At one point we had thought we might be leaving for Colorado today … but it became very apparent last week that I had absolutely no chance of being ready to hit the road anytime soon. Everything is happening at once, and I’m locked down in Tucson until I can get it under control.
For years I advocated how you can work from the road, and that’s still true. In fact it’s even more true today than ever before, because the Internet-based software tools and connectivity options have improved dramatically. But “from the road” doesn’t really mean from the road, it means “while parked somewhere in your RV.”
To really get serious work done, you have to stop driving, stop sightseeing, and just do the job. The fantasy of working from your Airstream while the scent of pine trees wafts in your open window, and the Grand Canyon looms just a few feet away, is replaced by the reality that the best place to get work done is often an RV park in a city, with the doors & windows shut. And if you’ve got to get somewhere in a hurry, it’s pretty hard to get much of anything done. I’ve never mastered the technique of driving and typing on my laptop at the same time.
I realized that with all the things I need to get done, it was pointless to hitch up the trailer. We’d just end up driving 300 or 400 miles and then sitting there while I pounded away at the laptop keys and raved about lousy Internet connections. Eleanor and Emma would have to find something to do, perhaps not in an ideal location, and all told we’d probably be less productive than if we just stayed here a few more days. So we are.
The Fall 2012 magazine got done last week, and is off to the printer, but that didn’t end my work on it. A few other things have to be checked off the list before I can forget about it, such as cutting a postage check (a painful moment; postage is my second-highest expense), invoicing the advertisers, invoicing subscribers, updating the online store, updating the website, building the Online Edition, cutting mailing lists, and a few other jobs. Most of that is now done. I’m working on the Winter 2012 and Spring 2013 issues when I have time. Fall should be in the mail by late next week.
We launched Alumafiesta last weekend and that is going well. People are signing up quickly, which is great to see. I think we’ve got a winner there. I’m working on the schedule now and hope to have something to release in draft in about two weeks.
We’re going to have a Track A/B/C system for Alumafiesta. Track A events will be “active”, meaning hiking, bicycling, and walking. Brett and I will lead most of these personally. Track B events will be physically easier stuff, mostly museums (like Pima Air & Space) and parks (like Tohono Chul) with guided tours by docents and volunteers. Track C will be “self guided” suggestions for each day, including driving tours, tourist attractions, and gem show venues.
This will all be in addition to the usual daily get-togethers, evening seminars, meals, and entertainment on-site. I’m having fun picking out and researching the activities. Today we are going out for lunch to see if a particular 4th Avenue restaurant will be suitable for an optional lunch get-together for our group, and this weekend we will go check out a park or two and inquire about guided tours. In September or October, when the weather is cooler, I’ll ride some of the local bike paths to scout out a route we can do, with lunch stop built-in.
The Airstream renovation project is plodding along when I have time to think about it. The upholstery shop came by for an interior tour, and their quote on re-doing the dinette came in at $1,728 (with new foam, and fabric assumed at $37/yd). It turns out that the dinette will use about 14 yards of material, which is more than I had thought. So upholstery is going to be a huge part of the budget. We will probably try to cut that by shopping fabrics carefully, and getting a competitive bid. Tom M tipped us off to NewToto.com, where we can get Ultraleather at about $21 per yard. That alone would save us $224. But no question, it’s going to be tough staying inside of $6k for the whole project. The Marmoleum floor is looking like about $900 for the material, and I haven’t yet got a quote on the installation.
Alumafandango is in the final stages, with far too much happening at the 11th hour, but the bulk of the details are now complete. Over at Lakeside they’re racing to finish clearing up the site and installing the power system. Of about 91 trailers slated to arrive (as of today), more than half need/want 30-amp power, which caught us by surprise. The hot summer in Denver has really freaked people out. So the local electrical shops are being cleaned out of connection boxes by our electrical crew. Brett & I bought the old power distribution system that was owned by the Vintage Trailer Jam partnership (2008-2009) and that’s being cannibalized to distribute power at Alumafandango too.
We had a serious monkey wrench tossed in the works a few weeks ago. A micro-burst thunderstorm hit Lakeside Amusement Park and washed out our camping area. An estimated 300 cubic yards of material was relocated from the main parking area, through our campsites, and into the lake. It also washed out the track for the steam train that circles the lake. Brett H of Timeless Travel Trailers led the heroic effort to recover the park as quickly as possible. They’ve brought in several 4-yard front end loaders, various other machines, and 90 cubic yards of crushed concrete. There was a lot of stored old park “stuff” that got flooded, and as a result over 30 dumpsters full of soggy material have been hauled away.
All in all this has turned out to be a good thing for us. The campground will have little grass this year, but we will have a fresh new surface, graded with a swale to prevent future wash-outs. A lot of eyesore debris is gone, many dead trees have been removed, and overall the camping area will be considerably nicer than it might have been. Work is still ongoing and things are a bit messy at this point but it should be done well before the event starts on August 21. We’re in daily contact with our people at the park, and revising the parking map & schedule of events a couple of times a day just to keep up with all the new information. I would rather this was all done months ago, but who can tell a thunderstorm when to hit?
And then there’s the “miscellaneous”. I’m supposed to be giving a presentation on “my favorite mobile apps and tools,” which I have yet to begin writing. We’re still recruiting volunteers. The t-shirts need to be shipped tomorrow. We need to build the geocaches, confirm the ice cream vendor, publish the Survival Guide, pick up the awards, build a temporary dump station, finalize some catering details, order the volunteer shirts, …. At times it does seem endless.
So life is temporarily a little crazy. We’re trying to do the work of two dozen people with a skeleton crew. It’s all I can do to keep my desk functional. I have lists upon lists, just to keep all the ideas and tasks straight. Somewhere in the pile of data that is my computer’s desktop I actually have a list of lists. There are photos and maps, spreadsheets and layouts, online registration systems (two separate systems covering four events), custom reports, and all sorts of shared documents in the cloud. If I lost my laptop this week I might as well just move to a country with no extradition treaty because there would be several dozen people looking to kill and/or sue me. (Which reminds me, I need to do a hard drive backup today.)
This would be depressing except that I live for challenges like this. Brett and I wouldn’t kill ourselves putting together these events if we didn’t really enjoy it. The standard we set for ourselves is high, but when it comes together at the end and people say “You guys did a great job!”, it all seems worthwhile—and then we start planning for the next year.
In the meantime there are sacrifices, and the primary one right now is that we will not be able to get into the Airstream until at least sometime late next week. I haven’t begun packing yet, although Eleanor has done much of the household stuff. My packing should be simple, since I didn’t take much out of the trailer when we got home a few weeks ago. I’ve got a small pile of clothes to add from the laundry and then my office stuff (laptop, cameras, etc). Over the years I’ve gradually accumulated separate “Airstream clothes,” and “Airstream equipment,” so for example I don’t have to load in my flatbed scanner or printer because the Airstream has its own that never get unloaded. This saves a lot of time. And that’s a good thing, because time is definitely something that is a bit scarce right now.