Wednesday, 3-4-98

T oday has been a busy day. I saw the sunrise for the fourth day in a row. That is some kind of record for me.

After a night in line ... getting ready to move out

The motorhomes that spent the night parked in the staging area, were moved out around 7:30 this morning. Their places in line were filled immediately by new arrivals. This continued for the remainder of the day.

I heard today that the campus here originally could handle only 4000 motorhomes. (The words "only" and "4000 motorhomes" somehow don’t seem right together.) The FMCA estimated there would be more than 7200 motorhomes at this convention.

The FMCA people were putting motorhomes in every little nook and cranny around the campus. When they finally ran out of space they started putting motorhomes in the parking lots all over town, including the parking lots of J.C. Penny and Wal Mart. The people in those locations are being bused in from town to attend the convention activities.

Our motorhomes are out there in that crowd

It has been an interesting experience. If I had been told that this was going to happen, I probably would not have come to this convention. But now that I am here, I am really glad I made the trip and I will probably attend a western convention in the future. We are having fun in spite of the problems. The experience would not be as enjoyable if we were here alone. It makes a big difference to be with friends.

We started our morning by going to the center of activities to scope out the situation. We filed out "Emergency Communication Cards" and checked out the seminars. Some of the women signed up for classes in various craft sessions. I felt that Cathie should have been here. From what I saw, she should teach a seminar about making your own greeting cards, maybe next time.

A tram ride was usually interesting and sometimes exciting

As we walked around the campus we made mental notes as to where various seminars would be held during the remainder of the week. We found our way to a small campus store to buy some extra rolls of film. I am using more film than I expected to use during our visit here in Las Cruces. When we left the store, I saw the campus book store inside the Student Union building. I can’t resist a good book store with technical manuals. I ended up buying a book about designing web pages. That was probably not the right thing to do, I had to lug that three-inch thick, very heavy book around for the remainder of the morning. Finally we returned to the motorhome for lunch.

After lunch, it was off to our first seminar. Barbara, Dave, Tom, Dick and I headed for the Atwood water heater seminar; while Kay, Nora, and Dorisdean went to a craft seminar. Those of us going to the Atwood seminar decided to take a short cut across the athletic field. Dave, Barbara, and Dick went one direction, while Tom and I went another direction.

We both thought we saw an opening in the fence at the corner behind a backstop. When we got behind the backstop, we found no opening. Now what? I climbed over the fence next to a locked gate. Tom tried to follow me but he wasn’t tall enough to reach a leg over. So I persuaded Tom to swing a leg over and put part of his weight on my right shoulder. The plan worked well at first, then Tom lost his balance as he came part way down and we both made an ungraceful landing. I think we are both glad nobody had a camera available to get our picture. I’m sure we looked funny coming over that fence.

Tom and I finally found our way to the Atwood seminar where the other three people in our party were waiting for us. Their shortcut was apparently shorter than our shortcut. We found a seat but the seminar speaker was late or never showed. Tom, Dick, and I left 20 minutes after the seminar was supposed to begin.

We made our way over to the new motorhome display area, what a show. The whole display area was covered with outdoor carpet. That isn’t too impressive at first until you notice the carpet is spread out over a dirt field, acres and acres of carpeted dirt. I’ve never seen a dirt field carpeted before. We went from model to model and inspected several bare motorhome chassis on display. I found it interesting to be able to see all the mechanical stuff that is normally hidden under the coach. Everything was so big. Some of the coaches look like buildings on wheels.

An unusual coach caught Tom’s eye and he called Dick’s attention to it. Tom felt it fit right in with Dick’s interest in military vehicles. It was a Fleetwood model that was made in two sections and articulated in the middle. It looked like some sort of military vehicle complete with a camouflage paint job. This special vehicle turned out to be a movie star. It was the vehicle that played the role of a mobile laboratory in the movie "Lost World" the sequel to the movie "Jurassic Park."

Another vehicle for Dick’s collection

As we left the display area, Tom and Dick went on to another seminar, while I went back to our motorhome. It felt good to sit down and get my shoes off. I did some reading and took a short nap before the rest of the group returned from their various seminars. By this time it was dark outside and time for our evening meal.

Tom and Nora prepared a sumptuous feast of sauerkraut and sausage for all. After dinner we all gathered in Tom and Nora’s coach to finish the day with friendly conversation. Tomorrow is going to be very busy day.

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