ICCC Convention 2018

You might remember that in 2017 Angie and I hosted the ICCC Convention. This year we traveled to Huntsville, Alabama to the 2018 convention.

It was half price to fly into Nashville instead of Huntsville, about a $500 difference. Since we would have rented a car anyway all we had to do was pay gas, its about a 2 hour drive so why not. We actually decided to add a couple days to the trip and spend some time in Nashville. I'd last been in Nashville on a work trip in 2001 and really liked it.

Our first stop was "Biscuit Love" restaurant but sadly I didn't get any pictures. If you're in Nashville I'd suggest you check it out.

Second stop was the Johnny Cash museum, and I'm so glad we went, this place is amazing. I thought I knew a thing or two about Johnny Cash although most of his activity predates me. The museum isn't very big but is just packed with great stuff. We spent about 2 hours there and could easily have stayed another hour.

Our chariot was this sweet Dodge Challenger, it rode nice and did okay on gas considering we thrashed it pretty hard.

Did you know that Antique Archeology (The Pickers from the History Channel) had a store in Nashville? Angie's mom is a big fan so we stopped in. There were no antiques we were really into but we did buy some swag.

I'm embarrassed that I didn't get a picture of the hotel, we stayed at The Kimpton Aertson which is right by Vanderbilt University. Great hotel, best hotel coffee I've ever had by far. Best part is it was free on points earned from corporate travel...

We spent the afternoon on a Segway tour through a terrible rainstorm. I thought I had video of the rain but can't find it. The rain was amazing, it pounded down for about 15 minutes, then stopped like somebody had flipped a switch, by dinner the roads were dry. We did have to detour slightly around some big puddles that would have drowned our Segways.

This was our second Segway tour, the first was in Chicago in 2016, don't hesitate to try them out, yes you'll look like an idiot but everybody does and if thats the worst thing that happens to you thats pretty okay...

Dinner was at Martins BBQ which is definitely one of the 5 best BBQ places I've ever been to. This area of the country is known for its "spicy mayo" sauce which is odd but not bad. We arrived pretty late and got the list of what we could have. I like that, it means what you can have is what they still have, which means they're not cooking extra batches during the day which means what you get is quality. It was too, so good...

Huntsville was great, the convention was great, I forgot to take pictures. The convention was held in an Embassy Suites which worked out really nicely. I now understand better the draw of a hotel convention. I was disappointed we didn't get to camp but at one point we were in the indoor pool when I really big storm moved through. I was glad I was sitting in the pool watching it rather than huddled in my tent...

Huntsville is the "Rocket City" and home to the US Space & Rocket center so of course we had to check that out. Pictured above is the return craft from (IIRC) Apollo 16. Its an amazing place and I strongly recommend taking a whole day, I think we were there for 4 hours and could have spent another 4 easily. We didn't find the Apollo room until late and sadly had to rush it.

The light-up was really nice, the hotel is on a canal which made for a great venue. I wish we had brought something to light but it was hard with the flight...

Since we flew I hadn't planned to buy much, then Angie won this sweet cooler as a door price at the banquet. I'd gotten roped into helping draw door prize numbers. Somehow I always get roped into something. ;)

Anyway since I would be shipping the cooler back anyway I took the opportunity to buy a glass shade from Craig Seabrook. I paid extra for the nickel band which I think really dresses up the shade. I put it on a CQ I've had for years which has a place in our living room.

Finally on our way home we took another half day in Nashville. We "visited" the Grand Ole Oprey but only went in as far as the gift shop. Neither of us is particularly into country music. We stayed at a Holiday Inn Express near the airport, if you have the opportunity don't hesitate to skip that place, if we'd paid for it I'd be upset. On the positive side we had a nice dinner at Flyte.

A trip to the Senior Center

For the last 9 years the bells of the senior center here in Winchendon have been an hourly reminder of what a cool old town we live in. Today in preparation for the 2017 Coleman Collectors convention Angie and I visited the place.

Quite the place huh? Built in 1895 as a school its a big building, the footprint is close to 6,000 square feet with rooms on 3 stories its got lots of space and the big windows mean lots of natural light.

They've got a lovely big old auditorium:

Its about 3,500 square feet which is larger than the place we had for our convention this year. Notice that there are no electric lights on in the picture, thats all natural light.

The highlight of our trip was the climb into the bell tower:

This is the actual operating mechanism of the clock in the tower. Art maintains it, he says its an eight day mechanism but in practice he gets more like seven and a half days per winding. He says that the clock hands drift a bit here and there but the bells are generally within about thirty seconds a week. Considering the clock is the same age as the building I'd say thats pretty impressive.

As I write this I can hear the bells chiming, by the clock on my computer its exactly 5pm, good job Art!

Art says we should go back in the fall and he'll take us all the way up in the tower, with the leaves off the trees he says theres an excellent view of Mount Monadnock. I'll borrow a good camera for that and get some nice pics.

Anyway right now it looks like this is our convention location. Crossing my fingers, picking a convention location was harder than I expected and I'm glad to have that part settled.

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.

Where you been?

Charlotte, MI. People there will tell you its Char-lotte which differentiates it from Charlotte, NC. Google says tis 770 mi from our house so last Tuesday (a week ago today) we loaded up the old Jetta and headed out. I'm pleased to say ~1500 miles later everything went pretty much perfectly. The car ran well, used about 40 gallons of diesel fuel. We spent a night each way in Niagara Falls, the first night was at the Radisson we spent our honeymoon in which was a treat.

The purpose of the trip was the 2014 Coleman Collectors Club Convention which was a hoot as always. We camped on site, my 413E made the trip as is usual:

Also as usual we camped with Ryan an Tara. A fun thing about camping with them is that we have the same tent, or rather we have the same tent model, they have a 2 person and we have a 4. Thats hilarious because both Ryan and Tara are 6 feet tall. I'm around 6 feet but Angie is significantly less...

Anyway some highlights of the convention include this beautiful hollow wire chandelier:

and a cool branding iron:

I have promised to work on a Colman rising sun brand. I'm thinking about having it printed in plastic on a 3d printer to make a mold to cast in bronze or brass.

There was more including a ride in two different Model A Fords, a horse and buggy ride and ice cream made with an old hit and miss engine. That ice cream was some of the best I've had in my whole life. The guy was making 5 gallons at a time and said he made 7 batches. 35 gallons over 2 days seems like a lot to me but it was that good, nobody had just one dose.

Of course there were a couple big light ups:

Of course I'm right in the middle of everything...

Light ups are interesting, they're a bit like herding cats. The organizers always want to lay out the lanterns in some pattern which requires everybody to pay attention. It seems like people want to just drop their lantern in the first spot they find and get out of the way...