Last night I never did get around to updating the blog — I was just too tired. Our day started innocently enough, as I noted in the morning. A dull agenda meant we’d be making our own fun, but we do that every day, so what’s the difference?

Then we started wandering around and pretty soon everyone was busy doing something. We took Adam and Susan to the new trailer display, introduced people to other people, and checked out some of the vintage trailers we never got time to see on Saturday. Around this time, Gunny showed up to grab Rich C for some tech support on his new Mac, and Dan dropped in for the day to scout for used trailers to buy. Behind every corner there seemed to be someone lurking, waiting to pounce for a “quick” chat, so our progress around the fairgrounds was fairly slow, but that was part of the fun.

A restored 1958 Pacer is being raffled off by the Florida Mystic Springs Unit. It’s a cute 16-footer with no bathroom. Herb Spies and other members of Mystic Springs worked on it. I bought three tickets …

Around 2 I finally met up with Wendimere Reilly and her husband Bill. Wendimere is “The Health Chic,” who you will see in the Summer 2006 issue of Airstream Life. They are traveling the US in their cool decorated Airstream International CCD 19, talking about healthy stuff and visiting health food festivals, etc. She had some advice and contacts for Rich C to use, since he has a rare auto-immune disorder that he’s learning to manage. We agreed we’ll try to meet again out toward Wyoming or Montana. Meanwhile Eleanor took Adam and Susan out for groceries, so now they are stocked for our trip onward this week.

I also caught up with Forrest McClure (draws “The Panes” cartoon for the magazine), Jim Haddaway (last year’s president of WBCCI — we had dinner with him in NTAC in May), Mike Scherkenbach and several other people from the San Diego contingent, and numerous other people who dropped by to asked questions or buttonholed me to buy a back issue. It’s a full-time job just keeping up with all the people we’ve met over the past year. I finally dragged back to the Airstream for a 20-minute power nap at 4 p.m.

Around 6:30 we had a barbecue hosted by Adam and Susan Maffei at their unique Airstream Class C, with Robert, Steve, Colin, Brett, Rich C, Eleanor, Emma, Dan, and I attending. I started things off with a “caravan meeting” to explain how some of are going to travel together to Glacier National Park starting Wednesday. It was easy: There aren’t any rules. I gave everyone Bert Gildart’s address in Montana and said “be there around July 7 or 8, and we’ll figure out the rest on a day-to-day basis.”

We heard that Colin’s latest major project, the 1965 Caravel owned by David Hale, scored highest possible marks in the Vintage Concours d’Elegance. Official results are coming out today. That’s a big validation of Colin’s shop, and he deserves congratulations for the achievement. That kind of high-quality work is part of the reason why Colin will be doing our Vintage Lightning restoration for Matthew McConaughey.

We were all noticing the vicious pollen in the air lately. Several of us had itchy burning eyes by 6 pm, but the barbecue ended up going to 10:30 anyway. This was a fascinating and intelligent group of people, and I took the opportunity to facilitate some brainstorming on “Airstream issues”, which was really productive. After we broke up, Steve and Colin headed back to Portland to catch an early morning flight home.

So, despite the agenda’s general dullness, it was a great day to just explore the grounds and we never felt like we needed to leave to stay busy. Today may be the same, since Brett and I have meetings set up for half the day, we need to pre-register for next year’s International Rally in Perry, GA, and everyone has someone they want to find and talk to. Eleanor is going to do laundry this morning, in preparation for our departure on Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning. If we have time this afternoon we’ll head over to Silver Falls with the mountain bikes, but I suspect we may be busy enough all day.