March 2-7

Dallas, TX, I have never been to this city and it turns out, I’m not actually going to be exactly in Dallas. I am actually in Grand Prairie, TX right across from Six Flags.

I arrive to the town on the 2^nd with no issues with travel. I don’t want to put a jinx on it, but thus far my travel has been smooth sailing. I picked up my rental car and drove to the hotel. I am using my Blackberry as a navigation unit because the cars don’t have them and we have been asked to decline them. So, being that I know none of these places, my Blackberry is proving to be very handy right now.

I am staying at Town Place Suits in Arlington, TX. Again, this was another nice hotel in my opinion. In fact, in this hotel we had a kitchen in our room, which included a stove, refrigerator, oven, dishwasher and microwave. So after getting checked in I

Found the event location and went to the Volt tent.

In this city the drive was going to have to be out on public roads. This is not ideal, but its what we have been given to work with. I laid out the route to be as safe as possible and still offer a quality experience. The course ended up being 1.1 miles long, this keeps it the same as the previous cities with respects to distance and time, now we just have to get passé the added risk of public traffic.

At this city I started something new, I made a map of the location and the layout so that I could mail it out to the team so they would have a heads up about what was going on. 

Of course, going out on the public roads didn’t appeal to anyone, but we all worked together and made it through the entire weekend on the Volt course without an issue on the route.

We did have some problems with random cars coming in off the street into our staging area. We took what measures we could to reduce this, but it still happened a few more times.

The real issue for me in Dallas was the truck demo’s and their location in respects to my course. It was so far away I had to drive to the demo, do the demo, then drive back to the Volt tent. This was less than ideal as I ended up only being at the tent for about 30 minutes at a time. This meant that I had to have my position covered for the time period that I was away.

Well, prior to this city, arrangements had been made to have one person appointed to cover for me. I was asked if a certain individual would be ok to cover for me in my absence and I said sure. Heck, anyone on the great team I have could do what I’m doing. So the time issue was covered.

The next issue was the weather. Again, I thought the Dallas area was supposed to be a warm place. Well, it was NOT. It was COLD, WINDY and at times WET. I mean I could not believe it. Three cities in a row and bad weather, Really?

The demos went fine all be it with low attendance. Oh, I forgot to mention, they added a demo to my talk in this city as well. Now I will be doing a Chevy frame articulation talk and demos as well as the GMC locking rear differential demo. Pics below show the demo’s

Looking forward to getting home, My oldest son just turned 18 years old on the 7^th OH BOY!