Pre-Rally Week

July 12
Woke up to an overcast day. In fact, at noon today, there was still no sign of the sun – reminds me of living near the California coast. Weather-wise, I can put away long-sleeved shirts and jackets. Nights are in the mid-60s, days in high 80s – although the weather guy says we’ll get hotter in a day or two. Humidity seems to be nearly matching temperature. All in all, quite pleasant though.

I’ve been asked to be on Winnebago’s Consumer Research Panel, and we met this morning. Members of this panel represent 15 motorhome users, and they meet once a year at this big rally. Our “job” is to hand out various surveys whenever and wherever we travel – to owners of all kinds of motorhomes, not just Winnebago products – and send the completed surveys back to the product development folks at Winnebago. They had a couple openings and looked for motorhomers who travel quite a bit and who have no problem talking to strangers. If you know me well, you know they chose the right person when they asked me!

At the meeting I met the product designer and developer for the Aspect (Jeremiah’s model). As part of the meeting we were able to go through four 2007 models (of all sizes and styles), and they served a nice lunch. I’m now armed with a bunch of survey forms. The consumer research department also will be hosting two women’s forums next week, and they have asked the survey panel to help. I’m looking forward to this project.

In the afternoon I got some writing work done and every hour or so I walked the rally grounds and found interesting people to meet; some I remember from last year’s rally.

July 13
Today was a fairly free day: more writing, visiting and reading. I finished reading Peter Jenkins book, A Walk Across America. It’s an old book, copyright 1979. Somehow I never got around to reading it.

July 14
Finally I made time to get on the Internet. I was hoping to have access here in my motorhome where it is cool, but no such luck. So I put my computer in my backpack and walked over to the “Internet” tent. Here the access signal was great and there were plenty of electrical outlets.