The VTJ is a huge success.   Everyone seems to be loving it, even as they are crammed into an increasingly crowded space.   I think that’s because the space is crowded with cool vintage rigs of all types, and their fun owners.

This morning started at 6:15 for Brett and I, as someone arrived for extremely early parking.   The thrumming of his vintage truck woke us up, so I dashed out to get him parked quickly in the hope of not waking up any more people than necessary.   From there it was all go-go-go.   At 7:30 we met up with park personnel to get some low branches trimmed, and Abe was busy managing that process all morning.   Registration was set up at 7:30 with Steve, Kim, Melissa, and Star handling everything.   Don, Brett and probably some other people were running around parking people.   Electric lines were being strung by a team of seven other volunteers by 9 a.m., and the first newspaper reporters arrived at 9 also.

We’ve got excellent coverage coming.   All the area newspapers are running stories and/or photos on Saturday.   Two TV stations are expected tomorrow, and the Automobile Museum’s director of programs (Alan Edstrom) was interviewed on NPR this morning. It seems our little event is catching the eye of a lot of people.   Tomorrow’s Open House should be a very exciting time.

By 1 p.m. the electricity and water were reaching almost everybody, and it was time for the first presentations.   Colin kicked it off with a program on “structural integrity of Airstreams,” or more simply put, “keeping it all together.”   I followed at 2 p.m. with a talk on camping in National Parks, which was well attended, and then at 3 p.m. Brett presented on “the history of motorhomes.”

At 4 p.m. we broke for happy hour under the tent, which involved massive quantities of food, four door prize giveaways, and a presentation by Alan Edstrom about the Automobile Museum.   Then at 5 p.m. Alex and Charon did their carny act, which included sword swallowing, fire eating, and the “blade box” routine ( sort of a variation of the magician’s truck of cutting a lady in half.)

From 6 to about 7:30 we organizers (Brett, myself, Colin, and Steve) ran around solving problems and parking late arrivals.     A few people arrived who had never towed before and were afraid to back up, so I backed up one myself and helped some others.   A couple of water hoses broke and had to be replaced, some electrical GFIs tripped repeatedly and we had to isolate some trailers that were problematic, and in the midst of it all we tried to figure out if we still had space to park the 10 more trailers we expect to see on Saturday (we do).

Somewhere in there we managed to scarf down dinner, and then at 7:30 we set up Fred Coldwell for his outdoor presentation on “Airstreams from 1939 to 1959”, with a projector, sound system, screen, computer, and our trusty utility Yamaha 1000 to power it all.

Our participants have seen very little of this.   They seem to be generally having a wonderful time, which is of course what we want.   People keep complimenting us on how well organized we are, and what a great place we’ve picked.   Honestly, all the advance work we did would be for nothing if we hadn’t had about ten volunteers also pitching in to make things happen.

At this point it is 9:30 and I’m looking forward to bed.   There’s a lot of action still going on outside and I hate to miss it.   But it looks like tomorrow will start early for us too, and we’ve got to get some rest if we are going to survive the rest of this weekend.