We’ve landed in Jackson Center, OH, home of Airstream since the 1950s.  There’s a sort of reliability about coming here, because not much changes between visits in a village this small.  Because it is so small we tend to notice the little things, like the fact that one restaurant has closed and another has opened, or that the BBQ place has a new sign.  In Tucson they could demolish an entire city block and we might not notice for a week, but here we can notice a new crack in the pavement as we stroll through the four-block downtown.

On this visit my primary interest is getting prepped for Alumapalooza, so I’m more interested in the grass fields and parking lots around Airstream than anything else.  After incredible and constant rains, it appears the weather pattern has finally broken and we are expecting a mostly sunny week.  That’s good, because the local farmers haven’t been able to plant (costing an estimated $904 million in lost farming revenue in this state alone!) and they need some drying weather soon.  Of course, we do too, but I walked the Airstream fields yesterday and could see that with just a couple of days of no rain we’d have no problem using 80-90% of the available space.  So by Tuesday, when 100 trailers are scheduled to arrive, we should be fine.

At the moment hardly anyone is here, which is ideal.  The factory is, of course, closed for the weekend.  Last year the Airstream “Terra Port” filled up with early arrivals, which is something we try to discourage since the Terra Port is for Service Center customers.  It was a bit of a madhouse, especially by Monday when the last space was taken.  This year something has kept people away — maybe the weather?  In any case, it’s quiet and that will be great for us since we’ve got a lot of things to do.

Tim & Alice came here on Friday, Brett & Lisa arrived yesterday morning, and we arrived yesterday afternoon.  Today our jobs are to pick up some boxes of donated materials, stuff goody bags, and strategize parking scenarios, plus make a run to the Dayton airport.  Not bad, so I’ll also have some time to get work done before the real madhouse begins.  It’s a weird way to spend Memorial Day weekend, but all for a good cause.