Things are heating up for us in all sorts of ways.  We were blessed with a sunny day, temperatures in the upper 80s, and a nice breeze all day to dry things out.  With more sunshine forecast today it looks like we’ll have no trouble using the grass to park trailers on Tuesday.

Our major task for the day was to stuff 275 goody bags.  Dave Schumann of Airstream’s Service Center arranged for us to have access to the service bays, so I pulled the U-Haul full of stuff (that Brett brought from Florida) into the relatively cool and wind-free space.  We swiped a few tables from the breakroom and set up an assembly line, with Brett, Lisa, Alice, Tim and myself working on the project.  (Eleanor was off doing laundry.  She cut her finger rather badly on Saturday night and can’t do much with her left hand now.  She is going to be wrapped up in bandages for the week.)

We finished the bags in about three hours, including a post-project celebration with guacamole & chips that E&E brought over.  It’s sort of cool to be working next to an unrestored 1935 Bowlus and the Jesse James Airstream Chopper.  Strangely, “Schu” showed up to see how we were doing, at exactly the moment we finished.  I think he was watching through the windows…

Eleanor and I took a trip down to Dayton airport to meet my mother and hand off Emma.  She’ll be winging it back to Vermont today, and we’ll see her again in about ten days.

On the way back, the Mercedes was running very low on fuel, so of course I stopped to buy diesel.  The combination of a nearly-empty tank and high Memorial Day fuel prices set a record (for us) for most expensive fill-up ever: $108.  I know for a lot of folks with big truck tanks a three-digit fill-up is commonplace, but this is the first time I’ve ever spent that much for a single fill-up on any vehicle I’ve ever owned.  It’s a psychological shock, that’s for sure, but I’m reminded of what people told me when we first started full-timing in 2005.  Back then gas was running about $2.80 per gallon and I heard, “Boy did you decide to go traveling at the wrong time.  Wait a while until prices drop again.”  I’m glad we didn’t wait.  It always seems expensive at the time, but having been to Europe and paid $7 a gallon I know that we still have a cheap deal here.

Another pair of key Alumapalooza volunteers, Lou & Larry, showed up last night.  They are our dear friends from eastern Ohio, with whom we’ve courtesy parked many times.  This week they are also the Vice-Presidents Of Parking, or whatever title they care to give themselves.  Parking is the toughest job at Alumapalooza, and with the tricky logistics caused by all the rain recently, we are going to spend a lot of time today wandering the fields so we can finalize our strategy and be ready for the onslaught of 100 Airstreams that is coming tomorrow.

I wish I could have managed to hold my camera while driving I-80 from Joliet IL to Gary IN yesterday, but I was too busy juggling the steering wheel and the walkie-talkie. The pictures I would have captured would show an uneven concrete jungle crowded with speeding 18-wheelers, bridge construction, sudden slowdowns, and in the midst of it all, an Airstream trying to avoid being smashed from three directions at once and a tiny Mazda Miata cowering in terror, dwarfed even by the wheels of the trucks.

It was a final test for Eleanor, who has borne up well despite 1,900 miles of bone-rattling driving across the country in a ragtop car that has no soundproofing.  The I-80 assault was noisy even in the pampered environment of the Mercedes.  (I almost had to increase the volume on my iPod, boo hoo.)  In the Miata it was a deafening rumble of tanks crossing the desert sands of Iraq, a bladder-loosening flyover of B-17s in diamond formation, and a 7.5 earthquake in Japan, all at once.  After nearly an hour of physical and mental abuse, we reached the relative peace of the Indiana Toll Road and pulled out to a rest area, where Eleanor collapsed for half an hour in bed.  But she survived, and recovered well enough to drive the last fifty miles.

And now we are here in South Bend, parked on carefully-laid pavers next to an antique farmhouse, surrounded by a few well-manicured acres of grass and horse pasture.  The contrast from the noisy, smelly, crowded, and cracked I-80 Death Race Challenge is so dramatic as to seem unreal.

The 34-foot Excella belonging to Charlie and Lynn is parked with us, stocked and nearly ready to go for their upcoming trip to Minnesota.  We have been here many times before, and it has always been an oasis for us at the intersection of Chicago, Michigan, and Airstream.  We’re ready to relax and catch up on things for a couple of days.

This is great, and crucial, because I am supposed to have the Fall 2011 Airstream Life magazine completed for layout by next Wednesday. That isn’t going to happen, because Alumapalooza makes it impossible for me, but I at least will get 3 or 4 articles in process so that the entire magazine isn’t held up until I return to it.  Today and Friday will be dedicated in part to getting a bunch of editorial work done.  Fortunately, I have been greatly assisted with this issue by Associate Editor Tom Bentley, and at this writing I am also working to bring another Associate Editor up to speed for Winter 2011.

You may have noticed that photos in the blog for the past week have been of lower quality than usual.  That’s because I have been experimenting with using my iPhone as my “point and shoot” camera.  It is highly convenient but the photos aren’t great.  In particular the iPhone is very contrasty and can’t handle low light at all.  It also lacks optical zoom, and any sort of manual control over the image.  So when I get to Jackson Center I’ll switch back to the Nikon D90 for Alumapalooza pictures.

We have been granted a huge boon.  Five months of awful weather in Ohio have  finally broken, just in time for our event.  It has rained almost continually and will do so again today, but as of Saturday the sun is forecast to shine — and keep on shining — with very little prospect for rain next week!

Of course, the ground is wet and may not dry out entirely by Tuesday, but we have contingency plans to temporarily park arriving trailers on pavement if needed.  Personally, I think we’ll be fine to start using the field by Tuesday or Wednesday.  The ace Alumapalooza parking team of Lou, Larry, Terry, Brett, myself, Alex, Charon, Laura, Alice and Tim will all be on site in advance to finalize our parking and utility strategy.  Plus we’ve got support from Lisa, Eleanor, Kirk, and several other folks if we need it.  So when 100 trailers arrive on Tuesday, we’ll be ready for ’em.  Look for us in the orange t-shirts, bearing walkie-talkies and trying to look competent.

The forecast suggests the usual JC weather pattern next week.  It will be damp and cool in the mornings, so you’ll come out of the trailer dressed in long pants and a jacket.  Shortly after, the fog will burn off and you’ll be roasting hot in the sun, so you’ll have to change clothes and find some sunscreen.  That evening, the temperature will drop suddenly after sunset.  At least once during the week a shower will pop up with little warning, too.  It definitely is a place where the old adage is true,  “If you don’t like the weather, just wait a while and it will change.”  Keeps things interesting, I say.

You really can’t travel through the central states this time of year without encountering some thunderstorms, and this year they are popping up like spring mushrooms.  Last night was our first encounter, starting with an enormous BANG at 3:25 a.m. that woke us all up. It was one of those “way too close for comfort” sort of lightning strikes, and I won’t be surprised if later this morning I discover a shattered tree in the campground.

In these situations an Airstream is a great shelter, being an aluminum shell, so unless there is an imminent threat of tornadoes, we just unplug the laptops from the local power grid and check the Doppler radar to get an idea of the severity of things.  Last night’s line of storms was pretty active and some tornado damage was reported, but from the radar view I could see that we were getting just the southeastern end of the line.  By the time we were awoken by the Big Bang, the worse was over.

We’ll see more rain today on the highway toward South Bend — it’s virtually unavoidable.  Once we are moving I’ll be watching for high winds and suspicious cloud formations.  If it gets funky out there, we’ll pull over and try to park the Airstream in the lee of a large building or under an overpass.  Hail is the most typical cause of severe damage, but you can never find a shelter when you need one, so the primary consideration is just staying alive if the weather really turns nasty.

We’ve had a few close calls in the past.  I remember caravanning north on I-75 through Michigan after Airstream’s Homecoming 2005, and Eleanor watching the weather radar on the laptop as we rolled north.  Ten minutes before a major line of storms blew through, we exited the highway and found a relatively sheltered spot for the Caravel, then watched the drama unfold from the safety of a nearby restaurant, complete with flying tree limbs.  In 2008, we had a tornado blow right past us and had to take shelter in a Wal-Mart.  A Class A motorhome in the same parking lot as our Airstream blew over onto its side in that episode.  We were also threatened by tornadoes at a rally in Myrtle Beach SC once, and spotted a nice little tornado spinning by at Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument in Colorado. Hail has hit us in at least three different states, but never large enough hail to dent the trailer fortunately.

OK, so let’s look on the bright side.  Today will hopefully be much less eventful.  The Airstream has now had the last of the Arizona dust washed off of it, including the solar panels, so I don’t have to climb on the roof to clean them.  We have no leaks, unlike last year at this time.  And the weather forecast in Jackson Center seems to be FINALLY turning to sunshine for all of next week, which will be great for Alumapalooza.  A dry week in Jackson Center would be a very welcome miracle.