F M C A Bowling Green - Monday, July 20, 2009
It is hard to describe the wonder of watching close to 3000 motor homes assemble in one place in a matter of two days or so. Think of the dynamics of it, a city of 6000+ people (official estimate) and 1000+ dogs (my estimate) and who knows how many cats, suddenly assemble in one place. For the most part we are self sufficient. Sure, some of us have an electric supply but we could do without it. It really is quite an amazing event simply to watch the parking lots fill with motor homes and find yourself in the middle of this mass of humanity, all living in a few hundred square foot living space.
We were up early this morning to attend a workshop on the Canadian Maritime and Atlantic Provinces. Timely information since that is our goal this summer. We have been there before but want to go to the extreme, Newfoundland and Labrador. The workshop was presented by representatives of Adventure Caravans but gave a fair account of the travels without mentioning the caravans until the final few minutes. The information was quite helpful to those of us who are more likely to travel on our own schedule and with our own interests in mind. We were uncertain about the additional expense of taking the motor home to Newfoundland but have decided it is definitely the thing to do.
After that workshop I took a break to take a trip to town to get an inner tube for my bicycle. I had three tubes for the rear tire but none for the front tire which was now flat. The cause of the flat was a leak in the valve stem, not the valve but the side of the stem! I found the bike shop on the internet and picked up a tube and installed it on the bicycle. Shuttle problems solved. The shuttles seem to still be rather random. They are functioning but not by any system that I can discern. Now I have my bicycle and I am free!!!
This afternoon we enjoyed a performance by the Bowling Green State University Brass Ensemble. The initial minutes of the performance was interrupted by the random activity of the lawn sprinklers! But after resolving that problem, the performance was wonderful. A wide variety of music was performed for a standing room only audience. In the end, the entire audience stood for a round of applause.
The motor home exhibits were opened at 1:00 p.m. promptly and were well attended. The exhibits were a little more austere than in past years. Smaller, much less carpeting, and apparently the vendors were prohibited from offering the motor homes for sale by Ohio law. Ironic, we came here to celebrate the motor home lifestyle and the sale of the motor homes which is horribly depressed today is prohibited by Ohio. I guess Ohio doesn't need the income from this city of 6000+ motor home enthusiasts. We looked at a number of motor homes and as Louise said when we got home, our motor home looks even better now.
We returned to our motor home late in the afternoon. I have a project in progress and spent most of the afternoon and evening working on trying to run the video cable from the dish on the roof to the rear bedroom. I am over half way with only a few obstacles yet to conquer. I passed the cable through the floor under the cockpit with great difficulty and spent much of the rest of the afternoon working under the motor home threading the cable over and through compartments. The neighbors were much amused at my obsession with completing the job. By the time Louise called me for dinner, I needed a shower badly before coming to the table.
Tuesday brings the opening of the vendor exhibits and the regular operations of the motor home exhibits and the service center. We have scheduled a routine generator service with Cummins/Onan and it will be performed in the next few days. That will save us a stop somewhere on the road in the next month or so. If you haven't been to an FMCA Convention, the service center is one attraction. If you have a problem with certain systems, the vendor will schedule maintenance to repair you system if possible and it is done on site. That difficult problem that no one else seems to be able to repair is tackled by the people who built the system.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in full swing and then it all ends and in a day the whole village of motor homes disperses to the four corners of the North American Continent. Poof, we'll all be gone! But that is yet to come there is so much more to do and see!
I'm looking forward to talking to Xantrex at their booth. Our inverter is very important to our lifestyle and we are having some problems. One more problem to be solved. There are many interesting workshops to attend tomorrow and many new friends to meet.
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