It's a Team's Life

2012 Pride and Polish GATS – Staging

We delivered in El Paso on Monday and had to have the truck inside the convention center on Wednesday morning.   That was not much time to get the Caffcadia ready!

As soon as the truck was unloaded on Monday I started the 600-mile drive to Dallas and the truck wash.   Tuesday morning we ran the truck through the truck wash, parked and watched it start raining!   Well Bob had to do some touch up under the truck so we parked on a slight incline and under the truck he went.   We spent the day at the TA, as we knew the dirt coming off of the truck would be stuck to us and we were right.   The shower at the TA that evening was heavenly.

While he was under the truck I started tearing apart the sleeper and cleaning the walls, the ceiling, all of the vents with Q-tips, and then going back over everything with polish.   I decided to leave the Kurig Coffee Pot and the Vita-Mix on the counter top, as they are in use daily.   We bought red roses for the table to add some color.   I did not spend as much time in the cab of the truck as I had not entered the cab.  We left the two GPS's on the dash as they are part of running our truck. 

Wednesday morning we drove over to the convention center staging area and that is when fear set in….   We looked around the parking lot at the Truck Show beauty queens and we thought to our selves, “Have we lost our minds?”   As we were waiting to go inside we continued wiping the truck down and cleaning.   One thing we noticed right off the bat is how bad the mud flaps looked…. these mud flaps have 160,000 miles on them and it shows.   I used some of my heavy-duty degreaser and a rough sponge and while they did not look new they were clean.  

Finally it was our turn to go inside and get the truck positioned.   This is when we really about turned around as the gate guard at the bottom of the ramp wanted to send us to the docks…   We kept explaining no we wanted to go inside, he then called his supervisor who said they would be right down, we again said we were in the truck show.   They finally decided to let us go up the ramp and into the show.   We were pretty shook at this point and really questioning what we were doing.

Once we were parked the last of the fun began with Bob rotating our tires so they were perfectly aligned, wiping down all the glass, and once again going over the truck.   We had to wait till Thursday morning for the judges and we felt we were ready….   We found out the next day we were not exactly as ready as we thought....