Tuesday, April 04, 2006

We Have Been Busy

It looks like my co-chair and I for the AORBS (amalgamated order of real bearded Santa's) have finally been able to lock down presenters for 24 different workshops for our very first convention. This will be held in Branson, Missouri July 7th through the 9th. It has been interesting talking to all the different Santa's and trying to find out what they are able to present to the others so that we can all work at becoming better Santa's.

Here is a web address for those that might be interested in what will be happening
http://www.discoversanta.com/index.htm It will be a lot of fun to get together with what we are anticipating to be 300 to 500 other white bearded gentlemen. I have discovered something rather interesting in working on this committee. A Santa can talk to a child and usually discuss all they need to talk about and get photos taken in 2 to 5 minutes. But when one Santa gets on the phone with another one it usually takes 45 to 90 minutes. That has some explanation as to what I have been doing.

The Santa-America
http://www.santa-america.org/ training program that was going to take place in June at Daphne, Alabama has been rescheduled to take place in Branson. It will start 2 days prior to the AORBS convention and some of the workshops will be held to coincide with the convention. All that means is one less trip I will have to make this summer. If I had to make a choice in doing just one though it would be the Santa-America training.

So now the committee members will be getting together in Branson the first week in May to go through all of the different events verify schedules and make contingency plans. It still means I have to do a lot of driving this summer. Going on 2 different trips that will be over 5,000 miles.

I was considering just renting a car for both trips but It looks like for the second trip in July anyway Santa will have a new sleigh. I have been doing some bartering and have managed to come up with a 1986 Chevrolet Celebrity station wagon. It wil be getting a new transmission and then some of the guys in the shop figured that if it was going to be for Santa that it would have to have some custom work done on it. So they have come up with a lot of plans and we will just have to see what happens. I know the first thing they want to do is paint it red and have the out line of a sleigh on the side painted in gold. From there they have even more plans like redoing the interior, special lights and sound etched rear windows and some special graphics. They have told me that they can have it ready for my trip the first of July. Now all I have to do is be patient and wait for them to do the work. If their plan comes together it should be a rather wild ride. It is almost like getting that OVERHAULING thing done on television, this will just take longer.
I will try to keep updates on the progress of this project posted on this blog.
I encourage any and all comments. There are still some other items being worked on by some very special elves. As soon as I am given the go ahead I will be letting everyone now what these projects are. I am even more excited about them than the new sleigh