The Frustrated Maestros perform each day at breakfast.
I was up early again working on blog posts and finally uploaded several pertaining to early last week. By the time Linda got up it was time to walk over and get some coffee. We tried to catch Michael Canode before his 9:00 AM seminar on digital photograph, but did not get there in time. I missed his seminar yesterday on designing and publishing website, but he offered to bring a copy of the handouts to today’s seminar.
Breakfast was coffee and donuts (rear) with “concert” and table seating.
We headed back to the vendor area, found Lloyd De Gerald, and paid him for the annual maintenance he did on our Aqua-Hot yesterday. We also bought a replacement nozzle to keep on hand. Lloyd suggested that we have the spare nozzle installed at our next annual service and buy another one to replace it at that time. His experience has been that nozzles that sit unused for too long often do work well when they are finally installed.
The morning was overcast and a bit dreary, so there were not a lot of folks talking to the outside vendors. We took the opportunity to chat with Lloyd about our interior remodeling plans and asked him what issues we should anticipate in moving the heat exchangers. He said that the coolant loops can be difficult to prime if they get drained and suggested that once we had re-plumbed everything it might be best for us to have him refill and start the system.
He also indicated that we could have up to three heat exchangers on each of the three zones (bedroom, bathroom, and living room / kitchen.) We have one heat exchanger in the bedroom, one in the bathroom, and two in the living room. We also have radiators in the water bay and the front storage bay. Lloyd indicated that the water bay was probably plumbed in with the bathroom and the front bay was probably plumbed in with the LR/kitchen, but that was not guaranteed. It should be easy enough to determine this by turning on the Aqua-Hot and then activating one zone at a time and checking for heat; I just haven’t bothered to do this yet. He suggested that we add heat exchangers to have three per loop, and that we replace the radiators in the bays with heat exchangers (which have fans). He also said the newer heat exchangers are smaller and much quieter than the ones that are probably in our bus conversion, and that we should probably replace those as well when we remodel the passenger side of the kitchen/LR area.
We needed to kill some time before Michael’s seminar ended, so we strolled through the inside vendor building again. The FMCA booth had shirts on sale, and they were even cheaper with our “rally bucks” coupons, so we bought a matching pair of plum pocket Ts. (The matching clothes phenomenon gets a double whammy due to age and RVing sub-culture.) We caught up with Michael at the end of his photography seminar. Someone had taken the handout he brought so he e-mailed the PowerPoint file to me. We ran into Butch and Fonda. Butch and I decided to wander over to Ron & Meredith Walker’s coach to see if we could fix the new door latch. The part arrived yesterday from Prevost and Ron had installed it, but it wasn’t working quite right. Butch saw what was wrong right away and corrected it. We then returned to our buses where Linda and I had leftover pizza for lunch and I took a nap. (That’s the problem with getting up really, really early; not that I consider taking a nap a problem.)
The Blue Ox technician showed up mid-afternoon to service our Avanti II tow bar and brought my nap to an end. The tow bar is showing signs of stretching in the latch pin holes and will apparently need to be replaced sooner rather than later; but not today. He completely disassembled the tow bar, cleaned it thoroughly, added new rub plates (washer), lubricated it, and reassembled it. I thought that was a pretty good deal for $25. Since I was now awake again, I did more work on blog postings and we had more leftover pizza for dinner.
I have been remiss in not saying more about the trains going past the fairgrounds. The trains have been so constant here that I am hardly aware of them anymore and keep forgetting to mention them. The tracks run along the southern edge of the fairgrounds and the trains seem to be almost constant at times. Linda read online that a train passes through Goshen approximately every 6 minutes, presumably headed to or from the Chicago area to points east and south of here. These are often medium length trains traveling fairly fast in both directions and the sound their horns long and loud at every crossing, of which there appear to be a very large number.
Linda talking with Alma Baker (L) and George and Sue Myers (R) at the reception for officers and vendors.
We went to a 4:15 PM reception for officers and vendors. This was a “ticketed” event, and we got to attend because Linda is the Treasurer of the Great Lakes Converted Coaches, which is organized under GLAMA, and I am the VP/Secretary of the Freethinkers Associate Chapter, which is organized under the International Area (INTO). This was another new feature at this rally, and was another example of how FMCA and its area associations are trying to recognize those who serve and make FMCA function.
Officers reception in the food hall, hor d’oeuvres and beverages on the left, seating on the right.
FMCA has 11 areas and almost 500 chapters, but many of the members do not belong to a chapter and/or have never been to a rally. Not that chapters and rallies are for everyone, but FMCA is very much aware that members who do not get involved in a chapter and/or attend an occasional rally often do not remain long-term members. And why should they? If you don’t engage with the people that are the organization, the benefit of membership boils down to a monthly magazine. This is essentially our relationship with the Good Sam Club up to this point. Our Good Sam membership is paid through 2017, but I don’t know if we will renew it at that time. We have, however, met several people over the last few months that recently attended Good Sam rallies and said they were excellent and that they had a great time. Of course, endorsements are like movie reviews, not very meaningful unless/until you can calibrate your taste with that of the reviewer.
The last light of the day.
The reception provided enough food for our dinner and we returned to our coach to relax before going to the evening entertainment. The last light of the day turned dramatic as we were preparing to leave. The featured performer for the evening entertainment was Sarah Getto, assisted by her father, who drives her motorhome, sets up the equipment, and runs the sound board. He is also a guitarist and adds guitar and vocals to some of her songs. Blind from birth and born with a cleft palette and lip, she is now an attractive, talented, 29 year old singer/songwriter with a music education degree that included training as an opera singer Her preferred vocal style, however, tends to lean towards country, although she does a very good impersonation of Karen Carpenter. She has much richer sound on stage than you would expect from a solo keyboard, as she prerecords richly layered sound tracks and then performs along with them. All of the vocal and instrumental work on these sound tracks is done by her, and her dad was very transparent about the process Sarah uses to create her shows. We enjoyed her performance along with the rest of the audience.
The evening concluded with a 50/50 drawing and door prizes. We didn’t win anything, but that was OK.