ICCC Convention 2015!

Yup, another International Coleman Collectors Club convention, this year in Walnut Creek, Ohio. This is Amish country, hilly, south central Ohio. Its a strange land I tell you, the roads are narrow, they twist around, they're full of Amish folk in buggies and the speed limit is 55mph!

As always the convention was interesting but the camp ground was where its at. A couple quick shots:

Ryan warming water for the ladies. Thats his Peak 1 stove but my Optimus hiking pot and pickup. That pot got worked a lot over the weekend and is terrific, actually the combo of Peak 1 and Optimus pot work really well together and boil water super quick.

Bugs love to find their way into lanterns and die.

This is the second of two light ups, I don't remember why but we couldn't get our act together to make it to the first one. The layout looks weird from this angle but the other way up it would be a kero-lite lantern. There weren't all that many lanterns, maybe 50-60 but I didn't count or hear a number.

The light up was at the convention hotel which made for good viewing stations.

For me this was the big deal of the whole convention. Greg had this hollow wire setup with 5 or 6 lamp heads attached to it all running off one tank. Back around the turn of the 20th century these hollow wire systems would be in people's houses with 1/8" copper tubes running through the walls of the house. The thing is that the fixtures are all torch-lite so you'd have to preheat the fixture to get it lit, if you didn't preheat enough or the generator was dirty or whatever you'd have burning balls of gasoline falling on the floor of your house. Sounds exciting right?

The last and probably most important piece of news is that after a close vote Angie and I were chosen to host the 2017 ICCC convention here in Winchendon, MA. In the weeks since the convention I've been scrambling to lock down a location, we're still kind of up in the air about that for now, I'll let you know when I've got something firmed up. Right now it looks like we'll be sending campers to Lake Dennison and Otter River state parks and hotel folks to the Colonial Hotel in Gardner, MA or the Woodbound Inn in Rindge, NH. Not sure yet which will be the better hotel, it depends on where the convention actually ends up, as I say I'll let you know when I know.