Hello again from Indio, CA

Hello again from Indio, CA

Thursday evening January 8, 2009 (Fourth travelogue of this trip)

We are at the FMCA rally in Indio (map). This is just a few miles from the Polo Grounds were the dog show was held.

As we had mentioned, the dog show was very interesting. I wish we could tell you that is was profitable. That was not the case. Indeed, it was the first show/rally that we have been to where we were skunked! We did talk to quite a few folks and they all liked the idea of protecting their pets/investment. The way they set up their booths is quite a bit different that what we are used to, and as a result, our booth was somewhat hidden by adjacent booths. In addition, we observed that these folks are very focused on dogs, and if you are not selling dog related products, they just walk on by. We are convinced that this is a good market, but we have to figure out how to get folks to think about our product.

On Sunday we moved to the Indian Wells RV park for a couple of days. That allowed us to charge our batteries and do several loads of wash. I also finished an install that I had started quite some time ago. The installation was very complex because of the generator control circuit. The installation was quite troublesome for some very strange reasons, but I got it done yesterday after setting up the booth at this rally. Thankfully, the folks have been very understanding.

Today was the first day of the show. The attendance seems to pretty good. We will get the official number in a day or two. Lots of folks have stopped by the booth and seem interested in our products. With the economy in the toilet, we will see if this interest turns to sales in the next two days of the show.

Pat did her Stamping craft class today and I do my safety seminar tomorrow.

That is all for now.

UPDATE (Friday Morning): When I was writing this blog last night, we noted that the bus started rocking quite a bit. We saw at least on neighbor come outside and look around. It turns out that there was a 4.5 earthquake about 8:00 PM last night in San Bernardino. At the time we thought about the possibility of a quake shaking the bus, but the TV (LA stations) did not have a banner on the bottom of the screen. This morning, they have had a couple of news story on the quake. It shook things pretty good, but there was no major damage or injuries.

We talked about earthquakes, and decided that the big old bus would probably be a great place to be if the BIG one occurred (assuming you were not next to trees or buildings).