When you join the Wally Byam Caravan Club International (WBCCI) you are assigned a membership number. This serves two purposes, both are for identification. You are provided with your first set of numbers for the front and rear of your Airstream and a club seal for both as well. This way, when you meet another member on the road or in a campground, you can look up the name of the other in the club directory that is updated each year. The other purpose is to identify your trailer at a WBCCI rally. These can be quiet well attended affairs and when you have from 100 (small WBCCI rally) to literally 1,000 or more nearly identical silver trailers at a rally, it is more than convenient to have a unique identifier for your trailer. This can be so that you can find your trailer in a row of 50 silver beauties after cocktail hour, identifying the location of the evenings’ cocktail hour, or for safety reasons in case there is an emergency and the authorities or EMt’s need to find your individual trailer.
This year I had the opportunity to attend my first WBCCI rally. We’ve been members of the WBCCI for three years now and so far I haven’t even put our membership numbers on our trailer yet. One of the neat ideas I gleaned from the monthly WBCCI magazine, The Blue Beret, was to apply the numbers to the type of cling film that is used for window clings and put them on the trailer just for rallies. This has the advantage that the numbers can be removed. Many people buy used trailers that either have someone else’s numbers on them or they or the previous owners remove the numbers only to find that the numbers have a ghost image burned into the clear coat. This can be unsightly if you want new numbers of your own or if you don’t join the WBCCI. I had my numbers printed onto the cling sheet material by a local sign shop. It wasn’t cheap, but I can rest assured that our trailer will have the numbers on it when we want them on it and not when we don’t. Since Airstreamers call a trailer without numbers bald and our numbers are removable, I can say our Airstream has a toupe’. :LOL:
The rally I attended was the Florida State Rally. This is the second largest congregation of Airstreams in the country every year and this year they had a weekend program at the end of the rally for those of us that haven’t retired. Unfortunately, the weekend program was the weekend before Fayette County School System’s President’s Week Break. This meant that Becki and the boys couldn’t go with me since the rally is in Sarasota, Florida and that is an eight hour drive from our home. So, I went by myself leaving on Thursday to be at the rally first thing on Friday morning. And who wouldn’t want to spend a three day weekend in south-central Florida during February? Sign me up!
The rally was fun. I met the nicest couple in a motor home parked next to me. They were not members of the WBCCI and had come for the weekend also to see if they were interested in joining the club. During the summer months, they work camp at Yellowstone and spend the winter at their home in Florida. Unfortunately, some of the members didn’t roll out the welcome wagon for me or for them. I don’t think they will be joining. It’s unfortunate because they were the “youngest” retirees I have met in a long time. Lenny rides his bicycle 70 miles each week. This is the type of members the club needs.
One of my friends I met on-line through the airforums.com was in charge of receiving and processing pre-registration for the rally. I didn’t get a chance to see his wife again, but I did get a couple of chances to talk with Randy during the two days of the weekend program.
All-in-all, it was a nice taste of the Wally Byam Caravan Club International.
