6/21-6/23            SoonerCon           Norman, OK

SoonerCon is my kind of convention! Lots of attendees. Lots of things to do (panels, workshops, cosplay contests, and even some after-dark more “adult” entertainment [a geeky burlesque and a drag show and more]). I managed to stay up long enough one night to catch the drag show… fabulous!

The show had LOTS of attendees and many were interested in books. I had many wonderful conversations. And many of those were attendees who came back year after year after year.

Sales were ok, but the staff told me that many of the vendors were complaining that this was a down year by as much as a third! OK, the financials of the show were only a very small profit, but if this was a down year, I can’t wait to see a good one. I can also see that returning here will increase sales significantly as people begin to notice that I’m going to be there bringing new stuff every year. Barring any major issues, this will be a regular venue for me.

If there was any negative associated with this con, it was the heat/poor air conditioning in the venue. I know… one show I’m freezing and the other I’m charbroiled. The aircon at SoonerCon varied. It never truly baked us but there were times we were sweating for hours. We loaded out in over 100 degrees outside. I felt like I was stoking the boiler in hell itself. My PacNW living has made me a wimp when it comes to heat. I spent the rest of the evening in a restaurant waiting for the sun to go down, but the temp didn’t drop below 90 until after 10PM on Sunday.

If the convention itself wasn’t good enough, serendipity sang its siren song at Soonercon. I got to talking to a young gentleman who was also a writer. It just so happens he was also stumping for a convention in Louisville, KY–Imaginarium. And it is one of the weekends I have free on this trip (July 19-21). That’s less than a month away so I expected no love in getting into an eleventh-year show. However, I tried anyway… and lo and behold, there was a vendor spot open. I grabbed with both hands.

Call it serendipity (just chatting with another author and getting a show that helped my trip), karma (for all of the less than awesome stuff happening to me on this trip), or whatever… I’m tickled and not looking that gift horse in the mouth (to mix even more metaphors).

6/23       Norman, OK to Bartlesville, OK                  168 miles

Ok, Remember that I said I found one part to fix my truck about 200 miles away? I made an appointment with them for Tues morning to get my truck repaired, so I had an easy day of it.

Drove through a town that had been all but obliterated by a tornado some time ago. Wish I could remember the name of the town. You could see the path where it travelled by the missing houses (most of them), the gouges out of their foundations, the piles of rubble, and the snapped off trees. Heartbreaking! I feel for the families that used to live there. I’ve lived in Tornado Alley in my youth. Your emergency plan was no joke.

Came into the moderate but still quaint town of Bartlesville and got groceries and scoped out the parking near the dealership. There was a perfect place to park right on the ring road around their shop.

First, dinner. I went into a place called the RibCrib BBQ. I had high expectations and they were totally dashed. I got a three-meat combo. The catfish tasted bland like something you would get out of the freezer section. The ribs were OK, but you only got two. The worst of the three was the brisket. I mean how do you mess up a brisket? Long, slow roast and you end up with this tender, juicy feast meant for gods and goddesses. Oh, no. This had all the taste and consistency of one of those pieces of retread tire you see on the freeway—DRY, flavorless, and chewy. The service was spotty as well. YES, I’m a restaurant snob. Having worked for a decade in the business, you get to know things and expect things. When the best thing about the meal is the ice water, you know you are in trouble. RibCrib gets at best two stars, maybe only one.

I went back to the dealership, set up in that spot, and went to sleep.

6/24-6/28            Bartlesville, OK                 The Truck Repair from Hades

So, I pulled in so I was first in line Tues morning.

Made sure I had my computer, phone, and munchies as I knew this would be an all-day marathon. My service advisor, a nice older gent named David, kept checking on me. When he had the full measure of my pain he came and sat next to me in the very comfy waiting room.

Not only was my diesel particulate filter cracked, but that also damaged the catalytic converter. They had the DPF, but not the CC. They could get it there in 3-5 days normal shipment, or I could pay expedited shipping for $70. I chose to pay.

In the meantime, the truck was still available and he suggested a nice RV park in town (he was politely trying to get my trailer off their lot, even if it was out of the way). So, I called and they had a spot I could get for a few days. I hooked up and went to Riverside RV Park, pretty much smack in the middle of town, but you wouldn’t know it. Surrounded by trees and with many amenities, they charged me for $140 for four nights. Not the best, but a lot less than I feared. A nice, family run park.

Now some might question why I would pay for a spot when the goal has always been to not pay for lodging. Well, two reasons: 1) I wouldn’t have my truck to move my trailer around to boondock or stealth camp. 2) Also because I wouldn’t have my truck, I wouldn’t have my generator. That means no aircon in the middle of freaking Oklahoma in the middle of summer… EEEEEEeeek! Might as well just throw me into the fire.

So, I parked and had most of the amenities of home. Somewhat refreshing after a month of don’t use too much water. Is my black water tank too full? Where am I going to find a dump station? Better not run my generator too long. Where am I going to get rid of my garbage?

I took advantage of their pool. The water was just below body temperature so warm enough to be comfortable and cool enough to refresh.

Riverside RV Park was a huge win. 4.5 stars!

Expedited shipping wins. My part showed up the very next day (Wed) before noon. Took my truck in and got a ride back to my place, expecting that I MIGHT get my RAM back on Thursday. I didn’t mention it before but they were also going to replace the fuel pump (a recall on my vehicle) and do some standard preventative maintenance.

Speaking of maintenance, I had some to do on my trailer so I spent Tues/Wed doing just that and lounged on Thursday hoping for a call from the dealer. Lo and behold, I got a call about 3:30 PM saying my truck was done and at the price $320 they quoted. My truck seems MUCH happier as I drove it back to the RV Park.

I have kvetched about my RAM truck and RAM dealerships. I’ll hold my tongue on my truck for a little longer to see if this problem returns. In general, RAM dealerships do not seem to care about customers (remember me being stuck in the middle of Montana with the deadly shutdown message) and their situations. However, Bartlesville Chrysler Dodge Jeep Ram gave me wonderful service. They understood my issues AND managed to do a recall on my truck that I’ve been waiting on for over three years from my home dealer. If you have service needed and you are in the area, take the time to use Bartlesville CDJR.

I have all day Friday to goof off and enjoy myself. I intend to do that before trying to decide what to do for the next week before KantCon.

Friday started with a bang, of sorts. The city water main that supplies the RV park blew out and gave us a fountain 30’ high. This caused the city to shut off the main leaving the park without water for about half the day. Oddly, the only reason I knew of this is that the folks at the park intercepted me as I went to do my laundry. The fountain was only 70’ or so from my trailer but I didn’t hear it because of my aircon. The city sure worked fast. We had water back by the afternoon (and thus my laundry did get done).

Had a stromboli at Luigi’s and for dinner and all-you-can-eat catfish at the Boomerang Diner. Both were very worthy. Don’t miss the fried mushrooms!

I also made a decision today. I have a week to kill before KantCon. I was going to leave tomorrow morning but I had no destination in mind. I could vagabond from rest stop to truck stop to rest stop for a week. I could find a state park (OK or KS or MI) and move in there for the week. My current space was willing to put me on a “weekly” rate ($25/day) and my space was open. The evaluation of all this went something like this:

Do I want to be moving every day when I don’t have to? Do I want to be running my generator every day to keep from being broiled? Not really. I will if I have to.

Well, is there a state park I can go to? Searching for a couple of hours online found NO state park RV spots from Sat-Thur… Why? Because Thursday is 7/4. I could find one through Wed, but even then, the cost was $21/day… almost the same. So why move? Ok, the parks might have some nicer scenery, but not worth moving.

Why not stay? No reason… I went to pay and got a shock… Instead of the $175 for another week, they backdated the $25/day for the time I’ve stayed and the total cost ended up being an additional $80 or $12/day… Damned… the gas to run my generator plus driving around cost would be more than that.

Folks, I can’t give a high enough rating to the Riverside RV Park in Bartlesville. This family business is run by good people and gives GOOD VALUE for your dollar. Please look these folks up if you are in the area. It’s worth it!

This will be all for this issue. I’ll message again later to give the details of the next week (if worthy).

Sorry for the delay, but my website has been down due to a change in hosts. Add to that the joys of TGRT itself and that leads to slow updates on my part. I’ve been creating the posts, just not putting them here. Mea Culpa.

To somewhat correct my failures, I’m going to put up all of what I have thus far and work hard to keep up with the updates.

Pre Trip                5/20/24-5/22/24 – Castle Rock, WA

OMG, but the pretrip on the 2024 version of The Great Road Trip is at least twice the headache I’ve had in past trips. My troubles started well before the dates above here but continued until almost the time I left.

Firstly, I found that I had a hole in the skylight in my trailer bathroom. Well, not one hole but at least six that I counted. I didn’t see this until much after the damage when I was at a convention (where it was raining hard) and a rivulet of water rolled across the floor at my feet! It didn’t take long to find the base culprit was the skylight as it was dripping down around the inside portion of the window (double layered).

New skylight, equipment to take old one off, bits and pieces to put the new one down, dry out the space so it doesn’t mold… took nearly two weeks to get it all done.

If that wasn’t enough, my trailer brakes weren’t working. So, I tried adjusting them and that did diddly AND squat. As my time was limited, I took it to Les Schwab to fix them. They told me the wiring was disconnected and they didn’t have the waterproof connectors to fix them. Again, with time to leave limited, I crawled under and connected the wires myself. It wasn’t a difficult job, just rough on my aging body. After some tests, I was finally ready to go from an equipment perspective.

I’ll note that I got a general checkup on the trailer by the same folks as well as a repack of the wheel bearings just a month ago. (this will be important later in the story)

With only three days to launch, I worked like a busy little beaver with a leak in his dam—standard convention load, decide how many extra books to carry for the months, where should they be stored, how should they be stored, clothes, food, toiletries, and so much more!

With my loving wife’s help, I was ready on time… whew! What gymnastics!

5/23-5/24            Castle Rock to Missoula, MT        543 miles

Easy trip all in all. I stopped for a nap in Yakima (I was tired from all the prep work). I intended to stop about 2.5 hours short of Missoula on the first day but the rest area I was counting on was closed. I drove for another hour until I found a truck stop. So the next day was an easy jaunt into Missoula.

5/24-5/27            MisCon                Missoula, MT

This convention was a rollercoaster, not because of the con, but because of things going on around the con. Overall, the convention was a bit of a disappointment after the feeding frenzy of last year.  I only did about half the gross I did last year. I attribute that to the fact that we had about 30% more vendors than last year. The hotel opened up more space for the convention committee to parse out.

So, what caused the rollercoaster? ♪ He’s going to tell. He’s going to tell. ♫

“No SINGING!”

Oh, alright… Well, when we showed up Friday, I’d planned on setting up and then putting my trailer in the back corner of the parking lot like last year. Best laid plans and all that. The parking lot was filled with shipping containers. The hotel was doing a remodel. There weren’t even a third of the parking spaces from before and the precious space to park my trailer didn’t exist. Shucks and other dirty words.

I unloaded and got mostly set up before I drove around a good portion of the city looking for a place to park my truck and trailer. I eventually found one but I had to bike to the con about 15 minutes away… in the rain… and the cold… in my kilt. At the time, I had no idea where I was spending the night. I did the morning by setting up and the evening by visiting and selling. I went back to my trailer (fortunately still light out), and found a truck stop about 15 minutes away. Off I went and made dinner and had a decent night’s sleep. Good thing for what awaited me in the morning.

On Saturday, I woke up and did my ablutions. I jumped in the truck and drove off toward the con. I had hopes of getting a much closer space because of the signs reserving places M-F. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t get that far. I’m driving down the freeway and someone pulls up alongside me and points back. I look back to see I’m streaming a cloud of white smoke behind me. I waved at the people giving me the information and pulled off. The smoke was coming from my wheels (primarily from the hub where the bearings were (yes, WERE)). Oh, and I’ll note just before this, my car informed me that my brakes were disconnected again.

As Les Schwab did repack (lubing) the bearings, and there was a Les Schwab in Missoula, I took it to them. This wasn’t an auspicious start to TGRT24. On the plus side, I had a place to park. On the minus side, I had to wait to find out exactly what was wrong, what it would cost to fix, and how long it would take… Christ on a cracker! On the plus side, they let me park my beast in their lot and let me camp out there as long as I didn’t do it while they were working on it.

Leaving my lame trailer, I drove back to the con. Late in the afternoon, one of the ConCom members of RadCon showed up and informed me that it is official. I’m to be the Publisher Guest of Honor at RadCon in February 2025!!!! Obviously, it’s early days so we don’t have all the details yet, but I’m tickled pink. Only took 13 years 😊.

So, a very up and down Saturday with sales about equal to Friday.

Sunday was more even-keeled and a slightly better sale day (no data on the trailer as Sunday and Monday the shop was closed for the holiday).

In the end, I did about 2/3rds of what I did last year. From a straw poll from the other vendors, I found they also had the same lower sales. This still makes MisCon a good convention, but a minor disappointment this year.

5/28-29/24         Fixing the TrailerCON      Missoula, MT

After running a number of errands during the day, I returned and sat for the afternoon watching nothing being done on the trailer even with the parts lying on the ground next to it. I just kept getting more frustrated. As my wife pointed out, “You think they might have other clients?” Meh… I’m more important (hahaha). As they were about to close up, the guy working on my trailer and I talk and he said he will finish up tomorrow morning.

While I was waiting, I talked to the Mgr who told me that conversations with the other Les Schwab had amounted to… nil. They weren’t going to cut me any break on the price but I could file a claim if I wanted to do so. Sigh…

The original Les Schwab approved my brakes once they were connected. They very recently did the wheel pack on the bearing but didn’t want any of the blame. That’s not like Les Schwab… at all. I’m guessing that I’m going to have to move over to the other Les Schwab franchise store in our area. I can’t trust the one I’ve been doing business with in the future.

Off to a hotel, a cost I’d planned to avoid the whole trip by using the trailer. By this point, I was a zombie. Had some Chinese buffet and into bed by 8:30 and didn’t wake until 6:30… I must have needed the sleep.

As predicted, my technician had my trailer up and ready by 9:30. With a total bill of $1465. Sigh. On the plus side, they only charged me for one hour of labor when I personally watched him put in over six. Now this was more like Les Schwab.

Had many things to accomplish today so spent most of the day in a parking lot working on misc things that every life has 😀

5/30-5/31            Missoula to Spokane       198 miles

One of my friends, Bruce Graw, met me along the way. Bruce is a constant traveler and a consummate geocacher. He had been at a caching event and decided to join me for at least some of my journey.

6/1-3                    Lilac City Comic Con

This show was different for me in a number of ways. First, I had a minion (Bruce). That made load in, set up, and load out much easier and quicker. To add to this, I had a vendor booth rather than an artist table. This was more convenient to put everything out, but its location wasn’t stellar. I did get signs made that showed my GOH status for RadCon next year.

Another difference was that I parked my trailer about 3 blocks away from the convention center and just kept it there the whole weekend. This worked quite well.

All in all, the show broke even for me. It was disappointing. I wonder if people were looking for me in the artist alley and not making it to the dealers room/finding me in my little nook that seemed invisible. Something to contemplate for future years.

After loading out and prepping to leave, my buddy and I splurged on a Brazilian Steakhouse. If you’ve never had the pleasure, I highly recommend it. Go with a big appetite. Basically, servers come around all night long with massive skewers of different types of meat and ask you if you want some. Oh, my. A carnivore’s delight!

6/3-6/6                Spokane, WA to Altoona, PA        2344 miles

This was the most difficult of all the trips (at least so far and likely in the future). 14 hour days of driving swapping between Bruce and myself to get there. I’m so thankful for Mr. Graw. I don’t think I’d’ve made it doing it myself.

Even with that, it was drive, drive, drive, sleep. Not much more. Oh, it was nice to have company to chat about things, but the whole trip was a drain. Fortunately, no disasters along the way.

6/7-6/9                SciFi Valley Convention

This was a very large show. Two floors of vendors. And it was more of a media convention than a scifi convention. I was one of only four book vendors and one of only two authors. Unfortunately, a large number of people didn’t seem much interested in books.

The one downfall of this convention is that they put me right under the air conditioning duct for the entire facility. Therefore, it was windy and so cold that I got rid of my kilt and sandals and work a jacket, long pants, and shoes. Even with that by the end of the day, I was wiped from the drain of the cold.

I did make a tiny profit, but nothing to write home about. I am hopeful that some of the people who did buy books will be back to buy more in the future.

6/9-6/10             Altoona, PA to Kettering, OH        359 miles

We chose to leave Sunday night (after a big meal), and also decided to ironman it back to Bruce Graw’s home that “night.” We did pretty well. We spelled one another and held a good long set of conversations to keep us awake. We got in about 2AM.

6/10-6/12            Misc Visiting in Kettering, OH     

Nothing much to say here except one thing. I stayed at Bruce’s in my trailer and we went out and had dinner with the Graw family. We watch a couple of movies. The exception to the nothing much was a trip to see the live “Mama Mia.” Bruce invited me and even paid for my ticket.

Let me preface the next section by saying I’ve been to two other live “Mama Mia” shows. They were both the same. They encouraged us to sing along with the songs. As someone who loved much of the ABBA Greatest Hits soundtrack through the eighties, I know many of the songs and do belt out the lyrics. WEEeeeeeeel, this wasn’t the way they did it here. I got told to “shut up” and was politely told not to sing by the usher during intermission. I restrained myself for the rest of the show.

After it was over, I talked to the couple who had asked me to stifle myself (and who also sicced the usher on me). I explained that I’d always seen this as a sing-along. In the end, I apologized for impacting their enjoyment. They were surprised and appreciative of my apology. So, it turned out OK in the end.

6/13-6/14                           Kettering, OH to Owensboro, KY                255 miles

This should have been a gentle four-hour trip that turned into an eight-hour marathon. First off, there was a tanker truck that had somehow fallen partially over the barrier between the N/S lanes of I75. It had been there for at least two hours before we came along (taking Bruce to his car in Mason). The delay was significant even that long afterward and the truck was STILL in place when we crept by.

Problem number two: My trailer’s waste water tanks were VERY full and my water was almost gone. I had mapped to a dump station. The place was closed (even at 11 on a Thursday). The dump locked and I didn’t even see potable water. Finding another one was out of the way. I did finally find a “pay station” but it put me almost two hours behind schedule. But, at least I was ready to travel again.

Wonderful issue number three: Remember when my wife asked me to have a drama-free trip? I’d already had a major issue with my trailer. So I got another joyful fun item… the dreaded “check engine” light on my dashboard.

I spent another couple of hours finding out what it was (Diesel Exhaust Filter Failure). Unfortunately, no local Ram dealer could get my truck in until late next week. On the good side, this failure only degrades my gas mileage rather than being debilitating. I called ahead to Norman, OK (my stop next weekend) and got an appointment to get it fixed there.

They say that Fate is a cruel taskmistress. I believe it to be so. As if this trip already hadn’t had enough surprises, the road home gave me one more twist.

I drive an eco diesel pickup—the Maroon Marauder (as I call her). The newer diesels have an ingenious method for reducing emissions. They spray uric acid (also known as Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF)) into the exhaust. The reaction reduces those nasty things that made diesels so smelly and horrible in the past. Well, I’m minding my own business, looking forward to being home. I’m in the wilds of Montana when I get a message from my truck: “DEF system failure. See Dealer.”

I’m thinking, OK. I’ll be back in a day and a half. I have two repairs on my truck that need to be performed when I get home anyway. I’ll just add this to my list when I go into the dealer.

I’m all fine and good until thirty minutes later the message changes to: “DEF system failure. Vehicle will not restart after 200 miles.” This began a countdown of mileage. Oh, fudge.

Luckily (he says with a bit of sarcasm), Bozeman, MT was just thirty miles away. I pulled into the dealership in town with one hundred sixty-ish miles left on my countdown. I go inside to find out that they can’t even put my truck up on a lift for three days. Calling about, I find no relief for that three-day period.

Now a little issue that I’ve failed to put out there… My son’s wedding was in about eleven days, so I have a deadline.

I looked into several options: renting an RV spot for a week, including renting an alternative tow vehicle (none available), renting a hotel room (ludicrous cost as it is the height of the season).

Eventually, the only feasible option that presents itself is an RV spot about thirty miles away. I will rent it for the week and see how it goes. So off I go to park my tentative home for the week. Along the way, the countdown and message about the failure went away.

“What do I do now?” I thought. “Is it still counting or did it just go silent?”

I end up going and talking to the dealer again and the answer is inconclusive… Only that it failed at some point and isn’t failed now. Can I succeed in going the rest of the eight hundred miles? No one is willing to commit. I do ask what it means by saying it wouldn’t restart. What if I keep going and never turn it off? Apparently, after the two hundred miles it would throttle my speed to five miles an hour if I dropped below 15mph. After fifty miles it would shut down the engine. I wallowed in angst for some time before making the decision to press on.

It appears I made the right choice. I never got the message again. I was able to travel without interference the rest of the way home.

Thus ends one of the more eventful Great Road Trips.

This has to be one of the more eventful segments of my entire life. The day I am scheduled to leave, I have an eye issue. I have a floater in my left eye the size of… well, make a stop sign of your hand and hold it at arm’s length. The entire size of your hand is a spiderweb across the focus spot of my eye. Troubling!

A few calls to my eye doctor back home sent me to someone local to check it out. $150 and the flash blindness that goes with eye dilation later, it isn’t serious but rather something that comes with age. It will go away over time.

Next, I decided to stop and visit my friend, Bruce Graw, in Kettering, OH and his family a bit more as it is on the way. While I’m sleeping in my trailer on the edge of his lawn, the driver of a car on a perpendicular street has a medical emergency. At ludicrous speed, he rams a large pickup (spins it around 110 degrees, totaling it), The runaway car flips over in mid-air and hits an SUV (and shoves it out of the way), lands on its roof, and slides to a stop 14” from my trailer. His headlight assembly flies out of his car and slams against the side of my trailer putting a fist-sized dent in the side. Had either pickup or SUV not been there, the runaway car would have torn my trailer in half. NOTE: the driver was taken to the hospital with minor injuries.

OK, that’s two bad things, and according to sayings they come in threes. On the way to Indianapolis from the Dayton area, I get a flat in a tire I’d planned on replacing when I get home. On the surface of things, this wouldn’t seem too bad, BUT, I have to unhook the trailer and swap the tire on the truck. Pickups are NOT built for serviceability. I’m a seasoned mechanic and it took me 90 minutes to get the tire off and the spare put on. $500 and two and a half hours after that, I had new tires on the back of my truck. The money didn’t bother me, but the time did as it meant I missed my arrival at the Indy RV park. But I was able to get a late arrival and all was good.

GENCON 2023:

OK, There were many goods and bads to GC this year. I’ll start with the bad and get those out of the way.

1. They moved the marshaling yard with effectively no notice. The marshaling yard is where vendors go to get in a queue to be able to drive in and offload their stuff. We had to drive around to find it. Oh, and they haven’t solved any problems of the past yet. 1hr sitting around waiting for them to let us in. 30 minutes to load in, get our badges, and set up.
2. There is a street between the convention center and Colt’s stadium. Bruce and I have always used this as a place to drop off each day (short walk to the back door), and to load out (and avoid the dreaded Marshaling Yard on the return). The city had blocked this off during the convention. (Grrrr) Longer walks in and out as well as marshalling yard OUT took 2+ hours just to get to the same location we normally pack out!
3. I vended next to a young lady who poached people I was talking to. This is extremely rude. It didn’t happen to just me. Several other vendors around her said the same thing. And on the final day she used a pitch that I think is just wrong (and other vendors) about “helping me by buying books so I don’t have to carry them to my car” or something like that.
4. I didn’t reach my goal of having record sales (but did respectably). I suspect I might have reached record sales if it weren’t for #3 above.
5. Really getting homesick… this trip seems interminable.  

Now the good things that happened.

1. I had a single record sale of 17 books. It started out normal enough. He asked about one book. I told him and he said “I’ll take that one.” Everytime he asked me about a book or a series the answer was the same. We got up to 9 books and he started to check out. I’d already run the sale when he said… “Wait, you didn’t tell me about this one.” Eight more books joined the pile. This is the single largest sale I’ve had, ever!
2. Great to see all of my fans! In fact, Michael (last name withheld because I don’t have permission) 3D printed me a parabola slinky. It’s a good deal of fun. Wonder how the cats will react to it back home. Special shout out to Beth, a fan who got married since our last meeting.
3. While we didn’t reach our record sales, we did quite nicely.
4. Got to mingle with all of my author friends.

Ok, I’m heading the farthest east I’ve traveled with TANSTAAFL Press. But, along the way, I’m stopping at Bruce Graw’s house for a visit and to pick up some things I had shipped there (I was short of some books and business cards).

I did dinner with his sister, we went and saw a couple of movies (Indiana Jones, and Spiderman), and I attended D&D with him.

I also managed some prosaic things like laundry, a minor trailer repair, and catching up on sleep! Nice visit but I had to make it march to get to Confluence in Pittsburg. Besides, Bruce comes to GenCon with me and helps me man the booth there. We will chat more there.

Welcome to Confluence in Pittsburg! This lovely convention had many surprises in store for me.

 First, let’s start with accommodations. I was able to boondock in the parking hotel lot, but at a cost. No, not a monetary cost, but a physical one. To be out of the way, the only spots available were not even sort of level. Where I ended up, I had a list of approximately 10 degrees from the driver’s side down to the passenger’s side and a slight head’s down angle, but nothing like the side-to-side problem.

Now, nominally a slight angle isn’t an issue but this was severe enough to cause problems. I had to sleep on my bed diagonally (and not sleep well). It also didn’t allow for cooking. And my spare hours really only had one position that was even halfway comfortable… leaning up against the wall in my dinette area. That doesn’t even talk about doing bathroom issues and other things.

Not the most comfortable of my stays on this trip.

The next surprise was the convention itself. I’m usually a good judge of how large a show is just from the website and talking with the convention committee. I had this down as a 1-2K attendee show. <BUZZ> Thanks for playing. More on this later. 

Day one was very disappointing with light traffic, minimal interactions by the people, and even fewer sales. Day two was turning better but still light. I wondered where all the people were. Until I heard a couple of the convention committee chatting near my booth that the total gate count was about 280 souls. Ack!

I’ll be honest, if I’d known that there were so few people, I may not have attended. And I would have missed out on what turned into a pretty decent show all, in all.

While for us, sales aren’t everything, they are a metric of how well the business is doing overall. There is a general tenant that for any show, a vendor should get 3-5x the cost of the show in sales to make it worthwhile. This show hit 6x even though we were only 2/3rds the nominal target sales we have for any show. So from a purely business perspective, the show turned out well.

From an engagement perspective, I had some problems. My normal patter (or flirting for those who remember my class Flirting for Fun and Profit) just wasn’t working as well as most every other convention. My rough guess is that it is an East Coast vs West Coast thing. I’m not at all saying that the EC folks were standoffish, only that I didn’t know the keys to properly engage. It did get better as the weekend went on, but I still felt there was a strain there that I don’t feel elsewhere. Maybe next time, I’ll get it right.