Mt. Hood, Oregon
We volunteered! This seemed like a great thing to do. We would assist the rallymaster assigned to a rally for about 125 RVs and have a year to get our act together. The rallymaster developed the rally and seminar schedule, set up the budget, found the location, arranged for meals, and a million other tasks. Our assignments were to find rally entertainment, get door prizes, invite vendors to show their wares, arrange for a craft seminar, and assist at the rally. We had a great rallymaster who did his job and let us do ours. FCOC Freightliner Chassis Owners Club. This club's membership consists of about 4500 RV's built with a Freightliner Chassis under them. The club is a chapter of the Family Motor Coach Association (FMCA). Club rallies are held twice a year with emphasis on providing technical information through seminars. Of course, there is lots of other fun things that happen at the rally: Meals, entertainment, Red Hat Tea, ice cream social, bus tour, etc. So we all had a lot to do in planning this rally.
Final Rally Preparations: We went down to Zig Zag Oregon to work with the Rallymasters from the 10th-14th. The main rallymasters had already arranged for the park, and the speakers, and the meals. While we were there we determined how all the seminar rooms, coffee and donut areas, and entertainment areas needed to be set up, and worked with the park to do that. We figured out how many volunteers we needed and made assignments and put those in the credential bags. We made banners for each activity and activity calendars to be posted on the bulletin boards and outside each seminar room.
We packed goodie bags! 3 bags of stuff for each of our 130+ rally participants. One bag had credentials with badge, meal tickets, site assignments, and schedule of events. Two bags were "goodie bags" filled with items like key chains, pins, pens, kozies (go around pop cans), rulers, calendars, etc, sales brochures of firms who gave us door prizes and local attaction material. It probably took the 4 of us most of 2 days to fill the goodie bags and then another day to fill a bag with rally credentials.
Door Prizes! We'd worked hard sending out letters requesting door prizes and we got a lot of them. Enough for each RV registered to get a prize! Our rallymaster had given up a big corner of his garage for the prizes as they came in. Now it was up to us to figure out which prizes to give out on which night and since many things were duplicated, make sure we weren't giving the same thing one right after another. We had some very nice prizes worth $150 so we wanted a special drawing for them. We made a computerized list of each registration and cut out the names to go in the fishbowl. About this time we had 3 registrants who lived in Punta Gorda, FL and had to cancel when their homes blew away in the hurricane. (We heard from these folks later - they were hit by 3 hurricanes this fall!) 3 folks down - then 3 folks signed on in their place: scramble credentials, name tags, site assignments, and names for door prizes. This whole time it was unseasonably hot in the mid-90's. We put in about 14 hour days here.
The Calm before the Storm. From the 15th to the 19th, we were mostly off duty. We were in Redmond, Oregon (by Bend) and it was in the mid-90's there too, but now we had no plug-in power. So lots of generator use. This was the Family Motor Coach Association National Convention with 5000 rigs. We were able to give credentials and goodie bags to most of our rally participants there. We also were busy with seminars and entertainment including the Brothers Four and the Kingston Trio. But these days we had free time and we could rest. So though the days started at 6am and ended at 10 we were able to get some rest in anticipation of: THE RALLY!
Friday - Check In Day We thought we had everything taken care of. We thought it would be so clear to everybody. But not so! Why don't people read the instructions?
They couldn't find the campground. They couldn't find their site. They couldn't find the seminar rooms. And they couldn't find out where we were having dinner. Granted, MOST people figured it out but we were surprised at the number who hadn't read their instructions.
Dinner was served at the Lion's Hall down the road aways. It was so nice not to have to do setup or cooking or cleaning for the meal! Dean had the entertainment hall setup for 275. To a packed house, Willie and Company, a ventriloquist sponsored by Freightliner Corporation, performed before the first 40 door prizes were given out.
Saturday - Seminars, Crafts, and the Red Hat Tea Started the day with coffee and donuts. So up at 5 to help set up the coffee and clean the tables off, and serving coffee and donuts under the big tent to 275 folks. Dean got to spend the day setting up and re-setting up the seminar rooms and finally setting up theater seating in the big tent outdoors for the evening entertainment. Everybody was busy this day. At the Red Hat Tea, Katie came in her ensemble and gave a talk on the history of "having tea".
Dinner again at the Lions.
This night's entertainment was Matt Jenkins from Tacoma.
We had heard his music and patter before and knew he'd get the joint moving. And he sure did. He had a great routine about the winter snowbird seniors who get into the pools and bounce round with their "noodles". A bit off-color but gales of laughter. A bunch more door prizes given out.
Our day ended around 11:30 after helping Matt take down his equipment and locking it up.
Sunday. This was a day of rest (for the rally participants maybe!) We served up coffee and donuts in the morning and held an ice cream social in the afternoon. We spent our "resting" day writing thank you notes to the 55+ companies who provided door prizes, goodie bag items, or money to support our rally. And, oh yes, doing the laundry!
Monday - 'Round the Mountain bus tour This was the day for the trek around Mt. Hood. Buses were brought in and hauled folks up to Timberline Lodge, around a glacial lake, along the old Columbia Gorge Highway, and down to Hood River for lunch, windsurfer watching, and buying fruit at a fruit stand. It was overcast and drizzly most the day and Mt Hood never showed but all the folks liked it. We didn't go as we were needed to "dog sit" for a couple of our participants and to just "be around" if anything came up.
Tonight's dinner at the Lions was steak and shrimp courtesy of Freightliner Chassis. Yumm!
Matt Jenkins entertained again. Now with his own fan club of "Noodlers"!
More door prizes, and the giving of the the extra valued prizes. That all went well.
Many folks came up and thanked us for putting on a good rally.
Sure made us feel good.
Glad they had a good time.
Would we do it again? Nah. Probably not. Not enough "feel good times" to counteract the stress and time involved.
