Okay, maybe I didn’t shave my legs, but I was still up before 7 a.m., and I even brushed my teeth! That has to count for something, doesn’t it?

Why was I up at such an ungodly hour, you may ask? Because we’re working a vendor booth at the Hershey RV Show this week – America’s “largest” RV show. I know it’s the largest, because it says so right there on their website. Uh huh, and I stand six feet tall, weigh 100 pounds, and have a full head of hair.  It must be true, because you read it right here on my blog, right?

Here is a picture I took about 10 a.m. yesterday morning of the aisle where our vendor booth is located. Everybody you see in this picture is a vendor, except for the person in the gray sweatshirt in the rear left side of the aisle.

Here’s another picture I took of our vendor aisle, from the opposite direction, just before 11 a.m. Hey, it’s a customer, the guy in the blue jeans in the rear! Everyone else you see is a vendor.

About 2 p.m. it started to rain, driving all of the people who were outside looking at RVs inside the building. We had a rush!

And here’s the vendor aisle just before 7 p.m. The guy on the left with the white hat on is a customer, the guy on the right, fiddling with the bike is a vendor. Do you see a pattern here?  While we did have a few (very few) little busy spurts, most of the day I could have fired a shotgun down the aisle and never hit anybody.

Last year, the Hershey Show claimed to have 37,000 attendees. Unless they all show up in one really big bus today or tomorrow, I don’t think they’ll be breaking any records soon.

Vendor hours are from 9 a.m., to 8 p.m., and if you have never stood on top of an ice rink for eleven hours, trust me, it’s an experience you don’t need to seek out. Just as they did Wednesday evening. a lot of vendors gave up and left a little after 6 p.m., and the place was almost empty. The show directors came on the public address system several times, warning vendors that they were not allowed to leave before 8 p.m. Many ignored them, because they had already left.

Miss Terry wanted to stick it out until closing time, and I grudgingly agreed, until somebody from the show came through the vendor area “taking attendance.” Apparently, if you leave early, they fine you, and if you won’t pay the fine, you can’t come back next year. Now, anybody who knows me well knows that the best way to get the Nixter to do something it to tell me I can’t do it! As soon as Terry told me about the attendance taker, I was packed up and out of there in about five minutes!

It is totally asinine to expect vendors to stand around on a cold ice rink for that many hours a day if they don’t have any customers to sell to! A longtime vendor told me that the number of vendors has dropped dramatically at this show in the last few years. Why do you think that is?

They tell us that today and Saturday will be killer days, with customers pouring in the doors, but it would really have to do a dramatic turnaround before we would ever consider coming back to this show. Lost time is lost time, and you can never get it back, no matter how well you do the next day. Never say never, but I just don’t see it happening for us.

Thought For The Day – The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.

Click Here To Register For Our Arizona Gypsy Gathering Rally!

Yesterday was the final day of our 2010 Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, which consisted of morning coffee and donuts sponsored by Mac McCoy, one last chance to visit the vendors who had not already packed up and left, and the tour of the Heartland Recreational Vehicles factory. By noon we had all of the tables and chairs put away, and the building emptied out.

We spent most of the afternoon trying to get our motorhome back to some semblance of normality, stowing away rally materials in our bays, and sorting through leftover brochures, display materials, and notes we had hastily scribbled on slips of paper about interesting places to visit that our attendees had suggested, and good campgrounds they thought we might like to stop at someday.

Our dear friends Tom Owen and Diane Rojewski came by to chat for a while, and Frank Hinman popped in for a few minutes. Rumor control has it that there may be another visit to Tom and Diane’s houseboat in Key West in our future. Tom and Diane graciously invited us to stay at the houseboat two years ago, and we spent a wonderful week exploring Key West and the rest of the Florida Keys, kayaking, and playing tourist. We’re really looking forward to getting back down there again.

Soon after Tom and Diane left, Orv Hazelton stopped in, and we solved most of the troubles of the world; then Greg White came over to join us, and he had answers for the few dilemmas of mankind that Orv and I had not gotten to yet.

I spent a couple of hours reading over the rally feedback forms that we asked each attendee to fill out. There were a lot of glowing compliments about the rally, which are always nice, but also some good feedback on the different seminars we had, as well as suggestions for future rallies.

Terry and I read each and every feedback form, and give those suggestions serious consideration. We don’t always go with them, for various reasons, but we have incorporated several of our attendees’ suggestions into our rallies.

One comment that gets repeated frequently at every rally is that we have too many seminars at the same time, and that a person can’t attend one that interests them unless they miss another in the same time period.

One of the things that sets our events apart from many other RV rallies is that we focus on a broad spectrum of seminars. We had 60 different seminars at the rally, which is about average for one of our events. Not just vendor seminars, but also seminars on all kinds of other topics. At this rally we had seminars on bicycling, kayaking, traveling to Alaska, genealogy, Midwest travel destinations, RVing history, RV electrical systems, tire safety, weight safety, fire safety, and more!

True, sometimes there are conflicts when somebody wants to be at two different seminars held at the same time, but the flip side of that coin is that at least we offer plenty of options to choose from, to suit every interest. If we offered fewer seminars, and repeated them twice as some have suggested, we would drastically reduce the options for others who may be interested in something else. To us, more is better when it comes to seminars.  

Of course, we can’t please everybody; we had comments that people wanted more computer related seminars, such as the nine that Geeks on Tour presented, and comments from other folks who said they didn’t care about computer seminars, they wanted seminars on RV maintenance, or pet care, or crafts, or… you get the idea. The problem there is, of course, finding people qualified to teach those seminars. All we can do is to continue to find new seminar topics and new people to present them.

Comments were mixed on having the rally at a full hookup campground. Some people loved it, and some said they would have been just as happy at a fairgrounds, if the cost had been less. And, of course, there were folks who wanted the full hookups, but at fairgrounds prices. That just doesn’t happen!

We had 165 RVs registered the rally, as well as a dozen or so others that had not registered, but were here at the campground on a weekly or monthly basis, and signed up for the rally when they learned about it.

Most of our vendors reported good sales, and a few said that they made more money at our rally then they did at the big Newmar Kountry Klub rally the week before in Goshen, which had over 600 RVs.

With rally week behind us, Miss Terry and I plan to sleep late today and spend some time recharging our minds and bodies. We’re worn out, but we’re gratified that we have another successful rally behind us.

Thought For The Day – A ton of regret never made an ounce of difference.

I guess we’ve finally made the big time. There is at least one You Tube video of our Hoosier Honey beauty contest online. Check it out, and you’ll get a chuckle or two! Just don’t let your kids see it. Not because it’s dirty, but because if they realize how much fun us old farts are having, they might think we’ve lost our collective minds, and try to put us in a home somewhere!

Yesterday was another busy day at the Gypsy Journal rally at Elkhart Campground. We are running five one hour class sessions a day, with four different seminars offered in each session. That’s a lot to choose from! I presented two different seminars yesterday, Cemetery Stories, which tells some of the tales of lost love, mystery, and even humor, that we have found in burying grounds from coast to coast; and 100 Miles From Here, in which I demonstrate how RVers can find all kinds of interesting places to visit, and things to do within a 100 mile circle, from anywhere in the United States. It’s a perfect example of day trip adventures away from the RV park.

I also sat in on Roger Marble’s Genealogy 101 – Breaking Through Your Brick Walls seminar, and caught the second half of the Kayaking For Beginners seminar presented by Matt Streib, owner of Fluid Fun Canoe and Kayak Sales in nearby Bristol, Indiana. Our rally attendees all seem to appreciate having the opportunity to attend seminars on both RV and non-RV related topics.

At 7 p.m., it was time for our evening entertainment, a concert by the McKinney Washtub Two.

It was a fun filled show, with old songs some of us didn’t even know that we had forgotten, and favorites we all sang along to, interspersed with some comedy songs, jokes, and just an old fashioned good time.

Husband and wife team Whitt and Judy McKinney make music on everything from guitar and mandolin, to washboards, spoons, a flute, and even a kazoo!

They made a lot of new friends and fans with their performance, as was proved when we passed the hat for donations to reward them for their show. We are looking forward to having Whitt and Judy at another of our events in the future.

I was surprised during one of the sing along parts of the show when I realized that the beautiful voice I heard beside me was my good buddy Greg White. Among all of Greg’s other talents, he’s a great singer too! Is there anything that man can’t do?

When the concert ended, we chatted with folks for a while, and then Greg and Jan drove us to a nearby restaurant for dinner. It was after 9 p.m., but during rally week we just can’t get away any earlier. Fortunately, we have so many good friends like Greg and Jan, Mike and Elaine Loscher, Donna and Stu McNichol, and others too many to list, that look out for us and make sure we don’t forget to eat, because we’re so worn out at the end of the day.

Tomorrow is our last full day of the rally. We’ll kick it off with coffee and donuts, courtesy of Explorer Insurance and MorRyde RV Suspensions. I’ll be doing two more seminars today, The Reluctant RVer, which helps new and wannabe fulltimers get over their second thoughts and last minute cold feet; and Laugh Your Way Across The USA, which is brand new, and will be just a collection of the funny and goofy things that have happened to us as fulltime RVers, or that we’ve seen along the way. 

It’s been a busy, fun week, and it’s not over yet!

Thought For The Day – The most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you.”

A couple of months ago, some readers chastised me because I said that as much as I adore my two granddaughters, and while I love playing with them and spoiling them, at the end of the day, I send them home to their mother. My motorhome sleeps two,  I was told that I was missing out on one of the greatest parts of being a grandparent by not taking the girls on short trips with us.

Okay, here’s the truth – I wouldn’t mind taking the girls on an outing, but I just don’t want them exposed to the kind of people who run around the country in RVs. It’s bad enough that I have to hang out with them!  

The crowd loitering here at Elkhart Campground right now is a good example.  They may look like responsible citizens, even adults at first glance, but if you peek under that thin veneer, you’ll find the world’s oldest juvenile delinquents.

If you don’t believe me, just look at what they did to Bob and Molly Pinner’s car yesterday evening!

Now, nobody is naming any names here, but my confidential sources tell me that the miscreants responsible for this include some names that are very high up in the hierarchy of the Escapees RV Club.

It’s bad enough to toilet paper the outside of somebody’s car, but the inside too???? Have they no decency?

Bob and Molly took it all in stride, because they’ve been known to have to call somebody late at night to raise bail money too! Bob tells me that there will be payback, and somehow, I don’t doubt that at all!

The scary thing is that Al Hesselbart from the RV Hall of Fame Museum, and Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School, were the ones who drove up in the car, with Just Married signs in the back window! I bet that raised some eyebrows going through town!

I don’t know what Al and Dennis are doing here, but I think they’re either fixing to consummate their marriage, or negotiating their divorce!

When I was a young man, my Daddy told me to stay away from women like this! I’m sure glad I ignored the old man!

This is what happens when cousins marry and have children!

So there you have it. Would you want your grandchildren exposed to people like this? They’d go back to pre-school and start running a loan shark racket on the playground!

Why, even I, at my advanced age and with my strong moral fiber, have been known to be late to Sunday School if I spend Friday night with this bunch!

Thought For The Day – Of course I’m against sin; I’m against anything that I’m too old to enjoy!

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!

We got a rude awakening yesterday when we got the keys to the building here at Elkhart Campground where we plan to have our vendor booths, seminars, and evening entertainment. We have outgrown it before our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally even starts! 

As soon as Terry and I started measuring the big new room where we expected to put our vendors and hold the entertainment, we looked at each other and both said “oh oh!” There is no way we could even put all of the vendors in the room, let alone be able to cram in seating for 300+ people for the evening door prizes. We goofed, plain and simple. We overestimated the size of the building available to us, and underestimated the number of people who wanted to attend the rally.

We scratched our heads, then called our pal Greg White and had him come over and take a look. I didn’t really think Greg could build another building in twelve days, but I have seen him do some pretty remarkable things, so who knows?  He walked around for a while, paced off the length and width of the room, did some mathematical calculations in the air with his finger, then scratched his head, and said “Yep, you goofed!” I can always depend on Greg to cut right to the chase.  

Now what?

We can expand the vendor area into a second room, and we can make that work. But there’s still the matter of where to put all of those folks in the evening.

I’m nothing if not resourceful. As the old saying goes, I’ve done so much with so little for so long, that I can now do almost anything with absolutely nothing. We are arranging for a huge tent, which will be set up on the tennis courts in front of the rally building, and that will be the venue for the evening events. It’s not perfect, but as long as the weather cooperates, it will work.

Every time we hold a rally it’s a learning experience, especially when we hold one in a new location. And we’ve certainly learned a lot this time around!

If we ever hold a rally at an RV park again, and I’m not sure we ever will, we will just collect the rally fees, and have the campground handle all of the reservations. At this rally, we were supposed to collect all of the camping fees, and pay Elkhart Campground for each RV attending. But some people made their reservations directly through the campground, some booking a whole month, and it has resulted in a logistical nightmare.

Plus, because the campground is open to other folks during the rally, we have had a lot of people who are going to be here who want to attend the rally events, but can’t understand why they should pay the rally fee, since they’re here already. They don’t understand that it costs us a lot of money to put on an RV rally. Besides the facility rental, insurance, morning coffee and doughnuts, and now hundreds of dollars to rent a tent, there are the costs of printing rally seminar schedules, the door prizes we buy to give away, sound system rental, and a lot of other things I can’t remember off the top of my head. When I told a couple of the people that they would have to pay the rally fee, they were pretty upset. But this is a business, and we have to cover our costs, plain and simple.

Oh, I’m just venting. We’ll get it all worked out, and I’ll probably only have to sell two or three pints of blood to have enough fuel to get out of town. Like I said, it’s a learning experience.

The good news is that 99.99% of our rally attendees are fantastic people who are able to roll with the flow, and if we have to have the evening events in a tent, they’ll slap on the mosquito spray, carry over their chairs, and sit down and have a great time. As for that other .01 percent, well, they’ll do some learning too, right?

Bad Nick has been busy too, posting a new Bad Nick Blog titled Out At Last. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – When you’re finally holding all the cards, why does everyone else decide to play chess?

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!