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After a fun evening at the Embassy suites we got up at a reasonable hour. Carole decided to do our laundry at the motel's coin operated laundromat while I went out to our bike and gave it a much needed scrubbing down and polishing. After all, we couldn't show up at Wingding with a dirty GL1800. At around noon we packed things back into the bike and headed over to the Gaylord Texan Hotel to register.

As we got close there was all kinds of chatter coming in on the CB from other wingers riding in so I shut it off. We pulled into the entry area for the hotel and I was blown away by the number of Wings taking up the entire area. It was nearly impossible to find a place just to park the wing while we registered. We ended up parking illegally with about 50 other wings right in front of the door and went inside. Registration in the Hotel was a zoo but we made it through okay.

If you have never been to the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine you have to check it out! Even if you are just riding through, stop and go inside. It was like being in Disneyland without the rides. They have facades that represent everything Texas is about, including a replica of the Alamo. Streams and plants are all over the main atrium area making you feel like you are outside, but the air conditioning is a much appreciated relief from the heat. There were about as many people meandering about as you see at Disneyland as well. We found the Wingding registration area easily and signed the appropriate papers. Then we made our way up to our room.

The room had a balcony overlooking the atrium area. It was fun just to sit and people watch from high above the crowd. Every kind of riding costume you can imagine was moving around the atrium. It's tough to describe, but if you have ever been to a GWRRA function you can appreciate what I'm talking about. You could tell this was a convention in full swing with representatives from almost every state in the US and several for Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

As soon as we felt settled in and rested we made our way to the vendor area. I was kind of disappointed. Fully half of the vendor area had pots and pans, vacuum cleaners, garage door openers, and other assorted displays that I failed to see any connection to motorcycling. The other half had plenty of Gold Wing oriented gear but the prices weren't even as good as you can usually find on the web. After talking to several of the vendors I learned that the price the GWRRA charged for the booths combined with the cost of having their people on site ate away at any discounts they could possibly provide. Nonetheless, I had come to Wingding with the notion to buy some Kuryakyn trim lights for the saddlebags and trunk and have them installed. It turned out the best price was from Honda Directline (I could have purchased them online at their site cheaper) but they didn't do installations. They pointed me out to a third party installer, so we negotiated a price and scheduled installation for later in the day.

Afterward we decided to go into the covered garage area under the hotel so I could work on the fog lights and do some serious troubleshooting of the problem that had been bothering me for three days. As I pulled my bike into the garage I was blown away by how many Gold Wings were everywhere! But one of the most irritating things to see was hundreds of trailers (the kind you pull behind a wing) sitting in parking spaces everywhere while the owners were out on their bikes. Fully half the parking spaces (we're talking hundreds here) were taken up by trailers. And not just one parking space per trailer. Several of the owners had placed their trailers so that they would take up two parking spaces and then had roped off the area as if they had ownership rights. I couldn't find a parking place for our bike. I was tempted to re-align a trailer so that I could use a parking space but decided against it, knowing that some folks get extremely touchy about strangers touching their toys. As it turned out, others were not so courteous. One of the biggest complaints that came from Wingding 2004 was the trailer issue and the way some folks were simply moving them out of their way. I can see both sides of the issue and am amazed at how discourteous some of these folks are with each other. Nuff said on that issue.

I finally wedged my bike between some concrete posts near the entry to the garage and put my bike on its center-stand. I removed the seat, front lower cowl, side panels and panels and began to get to work troubleshooting the wiring for the fog lights. First I inspected everything and found that all the connections were still solid. I checked the bulbs and they were still good. I again looked at the fuse and saw that it looked solid as well. I pulled out my light probe and began checking for voltage. Ultimately I found I was getting voltage before the fuse but not afterward. Bummer!! I had just been snake-bit by the first rule of electronics.... never trust that a fuse that looks good is indeed good! To test it out I inserted a screwdriver in place of the fuse and voila!! I had lights. As I was shaking my head in irritation at my own stupidity a couple of GL1500 riders came by to see what I was up to. I explained to them what I was doing and that I was going to button everything up so I could ride to an auto parts store and get the right size fuse. One of the guys told me to standby and walked over to his bike to grab a spare fuse he had. It fit and everything was back to good working order! I offered the guy a five dollar bill for his generosity and he recoiled like I was trying to hand him a black widow. He repeated over and over, "Pay it forward! I ain't taking cash from another winger for helping him out!" I should have known... it's all about the fellowship of the Wing.

Much relieved now that my lights were working we pulled the Wing to the back of the Convention Center to wheel it on in for the installation of the trim lights. All went uneventful as some 18 year old kid installed the lights. He was quite skilled. Everything was done perfectly and I haven't had to touch them since. While he was installing the lights I noticed that my tires were down to the wear bars. So Carole and I found a vendor selling tires and giving free installs. I decided to stay with the OEM Dunlops. After all, they had handled the southwest roads better than I had hoped, so why change?

Okay... vendor stuff done, it was time to enjoy our Wingding experience. The hotel had some excellent restaurants that were almost the only eateries in Texas that could cater to the Vegetarian diet. We had some excellent Tapas, Pasta, and salads during our stay at reasonable prices. The Wingding events themselves weren't anything to write home about. There was a model car derby going on somewhere upstairs, several seminars and classes, ice cream socials and such, There were bike judging contests going on (didn't see anything notable) and riding skills demonstrations at some other location that we never found. There was a night time Parade Of Lights (for the wingers that have done some incredible effect lighting to display to the crowd) as well as a fire works show for the 4th of July that was several miles away. So most of our time at Wingding we spent enjoying the sites and atmosphere of the Stockyards in Fort Worth, the West End in Dallas, and Cowboys in Arlington (a country dance nightclub). All in all we got what we expected... a good excuse to be in the DFW area and enjoy Texas. We really never adapted to the Wingding crowd. We did spend one evening dancing to a 50's style band that the GWRRA had hired in for a couple hour show. But we felt out of place since we weren't wearing chapter costumes or vests with pins on them.

All-in-all we enjoyed Wingding 2004:

Plusses:

Great property for this type of event!
Any excuse to ride to Texas is a good one.
Friendliest people on the planet.
Vendor area provided lots of ideas.
Beautiful wings everywhere providing ideas for personalizing our own wing.
Good variety in seminars (we attended the "Two up tour packing" and "Two-up emergency" seminars.

Minuses:

Parking accommodations sucked.
The vendor situation needs to be addressed. I mean, pots and pans????
Most social events are geared toward the 60 year old plus crowd.
Quit pushing the raffles! I felt like there were panhandlers at every turn.

Now that we have been to a Wingding we probably won't go to another. But everyone needs to go at least once to build there own impressions. The potential for greater things is there and with the current political rearranging going on in the GWRRA hierarchy I have a hunch good things will happen. Until then we have let our membership expire.

After three days of enjoying the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex we were refreshed and ready to hit the road back home. Originally we had a route that was mostly off freeway but we decided that we wanted to get home a day early to recuperate before getting back to our daily grind. So we picked an interstate route and packed up, disappointed that we were leaving the friendly folks that create the Texas culture..