My wife had been urging me for a couple of years to take my qsl cards to Dayton and get them checked. She knows that I could never part with them, so mailing them was never an option for me.

We got to Dayton Thursday night, unpacked, and had a nice supper at a local restuarant. Then we returned to the hotel and I started removing cards from the binders I had brought.

I had heard that the cards should be sorted by band and by mode. So I did. This must have taken at least 2 hours. I do not know why, but it was exhausting.

So, Friday came.Way too early. I had been up past midnight.

I carefully packed my cards into a shoe box I thoughtfully kept, and padded the space with a hand towel I borrowed from the room. Yes borrowed.

We drove to the Mall, got on the Bus, and arrived at the Hamvention with no great damage (I think I was kind of clutching the shoebox at times).

We found the ARRL booth, and then the tables where the checkers sat. I drew a number (55) and noted that the current number was 22. Not too bad, I thought. Some DX took longer, I thought.

So I chatted with some other ham and learned something I did not know.

There was PAPERWORK involved.

So I grabbed a bunch of sheets, and we left to see what was happening elsewhere.

That night, I swear I spent 4 hours entering line by line the cards I had previously sorted. I decided to go for uniqueness rather than quantity, so if I already had an entity on one band, I eliminated it from other bands.

Again, we arrived Saturday at the ARRL dxcc checker tables. I took a number, but really did not need to. I sat down across from a checker and placed my shoebox on the table. You should have seen the look on his face. You have any idea how many cards a Full shoebox could hold? Well, mine was not full, unless you consider the hotel face cloth I borrowed.

Well anyway ...