The Rally, Louisville - July 22

Louisville, KY - Thursday, July 22; DAY 1

Today was the first official day of The Rally here in Louisville. We arrived in the Louisville area on Sunday afternoon and checked into a campground about 20 miles south of the city proper. After getting settled at the campground, we drove into the city to check out the show venue and get the "lay of the land". This area of the country is in the same HEAT WAVE pattern as most of the rest of the country is experiencing. It is in the mid-nineties and very humid every day/night. The parking lot where we are located at The Rally is directly in the landing path of the nearby Louisville Airport, and the flights come in about every 2-3 minutes from about 6AM until past 2AM every single day! Add to that the fact that the A/C in the coach can't keep up with the temperature outside, and you get the some idea of our living conditions here. Oh, yeah, we are also parked on a paved lot, so the heat rises from beneath the motor home to add to the misery.

Anyway, as I mentioned, today was the first day of the show and the crowds were huge! Kathy had to run back to the motor home twice to get more DIP, and we still had 3 or 4 empty containers by 4:30PM, and the show closed at 5PM. Today's pretzel count was 10 pounds, and about 1/2 pound ended up on the floor, crushed into the carpeting! This was a "feeding frenzy" today. Lots of "grazers", and maybe half of them actually bought something! Not complaining, just stating facts. At times, watching the "grazers", it seemed to me that they were competing with each other to see who could get the most dip on a pretzel (or pretzels). One young lady, who was there with another vendor, stood in one spot dipping into the Shrimp Dip until it was almost gone. She returned later, after we had put a new container out, armed with a hand-full of Cheez-Its, and went right into the Shrimp again! She saw me looking at her, so she left. However, she was nervy enough to return as we were closing up to see if she could get any "left-overs"! Twit!! At shows like this, I guess we just have to bite our tongues, grin and bear it. Ya can't teach people manners if they don't learn at home, eh?

At the present time, approximately 9:30PM, Kathy is making more dip samples for tomorrow's onslaught. I have already been out to buy more sour cream and pretzels. I bought 17 pounds of pretzels tonight and I hope that will get us through tomorrow. I have already cleaned out two local stores, so if we need to get more, I'll have to find other sources. This show will continue until 2:30PM on Sunday, and I hope that we have the resources to survive 'til then. Stay tuned for that report.

We do have one competitor here. A company called All Star Dips. Their pricing was very similar to ours, which we thought was very good for us, since we have a really exciting booth area, we put out the pretzels and let people help themselves, whereas, All Star hands out their pretzels, one-at-a-time, to the customers, and their dip samples, which are displayed in coolers similar to ours, are in containers with covers on them, with a small hole in the cover, about 1" in diameter, to dip the pretzel into. However, they changed their pricing after seeing our prices in an attempt to out-sell us. No Way, Jose!!! People appreciate the fact that we do not try to limit their ability to sample our dips, and our packets make more dip than All Star's.

All-in-all, today was a GOOD day for us, sales-wise! Our main concern, at this point, is that we will not have enough dip packets to get us through the show. Our wicker dip coolers are selling well, and we do have plenty of them in inventory to get us through Sunday.

LIFE IS GOOD!

Wilson and Beasley are hangin' in there. They spend their days in air-conditioned comfort, get two squares per day, and plenty of water. When we get back to the motor home at night, they are really excited to see us, but then, after eating, they retire to the bedroom and sleep!! What a life, eh?

Stay tuned for updates!