Time To Get Busy

Our Ohio Gypsy Journal Rally begins one week from today, and it’s time to get busy wrapping up all the last-minute details before the event starts. Fortunately for Terry and me, we have a lot of help here to get the job done.

Early yesterday afternoon, Mike and Elaine Loscher arrived at the fairgrounds and parked their Winnebago in the site next to us. We went outside to greet them, then left them alone to get plugged in and leveled out. Once they were hooked up and had the air conditioner running to cool off the inside of their rig, they came over to visit for a while. Mike and Elaine are dedicated volunteers whom we have come to rely on for so many things over the years.

A couple of hours later, Greg and Jan White showed up and there was another round of hugs as we welcomed them. Greg is in charge of collecting door prizes from the local business community and does a wonderful job of it. He also helps with parking, he’s presenting three seminars, and is always there to pitch in wherever needed. And Jan isn’t just eye candy! She helps Terry with registration, she will be presenting a seminar on working as gate guards with Greg, and is always a friendly face to turn to for folks attending the rally who have any questions.

Speaking of rally door prizes, we’re going to have some good ones to give out. In addition to the ones Greg will collect, our vendors will all be donating door prizes and we will also be giving away gift certificates for free camping, admission to the RV Museum in Elkhart, RV accessories, and an Amazon Kindle e-book reader, just to name a few.

And as if that wasn’t enough, our dear friends Tim and Crystal Ryerson from InflatableBoats4Less contacted me yesterday to tell me they are once again donating another Sea Eagle 370 Pro Package! How cool is that? Tim and Crystal are two the nicest people you’ll ever meet, and they are totally committed to customer satisfaction. When you combine a quality product like the Sea Eagle inflatable boats with business owners like them, how can you go wrong?

We have a lot to get done this week, and the first-order of business will be meeting with the new fairgrounds manager, whom we have not worked with before. There are some wrinkles we have to iron out, including the stage. In the past we have rented a stage from a local company and not had a good experience with them, so last year the previous fairgrounds manager said they had one we could use. As it turns out, it’s an old cobbled together plywood contraption that they have had sitting outside and were going to take to the dump but decided to hold off on until after our rally. But now they plan to charge us $200 to use it! I don’t think so!

One of the big frustrations of holding RV rallies, aside from losing money at them and all the work involved, is that every fairgrounds we have worked with has had management changes, with never any advance notice, and usually lots of confusion. But it’s just one more hurdle to get over, we’ve done it before.

I got an e-mail from our friends Bob and Lynn Throckmorton the other day, telling me that we have been featured in the current issue of the TrailBlazer magazine, which is a publication for Thousand Trails members. Someone interviewed us for it a while back, but we have been so busy that it completely slipped my mind. I haven’t seen the magazine yet, since we are not subscribers, but John and Kathy Huggins, who produce the Living The RV Dream podcasts  are at the Hershey (Pennsylvania) Thousand Trails now and John said he would try to get a copy and bring it to us at the rally. Thanks John, I appreciate it.

Thought For The Day – Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

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