Friends & Family – Page 2 – The Destinators

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!

Cincinnati – deux

We headed out from the Drumeo meetup in Hamilton, ON, nominally en route to this year’s upcoming Blues Guitar Unleashed live jam near Denver, CO. Now, a direct route between Hamilton, ON and Denver wouldn’t normally go through Cincinnati. Fortunately, we don’t care about direct routes nearly as much as we do about going different places and seeing different people, and we love getting together with my piano buddy Honghong. Last year’s visit was way too much fun, so there’s no chance we’d pass up another opportunity!

Set course for Cincinnati!

Pasadena, CA

When we moved to Connecticut in 1990, I worked on a team at The Travelers that was lead by Dwight. A firm believer in team-building, he and his wife Colleen hosted several team dinners at their home in Essex, CT, and we got to know Colleen as well. For the next few years, I thoroughly enjoyed the ground-breaking work we did in managed care. and I learned so much – about the healthcare/health insurance business, business politics, project management, people management, team-building – all skills that served me well when I later started my own business. Thank you, Dwight!

Sedona

We last visited Sedona in 2017 to see our long-time friends Malcolm and Judy, not long after they had retired and moved from New Jersey to AZ. They showed us around their new hometown and the surrounding areas, and, just as we always have, we looked forward to the next time we could get together. Then, in May 2021, Judy passed away. Her death was sudden and unexpected and very difficult for all who knew her, and we were deeply concerned for Malcolm, who’d lost his life partner of 49 years. Malcolm visited with us in VT later that summer on an east coast tour of visits with friends and countless private celebrations of Judy’s life, as he began to heal.

We were excited when we learned that Malcolm had met a wonderful woman, that they’d fallen deeply in love and were embarking together on a new chapter in their lives. Malcolm and Lita were married in May 2023, and we were eagerly awaiting our visit to meet and get to know Lita! Oh, and also Lita’s dog (now Malcolm’s step-dog) Cali.

BGU/ABQ, The Prequel: Weatherford, OK

That unanticipated schedule change that resulted in our visit to Palo Duro Canyon SP on our way to the blues jam in Albuquerque also changed our route. Getting to the park in TX took us straight across OK, instead of heading north to Colorado as we’d planned. Now, my jamming partner Gary and I had been exchanging emails and we had a few phone conversations to decide on a list of songs to do at the jam, but we’d never met and we’d never played together. Well, Gary lives in Weatherford OK and it turned out that we’d be driving through there on I-40, so I asked him if we might stop by (for a few hours at least) so we could run through the songs we’d talked about. He said sure, and his wife Gayle suggested we stay for dinner to have more time to play. I asked if there was room to park the motorhome, which there was, and it was a done deal.

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.

St Louis

When we get close to St Louis, we feel a magnetic pull to our regular RV parking spot where we’ve visited a few times with my father’s brother Jerry and his wife Suzy. Much closer to my age than to my parents, these were my cool and fun aunt and uncle who lived away from the family homestead in New England (though they visited often). They hold the distinction of being the first of my extra large family that Doug ever met, back in 1984.

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!

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.

Rangeley, ME

Rick and Doug were work colleagues at the Sugarbush Ski School in the early aughts. I joined them on a chairlift ride one day back then and Doug introduced us. When I mentioned that I had grown up in Berlin, NH, Rick’s eyes lit up. He had been a competitive Nordic skier (cross country and ski jumping) and had competed at the legendary and historic Nansen Ski Jump in Berlin. I thought I was riding the lift with royalty…