Saturday, 3-7-98

T his morning we found that the weather had turned cold during the night. The wind was blowing harder than it had anytime during our stay here. We got around a bit late this morning and missed the first tram. Everybody else was on his or her way to the
Blue Bird doughnut coach.

Kay and I went out to wait for the next tram and we were treated to quit a collection of weather. First it began to rain. So we took our umbrellas. We stood at the tram stop with our backs to the blowing rain, which was almost horizontal. We were talking with the tickity-tick sound, of the rain hitting our umbrellas, in the background. As we talked, all of a sudden the sound of the rain stopped as it began to snow. We now had white horizontal streaks blowing past our umbrellas. In a short time the snow stopped, but the wind kept blowing.

The tram finally arrived and we had a very cold ride. Because we got started late, Kay and I rode the tram to the stop closest to the seminar center. Kay was going to an oil painting class with Nora and I was heading for an Internet seminar.

I tagged along with Tom, Dave, Barbara, Dick and Dorisdean. We attended a seminar on connecting to the Internet while traveling with a motorhome. This seminar was very popular and could have been held in a room twice the size. A man named Jerry Sullivan put on the seminar. He did a good job of covering the subject matter with a bit of humor thrown in here and there. A proposal was put forth to start a new chapter of the FMCA. The new chapter would be a virtual chapter with meetings held on the Internet. The monthly newsletter would be distributed by e-mail.

The Internet seminar was over early enough for Tom and me to go on a search in the vendor area. We walked around the vendor tents looking for a particular electrical power line adapter. In the process, I stumbled across a booth for Velvac mirrors.

It turned out that Velvac makes the mirrors on our Lazy Daze motorhome. I’ve had a minor problem with my mirror and the man in the booth gave me some information to help me. He also gave me the name of a man at the factory to call. I talked about a small problem another person had with a Velvac mirror and I was told the problem was just a matter of making an easy adjustment. While discussing the adjustment, it was determined that I didn’t have the tool to make the adjustment. So the man gave me a set of instructions for my mirror along with the tool needed to keep the mirror properly adjusted. Finding this booth turned out to be a very good stop for me.

We left one vendor tent to walk across the open area between tents to get to another vendor tent. It was really cold outside. Because of the wind-chill factor, the strong wind was driving the perceived temperature way down. As we came out into the open area, we saw that the tent over the outdoor bandstand had been torn by the strong wind. I found out later that the area under the ripped tent was evacuated and the tent was dismantled to keep it from crashing to the ground.

Tom and I continued on our quest to find an electrical adapter and a test device to determine if a campground electrical system is wired properly. We never did find the distributor that Tom was looking for; but as we walked from one booth to the next, I spotted the type of adapter Tom was trying to find. We both bought a 30 amp male to 15 amp female adapter. This will allow an inexpensive diagnostic device to be used to check out the electrical hookup in a campground before plugging the motorhome power cable into the campground electrical system.

It now was time for lunch, so Tom and I walked back to our camping area. Nora and Kay’s class lasted until noon, so we waited for them to get back before we had lunch. Normally we all would have lunch together outdoors. Because of the strong wind and blowing dust, it was decided we would have lunch in our respective motorhomes.

I saw a big cloud of dust rolling to the south of us at about the time Kay and Nora walked back from their class carrying their oil paintings. The oil paint was still wet; as a result there were pieces of dust and debris stuck in the paint. Now that Kay and Nora were back, we could have lunch.

We all decided to stay home for the afternoon and gather in Tom and Nora’s motorhome for a visit. I was asked to bring along my computer to give Tom a demonstration of how to use a particular feature of a computer.

During the afternoon the Monaco service representative visited us. He came out to see if he could solve a problem Dick and Tom had with their cruise controls. A needed computer board was not available to make the necessary repair. It will have to be taken care of later. We finished the afternoon visiting. It was a nice way to wind down from a very busy week.

We did have some stormy weather on the last two days

The wind continued to blow all afternoon. At times we could hear the sound of the dust and sand particles hitting our motorhomes. Upon inspection, it looked as if there was no damage from the blowing dirt taking place. The wind was blowing so hard; I had to pull our motorhome up between the big motorhomes to reduce the rocking of our motorhome. Even Tom and Nora’s motorhome, which was o on jacks, was rocking a little bit.

Dave, Barbara, Kay and I decided to leave tonight just before the concert, so we could get a jump on the crowd departing from the FMCA convention tomorrow. I listened to the National Weather Service radio station to get the weather forecast. It sounded as if the wind would continue until midnight and they were warning high-profile vehicles to not go out on the highway. So Kay and I talked to Dave and Barbara about postponing our departure. It was agreed that it probably would be safer to leave very early Sunday morning. So we decide our new time of departure would be 5:30AM. This meant that we now could stay for the concert at the Pan Am Center.

After a quick dinner we all headed for the concert. We walked taking the shortcut through the athletic field. This evening we had seating similar to the night before but on the opposite side of the arena. Tonight we did not have to sit through a bunch of political speeches. Instead, we had an opening act of polka music.

Helen Reddy put on a good show

Finally Helen Reddy came out; she looked and sounded good. We listened to a collection of old time favorites as well as a few new selections. Helen put on an entertaining concert. This capped off a very busy and fun week for us. After the concert, we once again made the trek by foot back to our motorhome. This was to be the last long walk of a week full of long walks.

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