Ready to Rally, in Our Own Way

In just two days, we show up (knock on wood) at the International Airstream Rally in Sedalia, Missouri. We’ve never been to an Airstream anything, so we figured we’d go whole-hog with the big one this year.

Truthfully, we planned this a year ago when we thought we’d be coming back from Newfoundland, but even when we had to scrap that, we figured we’d still be in the Midwest this fall, so we kept ourselves registered. And, man, has this thing snuck up on us.

What “this thing” is is a week-long party/meet-up/conference for people in their Airstreams. As far as I can tell—seeing as how I haven’t been to one. But I’ve downloaded the app and joined the Facebook group, and now we’re setting our minds to last-minute preparations.

From what I gather so far, an important task everyone accomplishes before taking off for the rally is washing their Airstreams in their driveways. Oops. We’d planned on doing that in Elkader, Iowa, at Tracy’s friend’s campground where we know it’s okay for us to use that much water, but we bypassed that stop because of a motorcycle rally happening there, and we stayed instead at that lovely spot on the Turkey River. So worth it to us, but not an easy defense. Airstreamers sure value a clean trailer. And we washed ours last in, um, June, three long travel months ago. Since then we’ve been down to Texas and up to Michigan.

Another crucial step before the rally is putting on your BRN (big red numbers) so you can be guided to your parking spot and later found among the 1,500 other Airstreams in the Missouri State Fairgrounds. Now, we tried to put on our numbers back in June (same stop as when we washed and waxed), but the adhesive strip of numbers tore, and we had just one. We ordered more, got sent to our mail in Texas then had them sent to Finn in Michigan, and here in Iowa we gave it another go.

The front numbers ripped again, but Tracy ordered extra sets this time. Whew. Took three attempts in total, but they’re up, and Tracy didn’t fall off the ladder and we didn’t get a divorce.

Now, the back numbers are a different story. We started with the middle one so they’d be centered above the word AIRSTREAM, then we put up the numbers on each side of that. And then realized what we thought was the middle number most certainly is not. (22656 spells out BANJO, and we got the J in the middle instead of the N.). We don’t have a backup set for that size, so we just put the numbers up there in the right order, just not centered. Oh well.

Our friends Sherri and Mooch are already at the rally, helping set up the campground for the masses. We’re coming in a few days early ourselves so we can get parked near them and their friends and be ready to volunteer. Tracy will be helping Mooch get people into their campsites, and I’ll help Sherri at the Registration/Welcome table. I think. Every time I text Sherri with questions, she tells me I’m too uptight and we just need to show up and enjoy ourselves.

I’m thinking us showing up with our BRN like this will dispel any rumors of uptightness immediately. I mean, look at that! It’s freaking hilarious in the context of how careful Airstream owners are about how their Airstreams look.

The front looks good, though! You’ll be able to find us by looking at your phone keypad and spelling out BANJO. See you there!