Although the opening ceremonies for the 2014 Great Lakes Area Motorcoach Association (GLAMA) area rally (GLAMARAMA14) took place at 7:30 PM, the Elkhart County 4-H Fairgrounds were busy with activity all day. The golf cart shuttles started running at 7:30 AM and the parking crew members were at their stations and started parking motorhomes at 8:00 AM. The registration building was open at 8:00 AM, the indoor vendors were open at 9:00 AM, and the food vendors were open at 10 AM.
The Fleetwood Motorhome Association (FMA) had rolled their rally into the GLAMARAMA, and as part of their participation they sponsored Gary Bunzer, the RV Doctor, as the featured speaker. Gary normally only does national rallies and GLAMARAMA14 was the first time he had agreed to speak at an FMCA area rally. He was scheduled for a full set of presentations starting at 1:30 PM today. There were no other seminars at that time and he drew a large crowd, as he usually does. He had a second seminar starting at 3:30 PM but we could not attend as we were scheduled to drive golf carts from 4:00 – 6:30 PM. Fortunately he is repeating that seminar on Saturday.
Sometime during the last day or so I received a draft copy of the June 2014 Bus Conversion Magazine for review of my cover/centerfold article on the Cool Cruiser; a GM PD4106 I photographed at the 2014 Arcadia Bus Rally in late December. I sent back a few minor corrections. The editor had some health issues that delayed the May issue and they are working very hard to get the caught up so I got my comments back to the ASAP.
We had received an e-mail a week or so ago regarding the RVillage Ambassador Program and had responded that we were definitely interested in participating. Earlier this week we were notified that a webinar was scheduled for Saturday May 14 at noon. I e-mailed back that we could not participate in the webinar at that date/time due to GLAMARAMA activities.
At 4:00 PM we picked up our golf carts and headed out for two and a half hours of fun driving around the fairgrounds meeting people and providing rides and/or directions. There had been a threat of rain all day but it held off until after our shift ended.
The evening entertainment was provided by New Odyssey, an extremely high-energy three-man group out of Chicago, Illinois that plays 30 different instruments. They put on a great, but slightly familiar, show and we finally figured out that we had seen them a few years ago at a G.L.A.S.S. rally in Berrien Springs, Michigan. (Great Lakes Area Spring Spree.)
Before the show ever started the skies opened up and it rained very hard. We had left the roof vents/fans open/on, with a running computer sitting directly under one of them, so I ran back to the coach to close everything up. It was a short distance, but I was soaked by the time I went 10 feet. Ironically, but luckily, not a single drop of rain had entered the coach, perhaps because we were parked under a very large tree. Still, I closed everything, dried off and changed into my rain gear for the walk back to the assembly hall.