As of this morning -- I haven't checked the mail -- we have 215 people who have registered for the
RV BBQ at Oshkosh. This is almost the same number we had registered last year by July, and almost 400 showed up.
We're kind of hoping that doesn't happen again and we are imploring people to register in advance so we don't spend 4 hours running to the store to get more food (we can't very well say "sorry, the food's all gone," because the people who might lose out are those who paid in advance.
So we're once again encouraging all to register early. On June 1, the price goes up; not because we're greedy -- you think $7.50 actually covers the cost? -- but because we're trying to provide an incentive for you to do now what you might be inclined to do later.
As indicated, if we do get underwriters -- we've heard there may be some but we haven't seen the green yet -- then money will be returned.
Of course if we don't get underwriters, this will definitely be the last BBQ as we're well into the hole. (that tent is cool and allows us to proceed regardless of the weather but we had to use the EAA vendor and that's about $1,000 a night for that puppy. I should have gone into the tent rental business. Anyway, that's already been paid via my trusty old credit card. No checks are being cashed until the week before Oshkosh.
Also the camping fees at AirVenture have gone up another $1 a night this year and this year we'll need 6 campsites to accomodate the crowd. That's $19 a night times 6 ($114) times the number of nights we have to pay (6) for a total of $684 just for the patch of ground we're using. And we haven't even bought all the food and beer yet. So our expenses have almost tripled this year while -- factoring in the cost of postage -- the price of a ticket has dropped almost 50 cents from a year ago, when we lost about $200 on the deal -- a worthwhile investment, imho.
I'm pretty confident we'll be OK. The biggest headache I'm concerned about is a bunch of people showing up at the last minute who didn't tell us they were coming.
So if you're going to Oshkosh, you might as well register now because why wouldn't you want to spend a pleasant Midwest evening at a barbecue with several hundred like-minded individuals, with no speeches to listen to, no hard tables to sit on, where you can eat and drink as much as you can stand... all for just $7.50?
Make it easy on us. Do it now. I prefer snailmail as PayPal takes about 60 cents off the top and every dollar counts toward better beer.
And if you're in the EAA, spread this around your chapter (it's newsletter time and I'll bet your newsletter editor would welcome a few lines).
Oh, by the way, we could use an official "photographer." I'm thinking it would be great to take a large group photo and then send it to everyone after the event as a souvenir.
And, finally, we'd like to encourage RVers to camp near us and be our neighbors. We figure that way, we won't upset the neighbors with our bash. The map is on the Web site of exactly where we'll be.
And is there anyone going to OSH earlier than July 20 (Friday) who'd like to stake out our area?
Oshkosh BBQ update
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