Big Dogs, Baseball, and Horrible Weather
As most of you know, I've just returned from 17 days on the road, mostly from a PNat home stand that was 14 games. It all started on the 6th with the first game, I worked them thru Thursday with the help of Christine and Justin, two new members of the Big Red Team. One game was rained out.
Tank and Laura came up for Friday and Chuck and Ryan worked Saturday along with Christine and Justin. Laura had to be back in Lynchburg for her school's graduation. It rained at some point during all 3 games but at least, they were played.
I set up Big Red on Thursday up in the mountains near Gore, VA for the Big Dogs Offroad Spring Fling and opened on Friday for breakfast. It was my first effort with Big Dogs and I wasn't sure what to expect. And I wasn't entirely sure how to plan as I was cooking for up to 500 people 3 meals per day for the weekend. Jean and Gene brought their motorhome up and helped.
It turned out to be a pretty good event and even though I ran out of barbeque on Saturday night, it went well. They have already asked me to do another event in Richmond in August so I must have done OK.
Big Dogs is a group of crazy people that take their offroad vehicles along various trails through the mountains, run through mud and climb rocks. There are different groups that start off each morning depending on the experience level of the driver and vehicle. I stayed back in the campground!!!!
Seriously, they were a great group and suprisingly came from virtually every walk of life. My mistaken first impression was that I would be dealing with a bunch of redneck beer swilling partyers. And I was totally wrong. Probably as many professional folks as any "class". And, yes, they partied at night just like I do. Saturday night also featured one of the biggest bonfires I've ever seen and a big celebration giving away something like $17,000 worth of door prises.
It was a fun weekend.
Meanwhile, back in Woodbridge, the crew had a decent weekend despite a bunch of rain. I was back there for Monday's game. Tuesday was rained out and Wednesday was Hell-day with 3500 middle school kids. Chuck and Ryan came back for that day and joined Justin and me. We got slammed.
Tank and Laura came back up on Friday for another rained out game. Saturday was good, not great for a double header and then came the crushing blow. Sunday, Father's Day was called off after a massive storm during the night screwed up the field. That would have been one of our best days of the summer. So, basically, the weather cost me about $2,500 between Friday and Sunday.
On top of that, Big Red suffered another massive set back as I ran into problems with the New York Dept of Taxation. They now need 21 business days to issue their business license and my application for the Pfish concert wasn't submitted in time. This one hurt as we were set to take a crew to Watkins Glen of 17 people for the first week of July. Unfortunately, it is not like this in any other state I've been in. My fault, but.... 21 business days to issue a license is ridiculous.
To make up for some of that, we're going to run two locations at the Pfitz for that weekend. It should increase my PNat sales plus we'll give much better service and hopefully eliminate some of the long lines we've had there the past 4th of July weekends.
This weekend, I take Big Red to the Bland County Relay for Life on Friday. That was a really good event for me last year so I'm looking for a busy time. I head back to Woodbridge on Wednesday for 7 games including the 4th. Please weatherman, give me a break this time.
