Rally Time!

It's Thursday.. I'm beat, I'm tired.. I'm exhausted. Why? Because I have just returned from 3 days of travel on a work trip. Although this time I didn't go too far, just up the freeway about an hour to Salem where we had a customer rally.

What's a rally, you ask? Imagine this.... you know when you are traveling down the highway and get stuck behind a slow moving RV, carrying bikes, satellite dishes and all manor of outdoor activities as it moves down the road? Take 800 of those things, combine them all together into one area (in this case, the state fair grounds) and then wine and dine the owners all day... that is a rally.

This week was one of the biggest rallies our company has ever put on, combining 4 different motorhome brands, 800 coaches, and a whole bunch of staff. All said, with over 2,000 people on hand to entertain and feed, putting on a rally can be quite a feat! It can also mean a lot of work hours,, typically for me, easily 18 or 19 hours a day.

At the rallies I seem to wear a lot of hats (as noticed by many of the owners). First, I teach classes: a mobile internet class, a digital photography class, and, oddly enough, a ladies beginning motorhome driving class. This is a fun way to engage with our owners, teach a number of subjects and solicit feedback for my websites. Ladies Driving is quite the beast too. It starts with a classroom session, which I teach. We then divide the ladies up into groups of 4, and put them into a motorhome where they get a chance to drive a course that provides hands on experience with a variety of driving situations. We then finish off the week with a graduation ceremony with certificates to all who successfully complete the course. This time, I am happy to say we got 250 ladies through the course over a 3 day period with only 1 minor mishap (a lady ran over a cone to the point where someone had to crawl under the coach and wedge it out the the chassis frame.) Luckily, my schedule prohibits my being an in-coach instructor (although I have done it for many years), so I just teach the classes, supervise the program and let it go.

The other interesting part of rally life is that of video production. When I'm not teaching classes, I typically have my camera on my shoulder, shooting video footage on any and everything. At the end of the day, after the evening entertainment, I head back to the hotel and edit all this footage into a montage, set to music. The montage is then played on the final night after dinner as a "reminder of all the fun" over the week. (these people love to see themselves on screen!) The shooting and editing takes a lot of time and creative effort, and can be a bit brutal, just in the quick turn around time, but it's always worth it in watching 2,000 some odd people simultaneously reacting to your work.

In the end, a rally is just a place to reconnect with the reality of my job.. a place to rediscover why it is that we do this. I get chance to catch up with so many of our awesome owners, with such great stories, and employees that I haven't seen in ages. It is a reminder to me that we provide a lifestyle for people.. and important lifestyle, one that brings them many great memories. So all those times I have wanted to just say "screw this job... I'm out of here!" can kind of be healed by getting back to what we really do. It is a nice break from the office... I almost don't want to go back!

Some quick rally highlights:
•Teaching my digital Photography class. There was such a huge interest, that every chair was filled, people were standing along the walls, crammed into the doorways, and from my vantage point, filled out into the halls (all I could see out the doors of the conference room were heads). It was a fun seminar, and teaching is one of those things I have always loved. If I ever leave this job, these are the types of moments I will truly miss: connecting with customers in a fun, unique, and popular way.

•Seeing my old friend Miki, again. Miki was part of the family when I joined the company, working 1 cubicle over from me. Somehow we began a practical jokes war, my exploiting her intense fear of spiders. At one rally in Kansas several years ago, I actually had her shrieking in terror one evening after dark, from a carefully placed (and very large) toy spider placed in her rental car. She has since moved on to other opportunities in Arizona, but was back to visit us this week. After greeting with hugs, it was "game on" time yet again as I found a spider encased in an edible sucker gag that I could slip into her jacket.. she wasn't too pleased. But even with all the terrors I put her through, she knows that I think the world of her and it is always fun to have her back around!

Sadly, for me, as my job continues to evolve and change, my opportunities to attend rallies are greatly diminishing, as current management doesn't want me to travel any longer. So for me, I had to cherish all the memories of this rally, in case it is my last.. something that makes me quite sad!