My First Antelope Valley Gem, Mineral & Jewelry Show Pt. 3

I awoke Sunday morning more refreshed than Saturday morning having gotten more sleep the previous night than Friday night.
Mike Lyons and I got up, got ready, got checked out, and got ourselves over to the Lancaster High School for Day Two of this year's Antelope Valley Gem, Mineral, and Jewelry Show before it started.
We needn't have done so when we did as most of the other vendors weren't in any hurry to do so themselves nor were the customers to be seen initially at opening time.
Sunday mornings are typically quiet at most shows and thus was the case with this show.

By mid-morning we had folks ambling through but it stayed quiet until mid-day when things picked up a bit more.
However, Sunday was nothing like Saturday for me, although it was still a decent day.
I'm reasonably satisfied with this show and intend to come back if invited which Vivian says should happen so I'm happy with everything.

I got a repeat customer from the day before whom brought a friend with her and dropped additional money at our booth which was much appreciated to go along with the good conversation.

I had one dealer do a trade with me for an Arizona petrified wood slab of an entire log cross-section polished on one side along with some cash in exchange for a rather sizable Chinese Nantan meteorite which was a steal for me I felt and is one of the prizes of my meteorite collection.

Overall, most of the other dealers in the indoor section did not much better than we did and more than not did worse by their own admission which I felt bad about but that's how it goes in this current economy.

I figure if I can successfully get my business started and rolling during this weak economy then I can do fine with it over the long haul.
This is a trial by fire and if I pass it I will be fine.
I just have to hang in there and not get discouraged keep learning from everything that happens and appeal to God's Providence to bless my toil and give me good judgement in my decision-making.

Over the course of the day I heard through Vivian, that one of the regular dealer/vendors located outside in the parking lot and who was camping there had seen Andy(not DeLong) undress in the nude at his pickup truck in plain sight of all the night before which he had also observed him do at another show previously.
Andy is missing some parts...seriously.

Anywho, we started to subtly pack up at about 4:30 p.m. and we were late in doing so compared to some of the other dealers.
Nonetheless, we were done and out of there by about two hours later and had light to drive with lasting us over the Tehachipi Mountains.

We stopped at Mojave for gas and food and water at the same place I stopped for the same things at on the way back from the other Lancaster show I did last November.

I hate driving through Bakersfield and usually avoid it by taking Highway 223 and I-5 around it but at night I actually enjoy buzzing through Bakersfield on Highway 58 and Highway 99 and this night was no exception.

The last time I did a nocturnal drive through Bakersfield I saw a brilliant greenish fireball hurling down through the atmosphere and breaking up and slowing before my eyes. This was sometime last month coming back from Arizona.
This meteorite appeared to fall somewhere out over the desert northeast and beyond the Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains.
Boy would I love to find that sucker laying on the ground out in the middle of the desert or up on some desolate mountain in Eastern California or Western Nevada.

I found out that the halfway point between this show and my house is around the intersection of Highway' 46 and 99 at Famoso northwest of Bakersfield.

At Wasco we stopped at McD's, something I NEVER do anywhere but I have found the Wasco store makes a great nocturnal stop while taking that route at night.

From there we safely got back over to the Central Coast without incident which was nice as I never feel safe on Highway 46. It really needs to be a divided highway but local politicians don't seem to have the pull to get the moneys needed to make that a reality.

I was too tired to write this blog when I got in nor in the days that followed until tonight.

By the way, this coming weekend (Saturday, May 3rd-Sunday, May 4th, 2008) I shall be a dealer/vendor at the other Bakersfield Gem & Mineral Show "Art in Stone" at the Kern County Fairgrounds and I will blog that experience, too.