Tuesday August 16, 2011-Elkhart County Fairgrounds

Today is the official arrival day for this rally, so we expected a run on people at the registration counter. Stella volunteered to man our table to sign people up for the Heartland factory tour while I went to Wakarusa, about 20 miles away, to have my cell phone worked on at the Apple store.

When I got to the Apple store, I was first very impressed with the technology in the store's team attitude. The young woman that greeted me and got my name and email address, which was fed into her very small hand-held computer. Of course, as soon as I told her what was wrong and tried to demonstrate that my phone wouldn't come on, it worked. Well, not perfect, but it did work.

I later learned that an email had been sent to me, confirming my appointment. I soon spoke with one of the techs, who immediately began to take my phone apart and then peered into the ports, using a device much like something seen in a doctor's office to look into your ears. He declared that my phone had not been damaged when the coffee cup overturned on top of it, but he could see some oxidation inside and suggested that I might like to trade mine in on a newer model. When we bought this phone,we bought the insurance plan for it, so when it does go out, I will use that to replace it.

I returned to the park and learned that not too many people had come in today but Stella had signed up a few more. We ended up with 16 coming on Thursday and four on Friday. There are still a couple more people that have said they may come, so these numbers aren't too bad considering we had no advertising or even signs for the tour. We knocked off about 3 o'clock because no one had come in for awhile, so we went home to rest up for our food serving tonight.

We have signed on the volunteer and have been assigned to serve food. We went in way early this evening and got our instructions for what was expected to do and then stood around for 30 minutes or so until they started delivering the food. The instructions were very confusing but we got things worked out and got the food out to the people without incident. Once we got into the rhythm of serving, it went pretty well. The people in charge need some improvement, but the meal went off without a hitch.

We didn't get to watch too much of the entertainment because as soon as we had eaten, we went back into the serving area and started to clean up. When we got done, we returned to listen to the end of Don Tersini, who put on a pretty good show. He is an impressionist that does good imitations of several famous people and was the winner of Ed McMahon's Next Big Star. Here is a short video of his winning performance.

After the show, we returned home and sat outside. Our next door neighbor came over to visit and we had a very nice chat with him. He is here to sell the Sky Med service that we will look into for ourselves. We will go to his seminar and make our decision. I'll let you know what we decide.

So long.