Be Careful What You Volunteer For!!

When I originally talked to Bill Hall about volunteering to be the Ice Cream Social Captain at the 26th Annual Western Area Rally for FMCA, I didn't see TOO much involvement required.  I DID think it rather odd that no one else jumped up and volunteered to order the 5000 bars of ice cream, set up the tables and help the Golden Spike group hand it out.  How hard could THAT be right??  Well that assumption turned out to be wrong on my part.  I found out later that this was actually BILL's rally within a rally!!  At least I didn't have to check out local restaurants and make reservations ... this would be a Santa Maria Tri Tip barbecue, and Dan Chance volunteered to help me with anything I needed.

So here we are, parked at Wally World in LaQuinta, where we stage for the caravan to the fairgrounds.  The Golden Spike group is allowed early entry, giving us a good parking spot on pavement (hopefully)!!

At 9:30 am precisely, Kurt Simon our President and Dan St John, Treasurer, lined us up for the two mile trek to the Date Festival grounds.  Can you imagine the disaster this could be??  But let me tell you, this group has got it together.  Without any hesitation at all, 18 rigs and 18 tow vehicles were on the road, in order and ON TIME!!!  

As we arrive at the outside parking area, we are staged for entry and our permanent parking spot for the week.

Finally inside, we barely made the asphalt, but as it turns out, have the best parking spots ... with more space than ever before.  Last year, I could barely squeeze my car next to the slide out ... but now we have plenty of room.  As a Captain, I get a golf cart too!!!  That's it between the Chance rig and mine.  I've never driven a golf cart before, so it was a new experience.  It made me a little nervous to read a small piece of paper stuck to the steering wheel that said I would "personally" be responsible for ANY damage to the cart and would be billed directly!!!   Hmmmm maybe DAN should be the official Cart Driver!!!

Although our electrical lines had not been run upon arrival, they were shortly strung out behind us.  30 amp service provided to everyone by a HUGE Hertz generator.

What a mess of wires, but a BIG improvement over last year's version that blew up at several locations around the parking lot.

We were allotted the parking space of one rig for our "Party" area, this being one of the things I had to plan for.  It's a good thing Dan my co-buddy of this shindig told me to call Ken Carnes and ask him to bring the tables, or we would be eating on the ground.  I just can't say enough about this group ... they have helped me tremendously with getting this rally together.  Barbara Westerfield printed out all the numbers to keep us in order getting here (mostly that's to keep other rigs from butting in to our line for parking) and prints a small brochure with every attendees picture, name and address.  

With all this wonderful help, my job of Rally Host (so far anyway) has been easy peasy.  Volunteering to be Ice Cream Captain turned out to be a good thing!!  At 5:00 pm during our group therapy Happy Hour, the sun put on a great show for us!!  

Once the sun was down, the floodlights behind us came on, making for an excellent shadow image!!

                                     

Patty, Dan and I headed off for dinner at Fisherman's Restaurant for some yummy fried chunks of deliciousness!!  The Fisherman's Boat (a full size plate stacked 6 inches high) and the Mahi Mahi Tacos were excellent.

Today I have to run around and find out how many boxes of ice cream to deliver to those who can't attend the social on Friday.   The meat for Wednesday's BBQ needs to be marinated, and I will call on several of the men to donate their equipment .... cook the tri-tip that is .... for our dinner meeting.  I don't even have to find any trains or restaurants for everyone to enjoy ... but NEXT time I volunteer, I'll look into it a little closer before raising my hand!!!