april 08, 2009 12:10am
July 7, 2008 Kicked Out
July 7, 2008.
Kicked out.
Well the day started at 6:30am with a trip to the plastic house on the hill. That went well. The propane truck was filling up the vendor next to the F.O.V. booth so I had him fill up the Blue Bomber with gas for the stove. The day seemed to be starting off well but little did I know how the rest of week would unfold.
I dropped the Blue Bomber off at the truck shop (that shall remain nameless but it starts with an M) with the intention of having them fix the brakes. Well first they checked out the master cylinder which was sweating and I was told that they did a system check and I needed a new master cylinder. By coincidence the one I provided was not good according to their parts guy, so I had to buy one from them, go figure. I sat in the waiting room, the only room on that floor without air conditioning, for three hours until I decided to go into the RV and put my sprained ankle up to stop the swelling. After sitting in the in the RV for an hour watching the worker do his thing the shop foremen told me that they couldn’t fix the R.V. that day because the part wasn’t available until the next day. The shop arranged for a ride down to the blues fest to prepare for the evening show and I rode down to the park with the service manager who had lived in the London area.
Upon my arrival to the park I talked to a person with information about first world war Canadian pilots. We were having a good conversation when out of the corner of my eye I see Red, on his scooter, heading toward my booth with a concerned look on his face. The man I was talking to started on his way as Red pulled up. Red told me that the NCC people were around looking at my booth site and that I needed to talk to Mark Monahan. So I looked Mark up at his trailer at the back of the War Museum and he told me that he didn’t think that I would have to leave but that was up to the NCC. I started back into the museum when my phone rang, it was Mark Van dyke, our gas sponsor. He told me that his company was behind us 100% in the gathering video’s for the “Online Veterans Video Library”. Thank goodness for people with the foresight of the importance of our mission. After a little encouraging conversation with Mark from Journey’s by Jerry Van Dyke about their company’s issuing of a check for the first installment of their gas sponsorship. I made a call to the NCC to see if I could convince them that helping us get the word out about the “Online Veterans Video Library” is an important mission and our veterans stories are worth saving. They were not interested in our cause and are a large bureaucracy with a lot of people that must answer to a boss. The guy I talked to told me that I could probably get a permit for free but that I was to late to apply. We had been at the spot in the show for four day’s at that point, with no complaints, or violations. Being a veterans organization we just naturally thought that people would want to help preserve the memory of our veterans, but the world is not all peaches and cream. Everyone who does not have a veteran in their family seems to have better things to do than remember the deadly job our veterans did for OUR freedom. This setback will not detour myself from doing the best I can to establish the “Online Veterans Video Library”
I packed the day’s t-shirts into our trailer on the site and headed to Kevin and Sharon’s house in Constance Bay for a BBQ. Ya’know the public are the ones who are helping me get this job done. Canadian's care
