We headed toward Salem as I wanted our tow bar serviced by the factory tech after reading it should be done every 10,000 miles and I was close to 17,000 miles since I had done it myself right after purchasing it used off Craigslist early last year. I had called the factory to see what rallies they would be attending this year near me. Salem was the only one, and it was an Airstream rally. I was thinking that might be an issue to get into. Turns out, It wasn’t.
I drove down to Salem Monday morning, and after a bit was able to find the entrance to the facility. There was no one at the gate, so I drove in, not having a clue where to go. I saw a guy in a cart a couple of fenced lots to my right and drove over to him and asked where I could get a day pass. He told me that wasn’t necessary and pointed to a white building and said I should pull my car over to there and nose it in.
After parking it I walked thru another building and over to the area with more Airstreams. I had to ask where the vendor building was as there wasn’t a sign to be seen, and that included out on the roads getting in. Once I was pointed in the right direction, I found the Blue Ox booth and asked the guy if I could get my tow bar serviced. He said, “Absolutely!” and had me fill out the service sheet.
At that point I was figuring I was going to have to carry that heavy thing all the way from the car, which was probably a half mile. He told me they normally just come to your coach and service it while still attached to the receiver. Just then the service tech walked in and I was added to his list after a couple other service calls. To my suprise, the tech named Josh, had me get into his cart and we drove right to my car, and he attached my tow bar to the receiver on his golf cart and within 15 minutes I was on my way.
Now, I had done almost the same service he was doing last year, but it took me about 3 hours to do what he did in 15 minutes. I never thought of installing it in the coach’s receiver to unbolt everything. The perfect workbench for that job, it turns out. So I was done so fast I couldn’t believe it. I thought I would need to drop off my bar and come back some other day as it seemed was the norm in Quartzsite. I had gone there, but they were already fully booked for tow bar service when I arrived. The sales guy mentioned that in Quartzsite, folks are spread out over a huge area and the techs would have no way to find anyone’s coach, so only there do they require you to bring it to them. Normal rallies are in a very small area like a fairground.
Unfortunately I was in and out of there so quickly, I never thought to take a picture with all the shiny Airstreams. There were about 1,000 of them shining in the sun!