How to run a successful rest stop...

This weekend, I volunteered to do safety/communications for the Ironman Bike Tour, a fund raiser for the Minnesota division of Youth Hostels International. This is my fourth year volunteering for the Ironman and third year at the Lonsdale, MN rest stop. I think I really had my game on this year. Here's how I did it:

Radio preparation:

Kenwood TM-D700 in my F-350, crossbanding into the Burnsville repeater (146.210, no tone) at 50 watts.
Truck parked in the highest part of the parking lot, since the VFW building was down in a gully.

Inside the building:

Yaesu VX-7R handheld, talking UHF to the truck @ 2.5 watts.
My little Fujitsu P2120 mini-laptop with an extra (externally-connected) 15" LCD monitor.
OpenOffice.org spreadsheet for tracking events.
MS Paint for creating simple graphics to display on 2nd monitor.
Oscar's MultiShow software for displaying graphics on 2nd monitor.

Process (assuming you'd like to replicate what I did):

Configure laptop to "extend windows desktop" onto your second monitor. You'll be working with the spreadsheet on your laptop's display and displaying a graphical slideshow on the second monitor to inform the crowd of your services and attract their attention. If you've got a LCD or DLP projector to use, this works even better.

In paint, create an image in big letters that says "Rider Support will be back in 5 minutes". Set it as your background. Now when you walk away, you can hit Windows-L to lock your laptop and this will be displayed on both monitors.

In paint, create several other images that you'd like to show in sequence on the second monitor. I had a few saying "Rider Support", "Lost & Found / Need a SAG / Ask HERE!" and "Thanks for riding!". You may also want to create a template with a big blank in the middle, saying "RIDER / (blank) / you have a message" When you've got a message for a particular rider, you can just add the rider number and Save-As to the slideshow directory.

Create a directory for the event graphics, and make another directory inside that one called "run". Place your templates or images that you don't want to show yet in the first directory, then put the ones you do want to show in the "run" directory. This way, you can drag images into or out of the "run" directory to control what gets displayed.

Configure MultiShow to display all images within the "run" directory on the second monitor, waiting about 4-5 seconds between images. Note that while it's running, you'll have to right-click the slideshow's icon in the notification area of the start bar and select "settings" to re-scan the directory when you add images to the "run" directory.

Now set up your spreadsheet as you like, while the second monitor advertises your services to the riders as they go through the rest stop!