Dave's DOG Blog

Thursday

So, my personal bag finally arrived at the luxurious Nottoway Motel (Rawlings, VA) at 4AM (1AM San Diego time), after 4 phone calls with the baggage delivery service and motel night manager who was convinced that I was not staying in room 55, and refused to receive the bag at the front desk. So there I stood in the parking lot under the giant 10-foot tall-lighted “MOTEL” sign at 4AM…limping along in my boxers, DOG t-shirt and Coban bandage to retrieve my luggage.

Set up was a tad more tedious than usual. Given the drought conditions in the area, sinking the tent stakes (even with the jack hammer) was an exercise in frustration. Each stake required 7 or 8 attempts to find a spot with no major rock hidden below 5 inches of overburden. Driving tent stakes into rocks at a rock quarry…who’d have thought. Kevin from Lake Rawlings really came through yet again, helping the DUI crew of Faith, Pam, Al Morris, and myself right the tents in just less than 6 hours! Arranging food for the Public Safety event lunch required about 40 minutes and 2 managers on the phone to convince the local (and that means 29 miles away) Super Walmart Deli to make up sub platters to feed 20 people (that’d be 2 platters they said) with 21 hours notice. Apparently this Deli requires 24 hours notice, while every other deli we’ve dealt with this year only needs 12 hours notice. Thankfully, a helpful manager got it all worked out.

5PM a quick shower and it was off to the same Super Walmart to find BBQ food for the weekend. I guess it is getting a bit late in the season, since finding the appropriate number of acceptable quality “meat units” is getting harder (good thing I’ve already ordered the food for the next Demo Day – a month in advance). We cleaned out the entire stock of hamburgers and hot dogs, and it still wasn’t enough to meet our wild ass guess at the number of divers attending. We do have a participation form that asks who’s coming from each dealer to crew the event, and how many tickets have been sold (so we know how much food to buy), but it rarely gets filled out completely. Clearly I need a way to make it easier for the local dealers to communicate staff names and ticket sales with us. Perhaps Walmart not having enough stuff for us was a good thing, since we couldn’t fit any more into the rental car. There will have to be a few trips to make sure we have enough supplies to keep hungry divers fed and hydrated this weekend. If online ticket sales are any indication we have a ton of test divers coming to the event, some from up to 7 hours away!

The upside of the Nottoway is that the sign at the highway says, “Clean Rooms…now with phones!”…essentially what this means is limited cell phone reception and no internet! This translates into an early night off to sleep…after blogging of course!