Our Ohio Gypsy Journal Rally is off and running and everybody is having a good time. That’s mandatory at one of our events. Frowning can get you in trouble around here.
The day started a 7:30 AM with me chasing down a couple of Class C motorhomes driving around the fairgrounds, seemingly lost and confused. I caught up with one, who was looking for the dump station. I pointed him in the right direction, and then found the other, who had just arrived. I found a parking spot for him, then went back to our motorhome to pick up Terry, and dropped her and a pile of supplies she needed off at the Junior Fair Building, where registration is being held.
Then I parked over by the Hospitality Building, which is the best place to greet new arrivals as they pull in. I had only been there a moment before another Class C stopped in front of me, and the driver said he was headed into town for breakfast. He told me he didn’t tow a car behind him, then he asked why we did not provide a shuttle service for folks like him to get to local stores and restaurants. Huh? “How hard can it be,” he asked, “You rent a 15 passenger van and designate somebody to drive it.” I replied that in addition to being a newspaper editor, travel writer, book author, rally promoter, seminar presenter, and fulltime RVer, I didn’t have the proper endorsement on my driver’s license to be a taxicab driver too!
Mike Loscher and I were on parking duty. It was a slow day, but a few rigs showed up. We had 87 RVs on the fairgrounds Sunday night, and by the end of the day we were up to 105. That’s more than we expected for this rally, and a lot of the credit goes to Charles and Chris Yust and Al Hesselbart, who both passed out lots of sample copies of the Gypsy Journal at the FMCA rally in Indianapolis last week, and urged people to come to Celina when they hit the road.
At 4 PM we had our Welcoming and vendor introductions, followed by a short Ask The Experts panel. Then we stopped for a quick dinner and were back at 7 PM for door prize drawings. We gave out a lot of prizes, mostly from local restaurants, and we still have a lot more to go!
I mentioned in a blog a few days ago that the sound was not working on my Droid Razr Maxx, and that after a long talk with Verizon tech support, Barbara Westfield was given a strange suggestion. The tech told her to rub the back of the phone hard, with a finger near the speaker. I know it sounds weird, but apparently there is a printed circuit under the cover that does not make a good connection and the pressing motion is supposed to push thing s together inside the phone and resolve the problem.
Or not. The phone still isn’t working and I have missed a lot of calls. So yesterday Barbara was back on the phone with Verizon’s tech support again and the long and short of it is that they are sending me a new phone, which should be here Wednesday. Thanks for all of your help, Barbara.
Today we start our seminar presentations and it’s going to be busy all day long. In fact, it will be busy all week long!
Thought For The Day – Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the one’s you did. Explore, dream, discover.
Nick Russell
World-Famous, New York Times Best Selling Author, and All-Around Nice Guy!
You have patience my friend. Wishing the reminder of the Rally goes well.
The IDIOT (and he is an IDIOT) who wanted you to provide a shuttle service to take him into town to get breakfast had better be careful. He is liable to give the impression that some of us RVers are always looking for something for nothing and that some of us are just plain CHEAP!
PT Barnum once said there is a sucker born every minute. He would have been correct had he also said, they is someone looking for a handout born every minute.
Let’s see how this works. Say you set up a FREE shuttle service and find a half dozen people willing to serve as volunteer drivers — again assume they each have the necessary CDL. O.K. now the same guy who wants his FREE shuttle service will be the same idiot who sues you when his FREE tote bag full of samples gets caught on the bus door and causes him to fall on the bus stairs. So now you will end up working for HIM the rest of your life.
Guess he missed your blog the day you mentioned that your rallys are losing money.
A shuttle service,……what is next?, will he want you to provide an rv washing station to clean his rig before he goes? Or will he expect you to come by and get his trash every day?
Hmmm…shuttle service…Hmmm…get a 5th wheel/motor home, unhook truck/toad, drive to town, really how hard can that be? Some people, all they think of is themselves and nothing else. Sad…
As to your phone, you know Verizon is sending these storm alerts. I think it’s a joke but they say it’s the gov’t, not them. I ask how come people with other providers don’t have them? No answer. ANYWAY, they disabled those emergency alerts on my phone as I found them to be too generic to be any good and since I’ve had sound. Apparently they wanted their alerts to sound loudest and therefore lowered the volume to zip on other things. Just keep in mind. If you like the alerts, that’s your call.
Best wishes with the Rally hope to be there next year.
I always keep the last phone around so it could be activated when the new one acted up, it could activated it on line.
I’m so sorry “Nay-Sayers” always have to be so outspoken. We sooooo appreciate you and Terry and we fail to tell you enough. I’m glad you have “tough skin” and a ready answer for those!!
Good God. A shuttle service? I’m with Ed–what will some people want next? As someone who helped with organizing statewide and regional theatre conventions, I have found that the people who have the most complaints are not only self-centered, but are also absolutely clueless about what goes into planning and running a rally. Bob and I are having a wonderful time and have already learned so much at today’s seminars that all the talk at our lunch and supper tables was about sharing the information we had gathered. Better yet, we’re already discussing how to use said informatiin. Thanks for all your hard work, Nick and Terry!
And they wonder why someone goes into a rage and does something REALLY STUPID!! ie: using violence of whatever nature they can think of such as “going postal”. Maybe you could also start a laundry service and a cleaning service for the inside of the attendees rigs. Gee, Nick, I think that the possibilities for additional attractions are endless. Is it time for Bad Nick to get into the picture. You guys keep up the good work and, please, don’t let your Bad Nick side get physical!!
Glad to hear things have started on the right foot and that you are at above expectations. Aren’t friends great. Next time you do your budgeting try to remeber what the fee for “Life on Wheels” seminars were. That was several years ago and he got lots of subsidies and grants from the RV industry. I think there’s a lot of room up for the correct pricing for your Rallys.