In spite of some setbacks, such as overbooking vendor spaces, and not having a large enough building for all of the activities, we managed to make our 2010 Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally a success! At yesterday evening’s closing ceremonies, the audience let us know that they had a good time, and we really appreciated their support.

I’m a natural ham and thrive on the attention, but Miss Terry is never comfortable getting up on stage. During the opening and closing ceremonies at our rallies, she let’s me drag her up there, but she’d be much happier just doing what she shines at, working quietly behind the scenes, taking care of 1,001 duties to make sure the rally runs smoothly.

Last night when I had her on the stage, the audience gave her a standing ovation, and if anybody ever deserved one, it sure is Terry. Here is a rare picture of Terry up on stage, during our opening ceremony earlier in the week.

It’s late, and I still have a couple of hours of work to get done for tomorrow, so I’m going to share some pictures my buddy Paul Anderson took at the rally. Here I am enjoying a hug from my friend Marcia Jones. I sure do appreciate a pretty lady!

Our vendors all seemed to do well. Here are Bill and Janet Adams from Internet Anywhere, talking to Stu McNichol. Stu said Bill was able to solve a problem with his rooftop TV antenna when the techno-geeks at the network dropped the ball a couple of times.

Our vendors had all kinds of goodies for sale that no RVer can do without.

Here are our friends, Butch and Fonda Williams, who sell induction cookware, and make the most delicious almond toffee candy in the world!

Our rented tent was a busy place all during the rally, serving as a classroom, a place to socialize, and as a venue for our evening entertainment.

Our classrooms were filled with students for the many seminars we held.

Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School presented an excellent seminar on Testing Air Brakes.

For those looking for some adventure in their lives, the Beginning Kayaking seminar was popular.

This morning we’ll have coffee and donuts, sponsored by Mac McCoy, better known as Mac the Fire Guy. Then we have about 75 folks going out to tour the Heartland Recreational Vehicles factory, while others will be hitching up and heading off to their next adventures. Still others will be staying on here at Elkhart Campground through the Labor Day weekend, and quite a few will be here until the Escapees RV Club Escapade rally begins in a couple of weeks.

Terry and I will spend a couple of days wrapping up all of the paperwork from the rally, settling our bill with Elkhart Campground, and hopefully finding a few minutes to catch our breath.

But we won’t have a lot of time to relax, since we have to be in Hershey, Pennsylvania in less than a week to get settled in as vendors at the big Hershey RV Show.

Thought For The Day – Statistics show that at the age of seventy, there are five women to every man. Isn’t that a lousy time for a guy to get those odds?

I have some good news to report on the rally front. As I reported a few days ago, I really messed up when I was counting the number of vendors we would have at our Eastern Gypsy Gathering rally, because I did not take into account that several of those vendors wanted two or three booths. Suddenly we realized that we had nowhere to put everybody!

I’m happy to report that at least that problem has been solved. Sunday evening our friend Dennis Hill from the RV Driving School came by our motorhome to tell us that he was willing to cancel his vendor booth if it would make room for another vendor. Dennis said he had some driving lessons scheduled, and he could still do them, just not have a booth to sign up any more students.

And then yesterday morning, another good friend, Butch Williams, called to tell us that he and his wife Fonda would just come to the rally as attendees and give up their induction cookware vendor booth to make room for somebody else.

Wow! Do you realize what those folks were willing to do for us, and for the benefit of the other vendors? These are business people who essentially agreed to close up shop to help us out of a tight spot, and to give other vendors an opportunity to make money, even though they had reserved their vendor booths months ago, and built our rally into their travel schedules. You darned sure don’t see that kind of character and integrity every day!

Fortunately, Miss Terry got her graph paper and rulers out, did some drawing, some erasing, and some more drawing, and said “If we really tighten up and do some creative spacing, I think we can do this after all!” So we spent most of the day yesterday inside the building, measuring and laying out the vendor area, and I’ll be darned if she didn’t make it work! Don’t ask me how; all I do is come up with these harebrained schemes, and Miss Terry makes them happen, and makes me look good in the process.

So now we can fit in all of our vendors, including Dennis, and Butch and Fonda. And I hope everybody who comes to the rally takes the time to stop by their booths and thank them for their willingness to do whatever it takes, even losing money in the process, so the rally is a success.

With the new layout, we’ll have two rooms of vendors, and we’ll be moving some of our seminars out to the big tent we are renting. It’s not the way we originally planned things, and it’s not the way we wanted to do things; but as several of the folks who are coming to the rally have told us, we’ll still have a good time, in spite of ourselves.

At this point, the only camping spots we still have available are 20 amp water and electric, but we have plenty of them. If you want to come to the rally, and have not registered yet, shoot me a quick e-mail at editor@gypsyjournal.net and we’ll get you on the rally list.

Bad Nick is really ticked off, and I’ll let him tell you about it in today’s Bad Nick Blog, titled Too Stupid To Live. Check it out and leave a comment.

Thought For The Day – Live life for what tomorrow has to offer, not for what yesterday has taken away.

Click Here To Register For Our Eastern Gypsy Gathering Rally!