It used to be that in the spring we’d restart our blog with a recap of the previous year’s trip. That tradition was suspended in 2020 because of COVID and has remained so until now for that and a couple of other, unrelated reasons.
As the pandemic disrupted just about everything relating to travel, we were able to use the RV to get ourselves down Florida a few times to visit my mom while avoiding the risks and hassles of COVID-era air travel. Although in 2020 we never got out of the vehicle except to visit my mom in her senior facility, we jammed (carefully!) with friends along the way down and back on the later 2 trips. In those later trips we also managed visits to a few east coast National Park sites that we hadn’t yet explored – Cape Hatteras and Kitty Hawk in 2021, New River Gorge and Great Smoky Mountains in 2022. Last summer, we also visited places in our own backyard on a few short trips with friends in Vermont, upstate New York and the Berkshires in Massachusetts, as well as a medium-length trip up the Niagara Escarpment and back down to Toronto (from which we came home with COVID).
Yet even as restrictions on travel began to ease, we both had to deal with a couple of health issues that, although not serious in the sense of being life-threatening, certainly got in the way. Each required a program of treatment that was not compatible with extended traveling like we’ve been doing. So, virus or not, we couldn’t really go away for very long, anyway. How efficient!
I underwent 3 shoulder surgeries in 3 years (R-L-R) resulting from 2 separate skiing crashes that kept me in physical therapy for almost the whole three years. Yuck. On the other hand, I now have full range of motion in both shoulders and have recovered enough arm strength to start drumming again. Yay!
During the past year, Doug has had eye surgeries to address a couple of different conditions in both eyes, the most recent one just a few weeks ago. The combined effect of the incremental improvements seems to be enough to bring skiing, biking and hiking back within reach, so again, Yay!
While we were not traveling and not skiing, much of our time was spent on our music. Doug has played regularly at a few nearby open mics, developing his song list and performance skills. Through new friends met on this circuit, he was invited to perform at a historic hotel with concerts on the porch last summer. Here are some highlights from the show:
Since my rehab kept me away from the drums for 2.5 years, I had time to get familiar with a whole mess of software to advance our music: score notation, song library management, MIDI programming, digital audio workstation (DAW), audio recording, processing, mixing and editing, and video editing. Also, almost accidentally, I managed to learn to play the piano during that time.
Also, as I got back to drumming in just the past 3 months, I’ve been joining Doug at open mics with my suitcase kit. From that exposure, we got to be the opening act for a local music festival, a couple of weeks ago. We have highlights from that, too:
And now, it’s time to turn our attention to this year’s travel.
