name. That one didn’t start out well. For some reason, when I turned on on my Dell laptop computer, it decided it had a long list of updates it needed to do, right then. And then it needed to restart. When I finally got it up again, I realized that somehow the Power Point presentation for the seminar had disappeared. So I had to rush back to our motorhome, copy the file from my desktop computer onto a thumb drive, rush back to the seminar room, and load it onto the laptop. All of that, and I still managed to start the seminar only two minutes late! But I sure was mad at myself for making such a rookie mistake. I’m supposed to be a professional! Fortunately, the audience was very gracious and patient with me, and once we got rolling, it went pretty well.
After a short break, I was back at it again, with a new seminar I developed for this rally, called It Can Happen To You. Basically, I just talked about the fact that, while ours is a very safe lifestyle overall, bad things do happen to good RVers, occasionally. We covered things like illness and death on the road, being caught in bad weather, fire dangers, as well as crime and how to avoid becoming a victim. For the first time around, it went pretty smoothly, and I got a lot of good comments from the audience.
We ended the day with door prizes, and a concert by The McKinney Washtub Two. Whitt and Judy McKinney do a unique combination of old county standards and folk songs that they put their own twist on, mixed with some comedy, and whatever else they decide to come up with, and they are always a hit with the crowd. This time around, they drafted Miss Terry, Elaine Loscher, and Carol Hill to accompany them on kazoos, while Whitt played the guitar, and Judy player the washboard. (I told you it was a unique show!) Now, if you had ever told me my normally shy and demure wife would be up there on stage laughing and have a wonderfully silly time in front of so many people, I’d have told you it was never going to happen! But here is the proof!
Today we’ll have more seminars, and this evening will be our pizza party and then our Bucky Beauty contest. I bet they’ll be able to hear the laughter all the way to Dayton! 🙂
I mentioned before that this community always goes out of their way to make us welcome, and the other day a reporter from the Daily Standard newspaper came over to interview me, and then he spent some time talking to Al Hesselbart, historian for the RV Hall of Fame Museum. Yesterday they had a front page story about the rally,including two color photos. Hey, we’re famous! 🙂
Thought For The Day – Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
Our flamingos are apparently famous too!
Thanks so much for taking the time to share with those of us who cannot attend the rally. Each time you do this I am always surprised how you find time to do everything you do at the rally and still do a blog. I know you will say it’s your job and you love it. Well, it’s my spare time and I enjoy it and appreciate it. THANKS!
Thaks Dave. Like anything in life, it takes some sacrifice to accomplish. There are only so many hours in a day, and something must go. In my case, I gave up diet and exercise. 🙂
Nick, you remind me of the Eveready bunny–you just keep on going! I’m sure that, when you finally get back to your coach after a long day at the rally, you fall into your bed exhausted (after you post your blog, of course!). Those of us at the rally do appreciate it, and I hope we all express that to you personally before all is said and done. Thank you, Nick and Terry!
Once more you gave me a chuckle to start to day. Oh how we wish we could be there.
Any chance of a link to the front page article? Sounds like another well-planned and well-thought-out Gypsy Journal Rally.
George, here is a link to the story http://www.dailystandard.com/archive/story_single.php?rec_id=16065
Nick, to keep from having that “it’s not here… it’s back there” kinds of situations, I use Google Cloud connect to automatically keep all my “gotta have” stuff available in “the cloud”. Actually, it is in Google Docs and any sort of content is good there.
With a choice to have things updated automatically or only when I want to push the SYNC button, I never run the risk of not having content available.
There are also some mirroring facilities like DROPBOX and BOX.net that keep an updated copy on systems I choose of anything that I keep there. It’s just like another folder but the contents are kept in the cloud, too, and I can get to it from any system…. as long as I remember the userid and password.
You probably already know about these and just wanted a funny story to tell, right?
Great write-up in the local newspaper. Thanks for posting the web site. It is always nice to see a community appreciate what the RVers do. Too bad more do not get the message!
I’m not sure what all Emery is talking about, but you can change windows from “automatic update” to “notify you when an update is available”. Then you can actually do the update whenever you want.
JC
That was the best newspaper article about RVing I’ve read. That reporter actually got it.