In my last post we had left Cincinnati and were headed to Philadelphia for another show. We had a couple of extra days between shows, so we decided to visit the Amish country. We had a great time. We celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary at Mueller's Smorgasbord and hit a bunch of yarn shops (Judy is a knitter too). On to Philadelphia.
The hotel we booked through Priceline had seen better days. As I was going back to the car to get a suitcase, a door opened on our floor and a very buxom young lady stepped out in a very low cut top, high heels, lots of make up and perfume. We rode down the elevator together and she quickly walked through the lobby and into a waiting cab. I suspect she was in the hotel for commercial purposes, and not the kind that Judy and I were. Then I saw a man carrying a rifle in the parking lot. I was concerned until I found out that there was a gun show at the hotel that weekend.
The show was located in a huge old warehouse that smelled of tires. We were in the far corner of the show as far away as you could get from the main entrance. It took over a hour for the attendees to filter back to our area. Worse, we were across the aisle from someone demonstrating ergonomic rotary fabric cutters. For 4 days we heard the same demonstration over and over and over again. I WAS impressed at her enthusiasm for these ergonomic rotary fabric cutters. The 4th day she was just as bubbly as the first. I almost bought one for that reason alone. What I wasn't so enthusiastic about is going into the Ladies room by mistake. Know that 90% of the attendees of a quilt show are women. When things are slow I often say that "it's as quiet as the Men's room at a quilt show". On the first day of the show I was washing my hands in what I thought was the Men's room and two women walked in. I said "ladies your in the wrong room, to which they replied, no sir, YOU'RE in the wrong room". I went outside and found that the show promoters had changed the sign from the day before when we were setting up. In my defense, I suspect it was one of the few ladies rooms with urinals.
Sales were beyond lousy, then disaster struck. On the night before the last day of the show Judy and I got food poisoning. It was the worst possible time for that to happen. We had to man the booth the next day, pack it up, and drive to a hotel we booked and paid for that was 200 miles from Philadelphia. I thought about calling the show promoters and having them tear down our booth and pack it for us. By morning we weren't feeling too awful so I told Judy that we would get through the day in stages. Stage 1 - pack our bags and load the car. Stage 2 - Open our booth at the show and sell for the day. Stage 3 - Load the booth into the trailer. Stage 4 - drive to the hotel. Long story short, we made it to the hotel, but not before getting lost trying to find it. When we finally got to our room, Judy developed a migraine, threw up in the trash can by the bed and slept for 12 hours.
On the long ride home we had time to reflect on the previous 2 weeks and plan our next move. All of the profits we had made up to that time were wiped out on 1 trip. I felt like Tommy Lasorda, the legendary manager of the LA Dodgers when he told reporters that, "This freaking job is not that freaking easy!" Only he didn't say "freaking". Judy and I couldn't agree more.
My next couple of posts will be about our experience selling at the Holy Grail of quilt shows, the AQS Show in Paducah.
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