October 2023 – The Destinators

Home!

During the final two days of the trip, we tried to determine what it is that we both were experiencing – a now-familiar feeling we’ve had at the end of each of our trips. We’re happy to be coming home, yet there’s a sadness to ending our adventurous life on the road. We concluded that it’s primarily a feeling of wistfulness (yearning or longing) with a touch of bittersweet (contrasting emotions of sadness and pleasure). And overall, it leaves us with a sense of satisfaction with the adventure just concluded.

Grand Rapids, MI

Long before we started planning our Eastern Canada tour for this summer and fall, there was exactly one fixed point in the schedule, and that was a four-day blues jamming extravaganza in Grand Rapids, Michigan organized by our friend Tom (aka tommytubetone), that we could catch on the way home. Tom is no stranger to this blog, having hosted us twice when we were around Kalamazoo. Tom also jammed with me that time in Memphis as well as at various other times and places going back almost ten years by now.

This event was already being laid out when we swung by to see Tom in 2018, and it was well along in the planning stage when we stopped by again in 2019. And while it was disappointing to see all of those plans go into storage with COVID, much like a fine whiskey improves with age, when this bottle was finally opened we found there was pure magic inside.