GamaGoatGirl
Member
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- Location
- Upstate NY
At airport waiting for flight! Great seeing everyone again!!
Steel Soldiers now has a few new forums, read more about it at: New Munitions Forums!
I hate that I am missing this one. For several reasons.
Ditto
Me too.
Wow, you guys didn't make it either, eh? Now I don't feel so bad. Maybe next year.
I'll be honest, I've worked 7 days a week for the last 6 months and I was still a day late to my own rally. If I wasn't obligated to be there, I wouldn't have made it this year.Life threw a curved one stopping us from coming as well .
A little back story on this,And................. finally.................................
I want to share something with ya'll that was shared on the rally's Facebook page. It is very moving.
To the person who drove this guy around, you know who you are and I tried to call you earlier and thank you but your number has apparently changed. You got to be a big part of this family's story and that's something not everyone can say.
View attachment 705092View attachment 705093
That's heavy stuff.
I'm very proud to be a historic military vehicle collector today. You guys (driver, Jeep owner) did right by this guy and our hobby today.
Several of us had discussed the possibility of making this our last Rally....but that was before we got there. Even MamaBear is up "for at least one more".I'll be honest, I've worked 7 days a week for the last 6 months and I was still a day late to my own rally. If I wasn't obligated to be there, I wouldn't have made it this year.
We talked about this some at the tent and we think it's just that the economy is humming along and people have a lot of work.
I'm sorry I missed a lot of my friends this year, but I know how it is.
Okay, on to the main thing:I want to thank a lot of people here and there's way for me to get everyone, so if you worked, it's not that we don't appreciate it, it's that I can't remember the dozens of people who do the hundreds of things.
I want to thank Memphis Equipment and their wonderful staff and management, who has chosen to support the rally two years in a row. Their support has allowed us to weather some expenses that otherwise, I'm not sure we'd have been able to cover.
I hope that rally attendees understand that the rally makes money two ways: we sell t-shirts and we make a tiny bit of profit at the MKT. As you can imagine, with $3 breakfasts and $4 lunches, it isn't a lot of profit. So the rally has to pay for a lot of stuff with that small profit: our insurance policy, our attorney to look over paperwork like waivers of liability (notice how kids didn't have to have their own waiver this year? ), an accountant, etc. And this year, we are going to have to spend about $800 rebuilding the handwashing stations. When D-town pulled them out of storage, they were all leaking. We installed new pumps but they still leaked. We have them in the rally trailer so I'll bring them home and Deuce Doctor restore them this winter.
And all that money is more than we make, so the sponsorship of companies like Memphis is key to the rally not having to charge attendees. I know Durhamtown has added tons of fees over the years, so we don't want to charge attendees anything more if we don't have to.
So thank you to Memphis and I hope all of the rally attendees will give them a chance to earn their business. I will say this: Memphis has the best prices on deuce brake hoses on eBay, so go give them a chance:
http://memphisequipment.com/
http://stores.ebay.com/MEMPHIS-EQUIPMENT-MECOPARTS
And thank you to our other sponsors, who helped us in multiple ways:
Old Guard Graphics, in beautiful Athens, Georgia, takes our design ideas and finesses them into a shirt that looks great and lasts a long time. They did the 2008 shirts and I still have some of them and I saw several of them this weekend.
Sign Guys in Athens helped us with banners and this allowed us to save some money.
Porterfield Tire in Athens sold us some cheap tires and we were able to raffle them off and that helps to pay for stuff as well.
And, a special thanks to Papabear and the CAMO crew who donated a brand new 39" Smart TV to the rally so we could raffle it off. I am humbled that such decent people help the rally in such selfless ways. You folks are the bomb. And the CAMO crew, from the moment they joined Steel Soldiers have supported the rally in so many ways. Bringing half a dozen vehicles to the rally and always something interesting that no one's seen before, running errands for us so we can stay in the field, etc.
Alright, that being said...........................
It is impossible to say how much I, the rally and the attendees appreciate the work of the volunteers. Recovry4x4 has manned the registration tent for years and refuses to leave his post.
SCSG-G4 brings this absurd amount of equipment so he can cook breakfast, lunch and dinner for 4 days in a field. This is incredibly hard work, it's hot, he's up at 4:45am to be getting the MKT into gear in order to have breakfast ready and while we're hanging out, doing trailrides and watching flamethrowers, SCSG is cleaning the MKT so he can be ready the next morning.
And SCSG brings a group of guys who help him drive trucks, help him set up and help him run it and without them, he couldn't do this and we'd all have to haul a sh..... boatload of food out there and cook it ourselves.
The MKT is an integral part of the Ga Rally experience and we will always thankful to Mike for letting those of us who were never in the service see what an authentic MKT in action was like.
Thank you to the people like Pammy and MicroJeep who help Mike cook. That's a thankless job and it's hard work. You folks are the awesome sauce.
AMGeneral72 has helped get swap meet vendors sent to the right place and the swap meet has always been well organized.
Thanks to all of the people who helped up set up the tents, tables and chairs and mega-mega thanks to the people who helped us break it down. I don't know about you guys, but I'm a lot more ambitious on Wednesday than Sunday and I know by Sunday, I'm dead tired and I just wanna' go home. So it's a big deal that so many people got together and helped us get the handwashing stations, tents broken down and loaded, tables and chairs broken down and loaded and helped Mike get the MKT broken down. We did a lot better this year than last year.
Thank you so much folks.
Thank you to Twright who sets up a coffee stand so that MKT Mike doesn't have to worry about that. Twright donates the proceeds to a good cause and even offers hot chocolate for people who want something different.
Thanks to u/RustyJunk, who helps me do lots of stuff and does a lot of stuff I don't want to do, like announce the raffle ticket winners and such. He designs the t-shirts as well.
And then there are the people like Coffey1, EMD567, SwampDonkey, RMTaunton, Squirt-Truck and others who you can give a task to and trust that the task will be completed competently and quickly. Coffey1 might even complete the task without falling off a truck.
And finally...............................
The rally wishes to thank all of the attendees who drive crazy, 5mpg (if they're lucky) vehicles hundreds and hundreds of miles to our event. Crazy people like Jeepsinker, who at the last minute manage to get a couple days off work and drive a deuce something insane like 800 miles to hang out with us. People who come home from a 10 hour workday for 2 weeks and then turn wrenches to make sure their vehicle is safe and reliable, then drive out to be here and then drive home and go to bed and have to get up to go back to work on Monday.
It is my sincerest hope that people have a good time. I know sometimes it's just impossible to make everyone happy. Maybe the notifications for dinner aren't as clear as people would like or something like that.
But I genuinely hope that all of you enjoy this event enough to come back. I've tried very hard over the years to look at what works and what doesn't and try and do more of the first.
Thank you all for coming. I hope I get to see all of you again next year and I hope you enjoyed the event.
Clint
Also:
A. I have a few shirts left over. They'll get inventoried tomorrow and I'll get a thread up.
B. Pictures and video can be added to the multimedia thread (https://www.steelsoldiers.com/showt...litary-Vehicle-Rally-multimedia-thread-17GMVR) and the rally Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/GeorgiaMilitaryVehicleRally/
C. If you have media that's too large to put here, I have a dropbox link I can send you. PM me.
And................. finally.................................
I want to share something with ya'll that was shared on the rally's Facebook page. It is very moving.
To the person who drove this guy around, you know who you are and I tried to call you earlier and thank you but your number has apparently changed. You got to be a big part of this family's story and that's something not everyone can say.
View attachment 705092View attachment 705093
That's heavy stuff.
I'm very proud to be a historic military vehicle collector today. You guys (driver, Jeep owner) did right by this guy and our hobby today.