Visit our Popular Forums

nohillgrish · 02-16-2009, 05:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pahaska

In addition to our usual unit newsletter for the month, I put out a "Rally Special Edition" with all of the rally info from our regular newsletter and a lot more photos. There is a list of awards and a list of door prize winners.

John,
Thanks for sharing your newsletter. For those of us outside your region, it again did a nice job of summing up a great rally. I shared how much we enjoyed the rally this past weekend with our local unit (Missouri Greater Ozarks). Don't be surprized if you have more folks from Missouri next year (that is if we're still invited).

Pahaska · 02-16-2009, 06:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PeeWee

Schwamborn

Sorry. That's what happens when I try to do things after midnight. I'm rushing to leave for the Mardi Gras rally.

GStephens · 02-16-2009, 06:24 AM

Dennis, you and your friends will always have a standing invitation to this rally though I can guarantee you we will be moving it to another location next year. This park repeatedly did not honor its agreements which created many, many problems for us that did not have to be.

I enjoyed so much meeting you and your lovely wife. I just wish I'd had more time to visit.

GStephens

soldiermedic · 02-16-2009, 07:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GStephens

I can guarantee you we will be moving it to another location next year. This park repeatedly did not honor its agreements which created many, many problems for us that did not have to be.
GStephens

Maybe moving it further north towards Missouri?

That will help us out next year traveling with a then five year old.

GStephens · 02-16-2009, 09:59 AM

I wish we could hold it further north Steve, but we will likely keep it in the Southern part of Texas below a San Antonio, Austin, north of Houston line to try and insure the best possible weather. It is imperative due to a variety of reasons that we hold this rally in February each year. Our Texas Highland Lakes Unit conducts this rally without financial help from any other source every year and we try to pass along all savings in parking fees, meals, etc. to the participants thus keeping our rally fees as low as possible. We are not in this to make a profit, but to provide a platform for the celebration of all things Vintage Airstream. A bad weather event with resulting cancellations would spell financial ruin for us if we had a number of folks fail to show up after we had already paid for catered meals, decorations, rally awards, etc. This year we fed over 225 people each of the three nights at an average cost of $10 per meal. Do the math just on meals to see the kind of money we could potentially loose. Add in the cost of some of the seminar presenters, copying costs, programs, rally ribbons and awards and you soon see that we must have a reasonable chance for having good weather to sponsor this event each year.

We will have a short meeting at our March unit rally to once again take it before the membership as to whether or not we hold this rally again next year. I am confident we will, but it is something that the membership must collectively decide upon every year. This year it required 28 committee chairmen and 52 total volunteers to put this rally together into the cohesive, well run rally that you saw for the benefit off the 103 trailers and 8 rooms of people staying in the nearby motel. This rally now exceeds the size of all but one WBCCI Region Rally in size as announced at the rally by International 1st Vice President Tom Collier. All of that effort is essentially in the hands of our unit's members with only minimal help from members from other units. Our feedback was tremendous this year. We believe this year's Vintage Rally was universally extremely well received. This rally has become an International event, but remains totally dependent upon the energy and good will of our small group of unit members.

I hope this helps to explain the selection of location each year. By the way, though I didn't have near enough time of my own this year to visit as I would have liked, I would like to personally thank you for attending and adding your own contributions to the success of this rally. I really believe having you available to perform leak testing and having Camper Clinic provide free repair to over 50 trailers while at the rally gave a real value added component to this year's event. Thanks again for your contribution.

GStephens

78GussyTX · 02-26-2009, 07:50 PM

Hi Everybody, thanks for posting all of your info, we were very sorry to miss the rally ... my doctor seemed to have other ideas, like sharpening his scalpal.

Great to see the pictures aand read the accounts. I was wondering, does anyone have any pictures of the Argosy that won the 70's award?

Marvin and Annie Fisher, if you are members here, would love to see your pictures!! We have a '78 year model and would love to see how the inside and out was done on yours.

Thanks, and see you next year,

Steve

Happycampers · 02-26-2009, 08:19 PM

Hello Steve.. Where are you in Texas? We are wintering in Zavalla Tx.. you can see the redo of the Argosy in the thread called Costalotta start to finish.. hope that you enjoy it... We have been living in our Argosy since Nov/08 as snowbirds and have found it very comfortable.. hope to meet you some time... hope that you are recovering and doing well..

GStephens · 02-26-2009, 08:51 PM

There is a picture of Marvin and Annie's Argosy at the top of post 257. Such a beautiful trailer it is. It had a paint job to die for.
GStephens

78GussyTX · 03-01-2009, 12:17 PM

Hi Marvin & Annie, I stayed up very late looking at your "Costalotta start to finish" thread, what a great job you did capturing that process!!! You are very talented and patient to go through all that, and what a beautiful result!!!!

Our Argosy is nearly all original inside, just has newer carpeting, couch, and refrigerator installed at the A/S factory in 1994. They also stripped and painted it there at the factory during that visit. My father in law gave it to us in 2008, he bought it new when my wife was 1 year old and stored it indoors all these years.

I hooked her up yesterday here on our property (we have full hookups out there) and found the furnace is not working, just had it serviced a few weeks ago, it worked until then!! The Surburban NT 24 SP. Oh well, that's original too, guess it served well for 30 years.

We are in Alvin TX, about 20 miles South of Houston. Drop us a line if you head South!

Thanks for the get well wish, had a tear in my left shoulder rotator cuff fixed up. Still in a brace and will be for 2-3 months I am told. I have learned a new appreciation for that left extremity!

Regards,

Steve

GStephens · 03-01-2009, 01:31 PM

Wish you weren't wounded. Marvin and Annie will be joining us at our next unit rally this coming weekend (Wednesday through Sunday) near Crockett at the Salmon Lake RV Park just outside of Grapeland, Texas. We'd love to have both of those fine Argosy's with us and parked together for the next few days.
GStephens

Happycampers · 03-01-2009, 02:56 PM

Hello Steve... Hope that you are doing well. I am glad that you enjoyed the thread of Costalotta.. she has lived up to her name..

.. we ended up doing more than we planned but we basically have a new trailer custom done for us.. have to think of it like that

... Stay well and maybe we will meet next winter.. Zavalla is now our permanent winter home... Annie

Happycampers · 03-01-2009, 03:31 PM

Steve ... That is a very lovely Argosy you have... loved the pics.. and great history and what a great gift to pass on...

Distantdrummer · 03-01-2009, 04:08 PM

I went to the Region 9 special brochure re: the rally and it was informative and well done. From there I linked to the "official" photographer's site.
But the pix are not viewable without some sort of pin or password or code.
Are these only for participants?
Also I thought there might be more comments posted here post rally.
would like to hear from Tom W.
And who came from the farthest just for the rally?
GStephens mentioned some glitches with the RV park's promises of service. Any chance those might be revealed?
Lastly in retrospect would fewer participants have been an advantage of any sort? And what would be the minimum number of trailers to make such an event work?
Is Canyon of the Eagles suitable for such?

GStephens · 03-01-2009, 07:32 PM

I can't answer most of your questions. The photographer you mentioned was not "the official photographer". He was eharve, a fellow forums member. He apparently made the photos available to people whose email addresses he knew.

Tom W hasn't posted on this site, but has contacted a number of rally participants through email since his return home.

I don't know who came the furtherest. We had two from Maine and four from Canada.

The problem with the RV Park was that we had a contract and an understanding that they would provide us 104 contiguous sites. They did not honor that agreement. As a result we had participants scattered throughout. This was not the way we agreed and it required us to make changes at the last minute as to where and how we parked the Vintage units which affected our open house. There were additional "problems" that were not problems when we looked into things, but the park continued to assert that there were "problems" throughout the rally which took up my time to discuss and resolve. I never did figure out who was making up these problems or why they were being asserted. I won't go into any further details here on a public forum.

Lastly, we'll be having a meeting of the small group who planned and executed this rally next week to go over the collated evaluations and discuss the 2010 rally. I can virtually assure you that we don't want to go to an every other year format or artificially limit who can attend or the number of rigs that may attend; yet I am sure these topics will be discussed at least in passing. While a rally of this size is a huge undertaking on the part of our unit, it has become a signature event for us and something to be mighty proud of. We now have a large contingent of Vintage trailers in our membership which is growing each year due to our support of this rally. I think that is a good thing.

I'm not familiar with Canyon of the Eagles, but we feel we need a facility that can both handle the number of rigs we are attracting and one which has facilities where we can have seminars and have a few meals together along with holding the award ceremonies especially should bad weather roll in upon us. We also feel we need to be somewhere near or south of a line from San Antonio to just north of Houston to insure the best weather and accessibility possible during that time of year. For a number of reasons, we feel we must hold the rally in February each year.

GStephens