Drums – The Destinators

Bakersfield, CA

Mutual friends introduced us. “You should meet this couple we met! They both play music and travel in an RV with an insane amount of music gear. You’d love them!” So we first got together with Rod and Tanya at their home in Egan SD in 2016, and love them we did! That was our first year out on the road and we learned so much from them about RVing, traveling with music gear, and making music. Mentors! We were humbled that these pro musicians, traveling as RVDreamTour, invited us to jam with them. We were fortunate to cross paths again later that year, in one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever played music in, and once again in 2019.

When we first met, Rod and Tanya were able to work remotely while traveling for months at a time. Although they still do that, their latest work situation requires them to occasionally be on site at several places in the west. They still spend summers in Egan, but winters now in St David, AZ which is nearer to the work sites. We checked in from Palm Springs, when we were about to be heading towards St David and – surprise! – they were in Bakersfield, CA. Well, that’s not very far from Palm Springs, is it? Set a course!

BGU/DEN: Parker, CO

Blues Guitar Unleashed regional jams have been a regular enough feature in this blog that I’m not going to open this post with another explanation of what they are (although if you need that, see my posts from last year or the year before that). Beginning last December my friend and fellow musician Bob (aka BobbyUT) has been making and tweaking all the necessary arrangements for our gang of blues brothers and sisters to get together this fall in his hometown of Parker, Colorado, just south of Denver, for 4-1/2 days of music and mayhem. That event took place last week, and history was made. Again.

Parker, CO

As mentioned in Doug’s post, the uncertainty of how long we’d be waiting for RV repair was unnerving. Sitting day after day in a dimly lit hotel room with only a bed and 2 chairs at the Quality Inn behind the Mercedes repair center would get old fast. And although we were surrounded by shopping malls with a huge choice of chain restaurants, the prospect of visiting those twice a day for more than a couple of days had limited appeal. We needed a change of attitude, a plan B. After all, people fly into Denver for vacation all the time without RVs. What do they do? What could we do without our RV?

Goin’ to Kansas City…

Kansas City, here I come. I’m gonna be standing on the corner – the corner of Twelfth Street and Vine…

…with my Kansas City baby, and a bottle of Kansas City wine.

Ashtabula and Ostrander, OH, thoughts on route-finding, and the Great Air Conditioner Saga of 2025

Sue recently pointed out that our approach to route-finding often places a much higher priority on visiting different places to do interesting things with great people than it does on efficiency or saving time or following a direct route. These priorities brought us not only to Cincinnati, but also to the two Ohio towns in the title of this post.

I want to point out that I am writing perhaps three posts in one right now. The two visits in this post sandwiched the visit in the previous post and the A/C saga spans all three of those, as well as the one before that. In the past, we’ve tried to remain chronologically consistent in our posts, but this shouldn’t be too hard to follow. Still, please pay attention!

Hamilton, ON – Drumeo live meetup, Do It Again!

Dinner – Jim, Thora, James, Marlene, Vihar, Sean, Sue, top of Doug’s hat, Mike’s right eye, Bram, Ed, Ale

The first live Drumeo meetup of our online drum student group we attended was in 2022 in Toronto. Last year’s (nearly) annual meetup was in Hamilton, ON. In the infamous words of Brian Wilson, it was so good, Do It Again! We wouldn’t miss another chance to meet up with the Drumeo group, again in Hamilton.

BGU/ABQ: Jamming in Albuquerque

The subject of this post is the seminal event around which our whole trip was planned. I’ve been an active member of Griff Hamlin’s Blues Guitar Unleashed for a baker’s dozen of years, and much or most of what I can now do with a guitar is a result of that. Our blog has a bunch of posts about visits with friends from the BGU forum and we’ve previously documented a couple of these Blues Guitar Unleashed student blues jams (here and here). A year ago, BGUer Larry H. announced his intention to host a jam in his hometown of Albuquerque the following fall (i.e., now). I was interested. Sue and I agreed that a fall-to-early-winter tour of the southwest would satisfy several of our needs, so I upgraded my response to officially ‘very interested’ and when the ‘who’s coming?’ poll opened I was the first one in.

Cincinnati

One of the reasons for this fall trip is that another Blues Guitar Unleashed member jam will be in Albuquerque, NM, early in October. Now, the shortest, most direct route between our home and Albuquerque goes through Cincinnati, OH. Regular readers are aware of our reluctance to take the shortest, most direct route to anywhere. Well, sometimes we make exceptions to that rule and we did for Cincinnati, because that’s where my piano-playing buddy Honghong lives!

Hamilton, ON – Drumeo live meetup

Andrew, Bram, Joe, Tracy, Doug, Sue F, Matt E, Christine A (photo courtesy of Joy B)

We had so much fun at the last Drumeo live meetup we attended in 2022 in Toronto, we knew we’d be back for another. We were disappointed to miss last year’s in Tennessee. This year’s meetup was held in Hamilton, ON, not far from Toronto. We were glad to see so many familiar faces – half the group attended the meetup in 2022 – and meet new Drumeo friends live. There’s something about all getting together in one place that strengthens those relationships we form online and heightens the sense of the Musora community.

Toronto – III

We were on our way to Hamilton, ON which is about an hour from Toronto. And whenever we’re near Toronto, we check in with Iris about getting together to jam.