Today was the opening day of the 2015 rally of the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA) Great Lakes Area MotorCoach Association (GLAMA). We were expecting three more arrivals from our Great Lakes Converted Coaches (GLCC) chapter but only two of them made it in before the 5 PM parking cutoff. Jim and Lydia Marin, who parked next to us at Elkhart Campground on Sunday, arrived during the morning while Linda and I were out running errands. Larry and Alma Baker arrived mid-afternoon.
Linda and I had our usual breakfast and then left around 8:30 AM. Our first stop was Martin’s supermarket on US-33 northwest of downtown Goshen where Linda ordered the food for our chapter social tomorrow. She and Karen Gerrie will pick up the deli trays, chips, pop, plates, napkins, and eating utensils tomorrow just before the social begins.
When we were done at Martin’s we continued up US-33 towards Elkhart, took CR-20 over to SR-19 and followed that north to W. Franklin Street where we headed west to the Elk Park Industrial Park and Paul’s Seating. We met with Paul who was as helpful as he could be but it was basically a wasted trip. He did not have a showroom, did not have additional information about the products shown on his website, and no longer carried any form of barrel chair. His business appeared to mostly be recovering existing furniture, although later in the day we were looking at Pleasureway motorhomes (made in Elkhart) that featured furniture from Paul’s Seating. It did not impress us as the highest quality RV furniture we have seen.
Paul suggested we look at MasterCraft for barrel chairs. Linda pulled them up on the web browser on her phone. They were in LaGrange, Indiana, which was quite a drive to the east on US-20, and did not have anything illustrated on their website that looked like the kind of chair we wanted/needed. We went back down US-33 to Goshen, stopped along the way for a soft pretzel at Ben’s, and then returned to the fairgrounds.
I made phone calls to Isringhausen, Suburban Seating, Villa International, and Glastop RV Furniture. I chatted with someone at Isri, Carlos at Suburban, Melanie at Villa (in Elkhart), and Peter from Glastop. The calls to ISRI and Suburban were in connection with getting an ISRI 6800/6832/6860 bus driver seat. The calls to Villa and Glastop were for barrel chairs.
We sat outside our coach for a while and chatted with Mike Dickson. He and Kathy are in the Jayco Class C next to us. We eventually got hungry and Linda made faux deli slice sandwiches for lunch. By that point I was ready for a nap and slept for about two hours. We had some of the seitan stroganoff for dinner around 5:30 PM. I put on my nice GLCC shirt and at 6:05 PM we took the GLCC chapter flag over to Building A to line up for the opening ceremonies. I thought I could handle the flag alone but we decided to have Linda help carry it. She was wearing her Desert Bar T-shirt so she went back and changed into her GLCC shirt.
The opening ceremonies started at 6:30 PM. After the presentation of the Canadian and American colors, the singing of both national anthems, the pledge of allegiance to the U.S. flag, and a very religious invocation, we had the parade of chapter flags. That was followed by the introductions of a long list of FMCA dignitaries and announcements. Fortunately it was all done by 7 PM. There was a short break before the Frustrated Maestros started playing and we took that opportunity to return to our coach as did many of our other chapter members. Several groups of us stood around and chatted until it got chilly and we all went inside. The rest of the evening was spent in our coach using our iPads.
