It was a typical Sunday morning.  It was quite cloudy in the morning and the crowds were late in arriving.  They could have been at church, at Badboys having a bad-ass breakfast, Blythe Bluegrass Festival, sleeping, watching the football games, whatever.  They just did not arrive until closer to noontime.

THE BABES OF TYSON WELLS.

INDIAN FRY BREAD.  I had my first taste of Indian Fry Bread for the year.  Located about 8-9 rows down from where I am at.  Cost $5 for Cinnamon Fry Bread and it was pretty good.  Loads of cinnamon on it.  Over the years, I had been going over to the place located over at Rice Ranch, but now I am older and it's just too far to walk.  This will suffice.

It was basically a ho-hum, non-eventful day as we grinded through our daily sales, which ended up about 1/3 less than last year on the first Sunday.  Some people did make some decent money while others struggled through another day.  This is a tough place to sell as you need a number (or one) of items that the snowbirds really like.  You can make a bundle.  And of course, the snowbirds are tired of seeing the same ol' things year after year.  I have a number of new items that they find interesting and are buying.  But my sales are not frequent enough to make an amount that is satisfactory.

WEATHER OUTLOOK.  I have been paying attention to a number of weather reports; Accuweather, Weather Underground and Weather.com and they are enough to drive you batty.  WU is the better one but right now Accuweather is not looking as intimidating that WU is showing.  We did have an 80 percent chance of rain for Mon-Thur but that has diminished to around 30 to 50 percent chance.  I believe that Thursday is the day right now showing 80 percent.  Personally, I think we might just get a few showers on one of the weekdays.

EVERYBODY WANTS A DISCOUNT.  Have to knock off several dollars on a lot of my sales.  My prices were low enough, but the customers are very tough.

HAIRY HATS.  I am selling them for $10 apiece.  Two lady's come into my booth and ask 'how much.'  I tell them the price.  One of them turns quickly to me and says 'He's selling them for $5 over there.'  So, I told her "Well you had better go down there and buy theirs.  I am not giving you mine for $5.00."  They left and walked down the aisle.  I watched them.  They did not buy that guys's either BECAUSE he was not selling them for $5.00.  The lady's did not come back to me.  You know, if somebody ever tells me they can get a cheaper price someplace else, then I tell them to go buy it there.  Besides that, I do not undercut my competition. 

Weather Underground for Monday: 

When I put in Monday's report, Sunday will be moved to the bottom of the page.

It began to rain around 10:00pm on Sunday.  That was one of those 10 percent chance weather reports.  Woke me up again at midnight and then again at 4:00.  Each shower lasted only 10-15 minutes and probably didn't amount to much.  I'm out in the BLM and I hope that we don't end up with mud out here.  Can't get out of here until 7:00am when it gets light out.  Too dark out here; can't see very much.  Haven't heard the coyotes yet.  Looks like this will be an on again/off again rain throughout the day.  Well.... at least we got through the weekend.

Checked the forecast.  Looks like those 30mph gusts will be back in the afternoon.  Throw in some wet stuff and that is looking like some mean ugly weather.  Definitely not good.  The weather reports are enough to scare the people away. 

Arrived at the Sell-a-Rama around 7:30.  Checked my booth and all was okay.  Parked in the back and waited until just after 9:00 to head over.  Some showers throughout the morning hampered sales and the rain pretty much stopped just before noontime, giving us a chance to salvage part of the day.  Sales were somewhat okay for the type of weather we had.  I guess we'll have the SOS tomorrow unfortunately.  Worst weather I have seen in my 6 years here.

ANOTHER BLONDE MOMENT brought to you by Clairol.  A lady looking at my tote bags asks 'how much?'  I told her $5.  She grabs two of them and steps around to where I am at, preparing to pay for them.  "How much?" she asked me.  I told her $10.  She looks at me.  "Ten dollars apiece?"  I look at her.  She was a blonde.  Ahhhh.  Now I see.  I then politely told her "No. The bags are $5 each and that will be $10 total."  Oh gosh.  Why me.

I WAS DYING FOR AN INDIAN TACO today around 12:45.  I hadn't brought one of my sandwiches over this morning so I had to find something to eat.  The taco's sound good.  Have had several of them.  The best I ever had was from a lady selling at the San Xavier del Bac Mission in Tucson probably 20 years ago (wow).  So, I went over to the stand where I had gotten my fry bread yesterday.  I looked at the picture and it said that it would cost $9.00.  Whoa.  Way too much for me.  I asked them if they had a 'vendor discount' which I almost never do.  The guy replied "no, we have no discount.'  Then I replied, "then no Indian taco.'

SO, I WENT OVER AND PICKED UP A WALLA WALLA BURGER just as it began to ran and I raced back to my space and closed up and ate my food and re-opened when the rain stopped about half an hour later.

A COUPLE DAYS AGO I went over to the Big Red School Bus and asked if they had Onion RIngs.  The guy poked his head outside the window and told me 'no' and said that 'he has nachos.'  I looked at him.  "What do nachos have to do with onion rings" I replied.  I then walked down to the  next aisle over to Walla Walla and got some of their large onion rings, which were pretty good.  Matter of fact, I think that they have the best food around the Sell-a-Rama.  However, that is just my opinion. I have not tried many other food vendors and the Thai food could be decent along with other vendor's.  Probably try Walla's pollack later in the week.  I am spending way too much money of junk food.

To read Sunday's review, scroll down toward the end of the page.  The most recent day will always be at the top and the remaining daily logs will be in chronological order.  Enjoy

I guess the rain stopped around midnight.  I slept solidly from around 10:15 until 4:00.  No rain, yet.

Had a little problem with the Internet Connection this morning.  Took 10 minutes to get on.  Frustrating.

COME ON DOWN to Dave's Bargain Basement Emporium where we have deals for you.  The place where everybody wants a discount on each and every purchase.  Meet 'The Price Slasher.'

TODAY'S WEATHER REPORT shows more showers this afternoon.  Hopefully we can get a good crowd over here before that occurs.  90 percent chance of showers tonight with more rain coming.  Thursday is supposed to be nasty.  Here's a picture of the water beside my booth.

When I went to my space, I noticed some puddles around it and I was cautious about pulling away the side covers.  I opened with extreme caution and stepped inside and saw some small areas that the rain had come in.  I grabbed hold of a long pole and walked over to an area where a lot of water had accumulated on top.  There was a huge bubble-like area sinking downward from on top.  I pushed my pole underneath and forced the water down the side.  I then did the same to each corner removing

The rains stopped during the early morning and by the time 9:00 rolled around we had nice sunshine to start the day.  The crowd was okay for a Tuesday and my sales weren't bad in the morning.  Early afternoon clouded up considerably and the winds began picking up.  The crowds began dwindling by 2:00pm and the weather was begining to look quite bad.  It was pretty obvious something was coming in and by the time 3:30 rolled around, we began to feel sprinkles.  Well, this time of day, if you have rain, than it's basically 'bye-bye Balboni' as the crowds will leave for the remainder of the day.  As the rain began to come down harder I walked around the canopy and removed things that would get wet.  I then closed up the canopy securing it the best I could against the rain and wind.  I then went to get my motor home and drove down our aisle and picked up Don and Tony and we drove over to the Flying J Truck stop just before Blythe and ate their buffet.  Along the way, we encountered some rain and winds.

We returned to Tyson Wells around 8:00 and drove down our aisle and saw quite a few large puddles.  I could see that the back area of my canopies was flooded with a couple inches of water.  It must have rained like a son of a gun while we were gone.

When I went to my space, I noticed some puddles around it and I was cautious about pulling away the side covers.  I opened with extreme caution and stepped inside and saw some small areas that the rain had come in.  I grabbed hold of a long pole and walked over to an area where a lot of water had accumulated on top.  There was a huge bubble-like area sinking downward from on top.  I pushed my pole underneath and forced the water down the side.  I then did the same to each corner removing excess water and then secured my canopy for the night.

I have more to say about today; but I am too tired and will finish tomorrow.  Tired and need some sleep.  I have battened down the hatches.

Decent day, weather-wise at least.  It was a bit cooler this morning and we had quite a bit of sun until early afternoon, when it began clouding up and becoming windy, once again.  Understand that they were having typhoon-like weather up near Sacramento and pretty much the same down in the Bay Area.  Tornadoes in the San Diego area and up around Napa.  Pretty wild weather back there.  Hopefully we don't get any of that over there, but they are predicting some really raunchy weather for Thursday.  Downpours and strong winds and gusts up to 55mph.  Wow.

Had some sales in the morning hours, but tapered off with the oncoming clouds and breezes early afternoon.  Every body still wants a discount.

FOR LUNCH I went over to Row Q and picked up an order of 2 pieces of fish and fries.  It cost $9.25 which was quite expensive.  The pieces turned out to be somewhat large and I received a large share of fries to go with it.  It was decent.  Pretty good for 'show food'.  However, it can not compare to Giovanni's down on the wharf in Morro Bay, nor can it compare to our London Fish and Chips back in Hayward.  However, this was one of the better fish & chips that you could find at a street fair, festival or fair.  The price was too high and I was bickering the other day when I was going to get an Indian Taco for nine bucks.  I just can not see paying $9 for any time of food at any outdoor event.  I place the value of this meal of $6.50 at the most.  It was good.  Turned out that this was to be my actual dinner  Almost 7:00pm and I am still stuffed.  I put some vinegar on it and they had tarter sauce.

EARLY MORNING SHOPPING TRIP over to Driftstone Pueblo in Row E.  Picked up a bunch of beads and other things to sell here.  I spent more than I have made over the past two days.  Ya just carried away when you go in there.  You know, I've been there a couple times so far and there really hasn't been any lines of people and not too many people shopping inside.  I haven't been over to Village Original's yet where I have seen lines of 15-20 people waiting to buy their stuff over the years.

ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS MOMENT happened yesterday.  I stepped away from my booth for a few minutes and Tony watched over for me.  Along comes a 5-year old boy who grabs two of my wooden snakes and pretends that they are fighting.   He then tosses down one of the snakes and grabs hold of one of my wooden alligators and then has it 'fight' the 'winning' snake.  Funny.  Tony tells the kid to put them down and the kid responds "Is this your space?"  Wow.  In this corner weighing 5 ounces, Snake-bit Charlie.  Here's a picture of Tony demonstrating the sport of Chinese Snake Fighting.  Place your bets, people.

Started raining around 1:15AM and didn't stop until 7:20.  When it got light out, I got Tony out of his truck next door and we drove over to the space.  Lots of flooding all around the place.  Went inside the booth and my canopy was sagging in a couple places and I had to push the water off the top.  My booth was 2/3 flooded   Ugly.  I think some of my stuff got wet.  After we were done fixing up, we decided to go for breakfast.  I called out to Don, who was in his motor home across from me and he said that 'he was sleeping.'  We decided to drive over to 'Bad Boys,' where everybody was bragging about the food there.

This is what the inside of my booth looked like during the morning between rains.  You can see the canopy bulging downward from the rain.  I had two areas like this and the only recourse would be to poke holes in the bottom for the rain to drain out.

Here's a shot of 'The Wash' which runs parallel to the south parking lot of the Sell-a-Rama.  This was taken mid-morning.  I would have to say that it most likely went over the banks later in the day.

BAD BOYS BREAKFAST.  Parked out front and walked inside.  Perhaps a dozen people and nobody in line.  I ordered the Hawaiian Omelette and after about 10 minutes the lady brought our food to our table.  It was now raining out side.  We sipped our coffee and began to eat.  I don't think that the food was that good.  Over-rated.  It was just okay.

MORE RAIN COMING LATER TODAY.  Chance of precipitation is near 100 percent chance.  Winds up to 50 mph this afternoon.  Chance of opening up around noon is 10 percent.  If others open and that water gets out of my booth I might open one side.  We shall see.  Got some sunshine right now but the rains are coming.

Returned to my space.  More rain.  More wind.  Really terrible conditions here.  The middle part of my back canopy has been punctured and the cover is flat and blowing in the wind.  I tied it down and the water was accumulating on the top.  We punctured two holes and are allowing the rainwater to drop to the ground.  I removed my clothing from there and stuck it inside my motor home so it doesn't get ruined.  Ditto with the hats.  Hope I can get some pictures taken later on of all this mess

Returned to the space a couple more times during the afternoon.  Impossible to open because of the weather.  Strong winds and a lot of rain.  We decided to go out for dinner around 4:00 and departed from my space in the motor home.  We had a little break in the weather and drove across to Quartzsite and stopped off for a dinner.  Can't recall the name of the place but I had a hot roast beef sandwich 'smothered' with gravy.  It was okay.  Not great.  It had begun raining again while we were in there and the winds were picking up.  We drove back across to Tyson and headed down aisle WX.  It was raining quite hard and as we went down, I saw the winds really whipping away at the canopies.

As we drove down Kuehn we could see that the police had blocked off the road because it was completely flooded.  Absolutely filled with water and it was gushing down the adjacent wash, almost reaching the banks alongside.

We were getting ferocious gusts of wind.  Just as I reached my space I saw the front cover open up.  It was raining very hard and my canopy was shaking back and forth.  It didn't look good.  The winds were increasing in intensity.  I climbed out of the motor home and began re-attaching the front cover.  The wind whipped the canopy a couple times and then I saw it begin to rise off the ground and collapse on the right side.  Oh my goodness.  I was shocked.  Everything on the ground now.  The 30-foot canopy in back of us was flying into the air and came crashing down on top of mine and part of it was dangling on top of the roof of a motor home two spaces away.  Canopies going airborne all over the place.  Crumbling to the ground just as mine did from the huge 60 mph gusts.  These were typhoon/hurricane like conditions.  Really bad. 

I looked up at the power lines swaying in the wind about the middle aisle.  There was the possibility that a flying canopy couple go flying toward the power lines and bring them down into the water frying anybody who had their feet inside the water.  I pictured the lines coming down on top of my motor home.  Fortunately, they stayed intact throughout the storm and did not come down.  It was very scary out there with a lot of things happening. 

 I climbed back into my motor home.  I was soaking wet.  Tony was running around outside and told him to hop inside so we could figure out what to do.  We sat there for about 15 seconds until Tony decided he would run over and get his truck and position it in front of his booth in an effort to block the wind.  Meanwhile, huge 20 to 30 foot canopies were toppling over leaving their displayed goods exposed to the elements of the storm.  The back rows were in the process of being wiped out.  To get Tony's truck in, I wouid have to move my motor home, which I immediately did with the intention of pulling back in behind him.  I drove away and headed in the direction of the back parking lot.  I turned to the right and looked for a row with no obstructions.  I drove down the row and headed out toward Kuehn Rd.  and turned right.  I went past Row WX because I couldn't get in.  The large canopy at the end had toppled over and was blocking entrance.

I continued down Kuehn and did a U-Turn just before the roadblock.  The police were there stopping traffic from proceeding because the road was flood with several feet of water.  I had to turn around. Driver's were going nuts and were panicking.  I began my U-turn and cars are dashing quickly around me as if were the end of the world.  It certainly seemed like it.  I had to do a k-turn there and as I was positioned perpendicular to the road a huge gust of wind rocked my motor home.  I thought it was going to blow me over.  I had to move quickly.  There was a huge area with a lot of water alongside the road and that shortened my turning distance.  Cars were heading down Kuehn toward me in expectation of turning around.  I maneuvered my motor home around and was finally heading back down Kuehn.  I thought I was a goner.  I turned into Row UV and headed down toward the center.  I saw a number of vehicles stopped and they were blocking my path.  I could see toppled canopies all over the place and they were blocking the way.  I went as far as I could and parked there.  It was a good spot because there were several motor homes blocking the fierce winds and it didn't look like anything would go smashing into me.  I quicky hopped out and raced around the corner through huge puddles to my space.  Tony's truck was positioned in front of his canopy.  For awhile it looked like his was going to go also but fortunately it held up.

Tables were overturned in the booth next to us and they lost a lot of glass pendants.  Earlier in the day, we all had to remove their covers to stop their canopy from flipping.  We covered up their other tables with tarps, etc and they looked like they would hold up.

Canopy was down on the right side.  Don's tables were flipped over and resting up against his motor home.  Canopy next to his was in shambles.  People were all over the place trying to pick up their things.  Apparently this happened around the same time that a tornado touched down in Blythe.  I'll tell you we had tornado-like conditions.  It was scary.  You had no idea when another canopy would go airborne and strike you in the head.

When I got back to my canopy there were several people helping to pick up there merchandise.  The winds were dying down and the rains were subsiding.  We had a good opportunity to gather up things before the rains started again.  Had to do things quickly.  We took apart several of the grids and they were layed underneath Tony's truck and that is where we put a lot of my things in buckets.  There were perhaps 5 of us doing different things there trying to get the things up off the ground before the next rains came.  The people in back of us who were selling socks were feverishly dismantling their 30 foot canopy which had topper over onto my booth and the motor home.  Others were working quickly in their booths trying to salvage what they could.  I looked up and down the last 4-5 rows  and saw many canopies that had toppled over and were destroyed.  Darkness was now setting in and everybody had to hurry.  Especially since we had no idea when the next wave of rains and wind would come.

When we were just about done, I drove my motor home down aisle UV which had now been cleared and came up row WX and parked near my space and we then loaded up all the remaining merchandise into the motor home.  It had all been dumped into buckets an boxes quickly and was a total mess.  But we had to get it out of the rain and water quickly.  No idea how much of my inventory was damaged.  I cleared out some areas inside the motor home and was handed boxes upon boxes (and buckets) of my items and tried to arrange them somewhat neatly inside.  Soon we were done and I drove the motor home down the aisle and decided to pull into one of the many empty, vacated spaces and hook up my electricity.   After resting up, I decided to go out and look at the back rows where many  booths had been demolished completely.  It was now completely dark there and beginning to drizzle.  I wondered about my friend, Dave who had been back there selling his clothing.  He lives over in Castro Valley and I have seen him and his family at many different shows over the years.  They told me that he had packed up earlier and left.  The lady selling hats next to him did not fare too well.  Three canopies destroyed along with some of her inventory.  They were loading her things inside her trailer. 

I talked to a guy who had a booth about three rows down and he said that he doesn't know where his canopy flew away to.  He couldn't find it. I was beginning to shake from the cold feeling I was getting from being soaked so I returned to my motor home and changed into some dry clothes.  I am typing this out during the wee hours of the morning, as I am having difficulties sleeping. 

I don't know what I am going to do.  I would like to be able to salvage one of the canopies and continue on with the show Saturday and Sunday with a minimal type set up.  Maybe can make a little money.  However, if both canopies are damaged beyond repair I guess I'll head home in a couple days.  I have space PQ-24 for the next event, but I don't know yet what I will do.  I can unload my motor home on that Tuesday and rummage through my buckets, bags and boxes to sort things out.  Would take me until Friday.  Really don't want to go home with all that wet stuff in the buckets because I don't know how and when I would be able to sort it out.

It is now 7:30am on Black Friday.  Getting light out and am preparing to go out and look at the damage and see what is left of my two canopies.  What a mess.  Oh gosh.  Beginning to drizzle.  Light winds.  Perhaps what happened yesterday was part of the tornado that touched down in Blythe.

With my camera in hand, I climbed down from the motor home just after 7:30.  I walked directly in front over to rows Y and Z and shot pictures of the canopies.  There were quite a few people out there trying to salvage whatever they could.  I walked over to other areas of the show and there was little damage past the last five or six rows.

I heard stories of people sitting out there in the parking lot around 5:00 when this happened.  There were tornadoes in the area but unfortunately none touched down here in Tyson.  Much more destruction had that happened.  I returned to my space and began dismantling the grids from the canopy.  My neighbor, Don had not made his morning appearance and his tables were still leaning up against his motor home.  Tony was still out in his truck.  Soon a lady offered to help me and that was fine.  Five minutes later another lady stepped over and help also.  This was really nice.  You had people helping the less fortunate all over the place.  Vendors coming together.

It wasn't long before we had all the grids removed from the canopy legs and were able upright the front canopy to determine if it was repairable.  There were only two cross-pieces which were snapped along with a broken leg.  Very simple.  My friend Jim and Tony arrived shortly and they began working on removing the necessary pieces from the other canopy.  We were going to use that one for parts.  Shortly afterward, they took off the broken pieces from the better canopy and replaced the broken cross-pieces with one's that weren't broken.  They then remove a leg from the older canopy and replaced the leg on the canopy that we were working on.

Soon afterward, I grabbed hold of the top to the canopy and we positioned it on the top of the canopy and raised it to the sky.  Beautiful, I must say and I was back in business.  I spent the next hour or so attaching the grids with the ball-bungies and before long, I had my planned set up complete.  I began retrieving some things from the motor home and began to place my merchandise around on the grids.  I was able to 'open' for business around 12:00 noon.  Throughout the afternoon I retrieved merchandise from my motor home.  I tried to take out the wet clothing, etc. and basically 'hang them to dry.'  I then made occasional trips back to the motor home to retrieve more items but I had no plan on getting everything out.  I expect to move into my new space (PQ-24) for the next event on Tuesday and I expect to go through every bucket I have and take care of what I have to do  During the rain on Thursday, people just dumped what they could into buckets and boxes and everything was mixed around as it was necessary to get this stuff up off the ground before they got too wet.

Fortunately, for the first time in several days, it did not rain most of the day and everybody was able to take care of necessary business around here.  Large dark clouds did appear during the latter part of the afternoon but no problem.  Just an afternoon breeze also.

I guess they say that the winds reached 71mph yesterday.

Preparing to head out to the pasture in a few minutes.  Looks sunny out there and a bit on the cold side.  Place opens up at 9:00 but not sure how many customers it will bring.  The rains have stopped and it looks clear for the next two weeks.  But the damage has most certainly been done.  I have one canopy sat up and went on a scavenger hunt and was able to retrieve pieces to fix up my other canopy.  Still looking for a top cover for it, but might end up getting a 12x12 tarp from across the street and going 'flat' on top.  I will have two canopies set up on Tuesday in space P24.  As for today and tomorrow, I am in X19.

TELL ME SOMETHING PEOPLE.  You are driving in some 4-wheel drive and you think that you are King of the Road.  You go down a road where you see road barriers that say FLOODED DO NOT ENTER.  You see a huge puddle of water off in the distance and you don't see anybody else driving through it.  Would you explain to me just why in the hell would you try to drive through it?  We had at least one idiot who thought his vehicle was so powerful that he could make it through there.  Honestly, how do you spell 'S-T-U-P-I-D? They had to bring in one of those smaller hook and ladder fire trucks with the basket and get him out of there.  I hope they made the village idiot pay $$$ for his stupidity.

Spent a good deal of the day rummaging through my buckets and boxes which were loaded up during the 'typhoon' on Thursday.  Quite a mess, but I believe I will have everything sorted out and my clothing and other stuff dried out.

NOT MUCH IN SALES TODAY.  Crowd was small for a Saturday and not much of a buying crowd.  Maybe they were down buying their dollar Flea Market type stuff; I don't know.  Certainly not whipping out those five dollar bills in my booth.  I didn't really have an overwhelming amount of merchandise in my booth yet, but I did have my top sellers located toward the front.

HAD SOME FRY BREAD for breakfast and then for lunch I went over to Walla-Walla and picked up an Italian for lunch.  Both were okay.

LAST NIGHT I TURNED ON MY HEATER and I then felt cooler air coming through the vent.  Oh oh.  Checked the stove and no nothing.  Ran out of propane for the second time in the life of my motor home.  I had filled up before leaving CA but I must have had that heater running a lot.  It was a cold night last night and I had to throw on three blankets and bury myselt underneath where it did turn out to be nice and warm.....  until I had to.... well you know.  Mother nature.  I slept decently though.  Drove over to the Pit Stop and filled up my propane tank.  Really thought that I had enough in there to last until Tuesday.  I'd better ration what I now have in it so it lasts until February 8, when I am heading home.

THE MARKET.  Went over to the market down by Chevron and picked up a couple large bottles of water and Pepsi.  Went over to stand in line.  Wow.  Definitely a bad time to go grocery shopping there.  About 15 people in front of me.  THREE'S A CROWD.  Just after I got in line, another dozen more popped up behind me.  Went fast.  There were four cashiers.  Definitely faster than Food Maxx or Lucky's.

For dinner tonight, Jim, Tony and I went over to Dorothy's Restaurant on the other side.  Parking lot was almost full and l found a parking space in the far corner. We walked inside the restaurant and it was packed.  SRO.  We waited 15-20 minutes for a table.  After we were seated, we knew that we all wanted the BBQ Rib Special for $9.95 and rather than waiting for a menu, we ordered right away to save time.  Whoa.  We had a 46 minute wait for our food.  Packed house.  As I glanced over to see the looks on the people's faces next to us, they looked like they had been waiting a long time for their food.  They did not look happy at all.

While waiting in line, there were some people on the end who had ordered the Rib special and I wanted to ask them how it tasted, but I didn't.  The waitress brought us our drinks after about 10 minutes.  We ordered Pepsi and they tasted like there wasn't any water added to the drinks.....  mostly or all syrup?  The food came at 7:01.  It was a rather large portion of ribs but I don't think that they were better than average.  Okay.  Just okay.  I guess the sauce probably wasn't that great and probably made the difference.  Seemed to have been cooked okay.  We have tried a number of 'restaurants' here in the Quartzsite area and have yet to find any place with very good food.  Over the past several years, I have gone over to Western BBQ for their pork ribs and they are pretty good.  However, a couple times they were really skimpy on the pork and I was dissatisfied.  Right now after tasting the food at other places, Western BBQ probably is about the best.  Good sauce.  Decent side dishes.  Pricey though.  Very good for the desert.  For some reason, a lot of people here do not seem to know what good food is, know what I mean?

TGIHHT.  Thank gosh I have heat tonight.  Went to my bathroom here in the motor home and it felt like a sauna.  Really nice.  Gotta take it easy on the propane and not use it to dry my shoes like I did on Thursday night after 'the big one.'

There are a number of people who have returned to the back rows and are now selling.  I just wish that they could get good sales but I don't think that very many 'visitors' are going there.  Some vendors around here no longer have canopies and are trying to sell from just tables and grids.  I wish them the best of luck.  Some have been able to get their canopies back up.  I have my damaged frame sitting in back of my canopy and somebody came along and asked me if I was going to keep it.  I know he was looking for parts.  I told him that I was going to fix it on Monday.  I now have it tied to the back of my canopy so nobody picks it up for scrap.  I need it.  All four vendors in the WX19-20 corner have renewed for 2011 and those spots are highly desired.  I was lucky to get mine a few years back.  I really think that there are going to be a lot of open spaces here next year.  Sales have been way down for a lot of us and the bad weather is enough to scare away anybody in those back 4 rows that were exposed to the disaster on Thursday.  Once again, I can't help but mention again that it was quite scary seeing all those canopies going up in the air almost at once.  Don't know when one of those canopies is going to come crashing into your face or smack into the windshield of your vehicle or RV. 

I guess that we could call today 'Laundry Day.'  Had to put the clothing all around the outside of the canopy.

Slept pretty decent this morning.  Woke up around 4:00am and dozed off until just before 7:00am.  Prior to falling asleep I heard quite a number of footsteps from people probably enroute to the stinky stalls between rows 19-20.  Pretty noisy down there.  I had parked in back of my space yesterday to make it easier to load up today.

VERIZON WIRELESS WiFi wasn't working this morning and I really couldn't find anybody to help me.  Called the number they gave me and it ended up being the one for the regular Verizon wireless phone service and not WiFi.  Will figure things out tomorrow.  I was able to get online with one of the local $4.95 a day services and it was quicker than the Verizon.  I will be taking their $139 contraption back to Best Buy and get my satisfaction guaranteed refund.

I WAS A MAN ON A MISSION this morning when I stepped out of the motor home.  I had a lot of things I had to do and most importantly I had to get the remaining buckets (which had things dumped into on Thursday) and go through them and dry out and sort whatever was in them.  Lots of work.  Had to get them repacked and ready for the next show.  I made a clothesline on the south side of my canopy and I constantly hung damp and soaked clothing on there to dry.  A long tedious process but I was successful in getting all out clothing that we sell dried out.  Very important to take care of it because I didn't want mildew all over them.

SALES WERE SPORADIC and disappointing throughout the day.  A bit of a typical, late-arriving crowd in the morning.  Absolutely beautiful weather today with plenty of sunshine heading my way.  Zippity doo dah, zippity ay aye.  My oh my what a pathetic day.  Nobody buying, nobody cares.  Zippity doo dah, zippity aye.   Sales were way way way down this year and we lost quite a bit because of all this rain. 

HINDSIGHT.  I walked around a bit at the show and did notice a number of canopies that were basically anchored down into the ground with a sort of spike and straps stretching upward to the top parts of the canopies.  However, these were just basic canopy only setups.  I think that this only prevents the canopy from flying down Highway 10.  It is not going to go airborne.  I had quite a number of grids attached to the canopy and I can still picture it topping over nonetheless.  Maybe.  Maybe not.  I think that it would probably still collapse from the 71 mph winds.  The straps prevent it from going up in the air but my canopy never left the ground because it was weighed down.  It would have most likely done the same thing.  I asked my self many times if there was something I could have done to prevent my canopy from toppling over and I don't think that there was a darn thing I could have done to change my fate.  I wondered what would have happened if I tied 3 large buckets filled with water to the legs on the left side (we put 6 buckets on the legs in Winchester Bay, OR for 40mph winds) and I still think that it would have collapsed.  At one time, I almost decided to remove the covers which I had around the canopy and that would have stopped the force of the wind.  However, I would have sacrificed a lot of my merchandise.  I did manage to take out a good number of more expensive items the day before since I knew that it was going to rain and I had problems with water settling on top.  My booth had been flooded with perhaps 3-5 inches of standing water.  ULTIMATE SOLUTION to this would have been to get all the merchandise out (impossible because of continuous rain) and drop the covers.

I AM PARANOID NOW whenever I hear the wind pick up.  For days we had strong winds leading up to the disaster.  I keep picturing what would have happened if we actually had tornadoes spinning through the show.  Can you imagine that?  With all those RVs and vendor's booths and vehicles?  Not a good place to be.  We came so close to having tornadoes tear through there.

HOW DO YOU DO THIS?  A lady walks over and as she is picking up one of my 3-foot long wooden snakes she asks the question 'how do you do this?'  I look over at her as she examines it closely and puts it back down.  Huh?  How do you do what?  Is there something about it that I don't know about?

WELLS ANGEL ON WHEELS. There was a 400-pound lady that came over in front of my booth in one of those motorized scooters.  She stopped for a second to gaze at my merchandise.  Her male companion was a few feet behind her.  She decided to move forward but her cart would not budge.  I was sitting down alongside my canopy watching as I sorted through my buckets.  She tried to move again.  She couldn't.  Her friend tried push starting.  Uh uh.  He couldn't get it to go forward.  She went backward about foot and then tried again.  No.  Uh uh.  That's just great.  Now I have this big 400-pound lady in front.  (well maybe not 400.  Closer to 450 I think).  She tried for several minutes to move but she could not.  Now, here I am beginning to wonder if she is going to have to stand up and walk.  Honestly, tell me how you are going to move a 400 lb. lady in a cart.  What you do?  Call in a tow truck?  Get 10 people to push her.  Let her sit out there all night long.  I know why it won't move.  You know why it would not  move.  I was really curious as to what would happen.  Here she was blocking my booth and making it hard for people to enter.  The battery wasn't run down because she could still move backward.  What's she going to do?  Drive down the aisle in reverse?  Can you picture that?  A 400+ pound lady riding backwards on one of these motorized scooters. I could picture everybody jumping out of the way as they dove into vendor's booths.  Great You-tube shot.  Finally after 15 minutes she was able to get it going forward.  Varoom.  Varoom.  Peeled wheels and front wheels high up in the air.  Wow.  You never know what you are going to see.  I am not poking fun at her nor am I ostricizing her but she was about five feet wide.  You just don't see stuff like this out in the middle of the freaking desert riding one of those motorized carts.  Thank gosh this wasn't mid summer when the temps are over 110 degrees.  That baby would be overheating.  Both babies!!!

Can you imagine having some kind of cart races here.  Once around the show.  We could break it down to males, females, under 30 yrs old, over 80.  Cool.  Then we do 100 pounds and under, middleweight division and then of course, the super duper heavyweight division. The main event.  Headliner attraction.  400 pounds and over.  Well, actually maybe once around the place is a bit far. Maybe just down an aisle?  We could film TV commercials here showing the durability of these things.  Well, on second hand probably not.  How about some tourism shots?  Show some of these great and exciting Tyson Wells activities.

OUT IN THE BLM.  When the rains came late last week, I decided that I would need to be within walking distance of my canopy in the event I had to do some work on it.  I had been taking my motor home out to the BLM but I pictured myself trying to drive out of there in extreme conditions.  So I have spent the last week or more park on the grounds of the Sell-a-Rama.  There were quite a few people who told me of their experiences out there in the 'wild.'  The winds were quite treacherous and was swooping down on people sitting out there in their RV's.  They told me that their motor homes were really rocking quite a bit and that is something that I am glad that I didn't have to endure.  And of course the potential for flash floods which did occur around here.