We arrived at Lou & Larry’s with no specific plans, other than to recuperate and enjoy the weekend with some friends. So when Loren, their daughter, invited us to visit Cleveland’s historic West Side Market, we hopped in the car and headed out.

The West Side Market has been open in Cleveland since 1840, and in its present building since 1912. This is the sort of place that Eleanor absolutely loves, with dozens of sellers of meats, ethnic foods, bread, vegetables, fruits, desserts, spices, flowers — all fresh and fantastic.

I could have bought one of everything, since it all looked amazing, but instead I bought nothing and just took pictures as Eleanor led Emma, Loren and Randy along through the aisles. The place is great for photographic opportunities. If you go and don’t want to come out with armloads of food, don’t arrive hungry.

Saturday evening Lou and Larry hosted a party for a bunch of Ohio Airstreamers. Ultimately about fifteen people arrived, and two families arrived with their Airstreams, so we had a mini-rally of three Airstreams.

One of the nice things about rallies is that you can usually bring up a mechanical problem and get plenty of helping hands. Five rivets on the rear end of our belly pan had come loose, allowing some of the aluminum to droop down. Eleanor had noticed this a week ago and we’d been waiting for a chance to fix it. So I broke out the rivet tool, the cordless drill, and a box of rivets, and invited the Airstreamers to learn how to replace rivets.

Unfortunately, everyone already knew how, since they all have their own projects, and so they declined my Tom Sawyer-style invitation. But they did all slide under for the photo above, including Emma. Later, Dave lent me some washers (to make the rivets hold the aluminum better) and Larry helped hold the aluminum in place while I put in the new rivets.

The potluck dinner resulted in absolutely massive quantities of food. We had enough leftovers to feed all the overnighters again, probably for several days. That didn’t stop Larry from making a fire in the morning and between him and Dave we had another big meal that held me for most of the day.

Today I have been finalizing articles for the Winter magazine, so it has not been a complete vacation for me, but this necessary to allow all the business I need to do this coming week. We’ll be at Airstream for service and meetings all week, and expect to be quite busy. I’ve also got to sit down with the atlas and figure some stops along the route from Dayton to Denver for the week after. Any suggestions are welcome.