Report from Red Deer

[fredintoon]

I am a true Yamabeliever.
Rather than watching the new episode of Dr. Who or attending an Easter Sunday church service or visiting the Draggins car show I was part of Saskatoon's CVMG group's presence at the CVMG Red Deer spring swapmeet.
The Red Deer trip has evolved it's own traditions.
The first heated discussion:-
Where is the swapmeet venue anyway? Does nobody have a GPS?
Was a one-time thing as the venue hasn't changed.
The second heated discussion:-
Where is the hotel anyway? why didn't you believe what the GPS told you?
Fell into disuse as we kept using the same hotel but was replaced by:-
Why did you leave the GPS at home? Your cleverdick smartphone can only find the new hotel if you know how to ask it!
When we changed lodgings this year.
We set up our swapmeet table Saturday night and were back early Sunday morning to meet old friends, swap lies and cherrypick the goodies before the customers were let in.
We are getting good, this year we sold more than we bought nor did we haul our own goods there to trade them with each other.
Met up with Rasputin who introduced me to some other list members that I was happy to finally meet face to face even if my aging brain can't remember their names right now.
The table behind us had an XS11SG for sale asking $750. Looked OK, missing righthand sidecover, they swore it ran good.
They also had an Ariel square four. Two pipe aluminum head & Ansty link rear suspension puts it between 1947 & 1950.
Missing fenders, seat, instruments & footpegs.
Asking $5,000 sold at $4,000. (FWIW, a nice complete running Sq4 sells for $10,000+)
I wonder if our XS11s will sell at ten times the new price for a basket case in another 20 years?
Then the drive home. Guess what? It's Easter Sunday so all the restaurants are closed. We were lucky to find a gas station that sold pizzas.
One thing I did find at the meet was a genuine sheepskin. I was planning to see if a sheepskin atop my bike seat would in fact make a more comfortable ride.
When I got home I just tossed the sheepskin on the living room floor.
This morning I found the dog had taken it over and didn't want to give it up.
Guess what I really found was a new dog bed.

[mack]

So fred

is the wife a proud owner of an SG now?

[Rasputin]

It was a really great turn out this year too. I was told they believed they had a new attendance record. Previous high was 1840. Any idea Fred, if they know yet the total attending this year.
There was 5 Forum members and four lurkers that I know of that were there, so that is huge for our area. The owner of that SG lives less than 10 miles from me so I scored his number in case he did not sell it. If he dragged it home he may do a better deal on it. If I had dragged it home without checking with SWMBO I may have been divorced, so this was the smarter thing to do.
Trdriver and his lurker buddy stopped by here after the swap meet as did another lurker. Had some BS time and a few parts went to another home so hopefully those guys will join in the fun instead of hiding in the shadows.
Have plans to meet up next weekend again with Mmatches who was also there. Do a little Bs'ing and see if there is anything I can help him with.
Met Paulapalooza (spelling?) and a couple of his buddies there as well, so all in all it was a good time. Not a lot of XS parts there but fun times for sure.

[paulapalooza]

As Rasputin said, the meet had a great turn out. It was the first one I had been to and I was quite impressed. Although there wasnt much for XS11 stuff, there was some neat things to look at and good people to talk to.

It was also nice meeting a site member (finally) and I would have liked to meet more but unfortunately my friends that tagged along were getting anxious to get back to Calgary. All in all it turned out to be a fun day.