Gun Blogger Rendezvous Registration Now Open

I now have the registration form available for this September's Gun Blogger Rendezvous. It's a PDF file, so download it, print it out, and send it in. All the instructions are on the form. I think this year's Rendezvous will be the biggest yet, and Reno's weather in September is usually quite nice for spending some time out at the different ranges.

If you've been wanting to get to the Rendezvous, then make this year you finally come to Reno and join in on all the fun!

It's a blast!

Silver Legacy Financial Agreement Reached

The Silver Legacy hotel and casino in Reno, the site of this September's Gun Blogger Rendezvous,  has been struggling financially,  like most of the casinos out there. Part of this is due to the economy, and part of it is due to additional competition from tribal casinos.

On the first of March a note from their creditors for 142 million dollars was due, and the Silver Legacy's owners were not able to come up with the money to pay off the note. The casino owners and the creditors have been in negotiations trying to work out an agreement to restructure the debt and to allow the Silver Legacy to continue in business and avoid bankruptcy.

I just received an email from the Silver Legacy that an agreement has been reached, and the Silver Legacy will continue on, business as usual. This is great news for the Gun Blogger Rendezvous, as the Silver Legacy folks have always been great to work with, and I really didn't want to have to re-locate the Rendezvous to another facility.

Here's the Reno Gazette Journal article

See you all in Reno in September!

Gun Blogger Rendezvous 2012 Dates Announced

The contract is now signed for the 2012 Gun Blogger Rendezvous. The dates will be September 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th of September. This is the second week in September, as usual. It is also the same weekend as the Reno Balloon Races.

The Rendezvous will be at the Silver Legacy Resort and Casino in Reno, where it's been for the last few years. We will be moving a few doors over to a larger Hospitality Room, but only a few doors away from where we were last year. The new location has the possibility of opening up into a larger size, which allows us some growth area for the future. Plans are to follow the basic schedule of last year's Rendezvous, but there will also be a few changes, and possibly some new things too, but it's still; way too early in the planning stages to make any announcements about that.

Every year I get a few emails asking why the Rendezvous can't be held on a different weekend, as that weekend conflicts with (fill in the blank). Reno has some sort of major event going on almost every weekend, and hotel prices vary widely depending on the demand for rooms. The week after the Rendezvous is the Reno Air Races, for example, and it's tough to get a room at all, let alone a group of rooms at a discount. Later in the month the weather starts getting colder, and it starts getting miserable at the ranges when we go shooting. Earlier in the year it seems that just about everyone is busy just about every weekend. In short, we are on the dates we're on because it's the best compromise, taking all the different factors in to account. If the dates happen to conflict with something for you, we're sorry about that, but there isn't a single day in the year that doesn't conflict with something for somebody, so we try to pick the best possible dates we can get.

Someone always asks "Why not put the Rendezvous in (his home town)? ", or "Why not move it around to a different city every year, like the NRA Convention?" The short answer is that it's an amazing amount of work to put on an event like the Rendezvous, and where the NRA has a good sized staff on the payroll to organize the convention, the GBR has only an unpaid staff of KeeWee and I, along with the much appreciated help of a few blogger volunteers. To move to a different city  means re-inventing just about every detail, and moving it every year means starting almost from scratch every year, and that's way more work than I can handle.

We all hope that the Gun Blogger Rendezvous dates will work into your schedule and that we'll see you in Reno in September. If you've never been to the GBR, perhaps this is the year to give it a try! We always have a grand time, and for spouses not so interested in the gunny side of the Rendezvous, there's also lots of other things in Reno to see and do, so come to Reno in September, and have a ball!