September 12, 2004

September 12, 2004

DAY 87

 

 

WOW ! ! ! ! !

This was an amazing, exciting day. Early this morning, we registered for the rally, then set off for "chapter row" to find the Ontario Chapter 18 representatives, Sandy & Peachy McGeachy to tell them about the phone message we left them about hauling our trailer here from Elkhart, a message they obviously haven't received yet. Before we made it to the Chapter 18 booth, we ran into Hans and Peta Arends from our Ontario chapter, who are hosting the Christian Fellowship BOF booth. BOF is Birds Of A Feather, the collective name of the various Escapee special interest groups like Christian Fellowship, Pet Lovers, and my favourite, Yehudim Al Galgalim

( Jews On Wheels ). We visited with Hans and Peta, then walked over to see Sandy and Peachy for awhile at their booth. We returned to the main registration building to get a cup of coffee, and check out the booths and displays in there. This is like RV'ing 101 !

We went to the "Volunteers" booth and signed up for 4 hours of volunteer work during the rally, to earn a volunteer's patch, but mostly to pay back the organization for finding a volunteer to haul us from Elkhart to here. While chatting with Harv and Louise Schweyer at the club products booth, we ran into Rick and Barb Aubrey, new Escapees from Ottawa, whom we met at the Kingston Rally in June.

Tuesday afternoon we will be gate security guards for an hour. Tuesday and Wednesday evenings for an hour and a half each evening we will be operating the tram that runs all over the fairgrounds providing transportation to attendees. Right after lunch we went on our tram volunteer training session. The tram is a streetcar like trailer pulled by a medium size John Deere tractor. To me it looks like an overgrown lawn tractor. Some of the guys seemed to think it was what farmers use to work their grain fields. I guess if you live in New York City or Los Angeles ... a John Deere tractor is a John Deere tractor. Anyways, I drive the tractor, and Joanne ensures riders get on and off the tram safely, and rings the cowbell to tell the driver to stop or go. That's the designated "ding-a-ling" job.

We got parked right close to the action, so I didn't realize until we took a training run on the tram route how incredibly huge these grounds are, and how many rigs are here. 1100 motor homes and large fifth wheel trailerstake up a lot of room. From the main activity areas to the far end of the parking areas must be about 2 miles. While on the tram training run, we met another Ontario member, Grant Calwell. Gee ... before coming here we only knew about 2 dozen Escapee couples, and we've met 1/4 of them here in Goshen the first morning.

At 2:00 P.M we attended the First Timers orientation session followed by the opening ceremonies at 3:00 P.M.. At 4:00 P.M was the ice cream social, and from 4:30 to 6:00 we were entertained by PANTASIA. What an astounding, talented group of young people. PANTASIA is the Findlay, Ohio High School Steel Band, an orchestra of about 2 dozen different steel pan drums and a few other percussion instruments. It was amazing to see how a town of 46,000 with a high school population of 2100 can produce a specialized high school band with such talent and skill. They must have much larger school music budgets than we do, because this was just 1 of the 3 specialty bands in the school's music program. I bought one of their CD's.

I wonder, since the Indiana residents call themselves Hoosiers and the Ohio residents call themselves Buckeyes, why we don't have a special nickname for each province's residents ?

Manitobans could call themselves Bisons and Ontarians could be Trilliums, or something.

After this great entertainment, we went back to the trailer, had supper, and returned for the 7:30 P.M. door prize hour. An hour of drawing names and awarding door prizes. We didn't win anything. I wanted the Mexican RV Caravan Tour. Joanne wanted the Mardi Gras RV Caravan Tour.

At 8:30 Joanne went off to see the Escapees "documentary" movie, all about how the club was founded by Joe and Kay Peterson, and the history and evolution of the club. Maybe I'll see it when it's shown again on Tuesday. I went to the evening stargazing session, led by an amateur astronomer. Booooorrrrriiiiinnnnnggggg ! I left after 45 minutes. Oh, well ... can't hit a home run every time at bat.

What a fantastic day. I hope the rest of the rally is as good as today.

DSK