Friends & Family – Page 4 – The Destinators

Toronto – Drumeo live meetup

The event of the summer for us was a live meetup of a group of people from Drumeo, my online drum program. Drumeo provides a plethora of video lessons and workshops, live-streamed or online. We, the students, post videos of ourselves demonstrating our new learnings or a new tune on the Drumeo website forums, and we share feedback with each other. We also have the option to post our videos for a Drumeo instructor to critique and make recommendations. Of course we’ve met some Drumeos on past trips, however, a live get together with 14 students is a rare thing. And outrageous good fun!

Elmore, VT

Our good friends Patti and Milo, whom we first met years ago out on the ski hill, are also RVer’s with a sense of adventure and a penchant for hiking and biking. Over dinner one night at the end of the ski season, we mentioned that we were thinking of exploring places closer to home in our RV this summer, and that, ironically, we’d never spent a night in our RV in Vermont except in our own driveway. That conversation evolved into a plan for a meet up for the four of us at Elmore State Park, just a bit north of where we all live in the Mad River Valley.

Stump Sprouts v. 35

Since 1987, with a scant handful of exceptions, a wonderful group of friends have gathered on Memorial Day weekend for a same-time-next-year event at Stump Sprouts in the Berkshires. Though we’re charter members of this group, due to our summer travels (up to 2019) and COVID (2020-2021), we’ve missed this annual rendezvous for the past few years. Since we’re in New England for this spring and summer, we were filled with joy when we learned the MemDay SS Weekend was on this year, and there was room for us to rejoin!

The Rendezvous

Our loyal readers will recognize The Truck, first spotted at the Ermine Hill trailhead parking lot in Denali State Park in Alaska in 2019. It was spotted again several times in Alaska (it’s a very huge state but there are very few roads, so that’s not a very big surprise…) before we actually got together with Dean and Dawn in Seward, Alaska. That rendezvous was so much fun that we knew we’d make others happen. We later missed each other by a day at Tombstone Provincial Park near Dawson City, Yukon – kind of a bummer, though we knew there’d be other opportunities.

Because we’re not traveling this summer, we were doubly elated when we found out that Dean and Dawn were traveling through Vermont. Another rendezvous, literally in our back yard (and our front porch, back porch and kitchen)!

Simsbury, CT

It’s funny how when we’re leaving for or returning from a trip, we’re a bit excited and tend to have long first and last days on the road. As a result, we don’t often stop to visit friends inside about a 4-hour driving radius from our home. That means a visit to Mark and Linda in Simsbury had become long overdue (though it’s not like we haven’t seen them at all – two of our meet-ups in the past 5 years have been on intersecting RV trips: one in Memphis, TN and another in Page, AZ).

Beaufort, NC

There is in this blog another post with a very similar opening photo to this one. In that post, we introduced our readers to Walker, who lives with our friends Hope and Carlos in Beaufort, NC. But the photo above is recent, and Walker is almost five years older here than in the previous photo, and don’t we all wish we could have aged as well as he!

Murrells Inlet, SC

My cousin, Sam (aka Cecile), is 17 years older than I am. She got married and moved away about the time I was learning to walk. Like her sister Jeanette, we didn’t really get to know each other back then. (I did get to know their older sister, Helen, who stayed nearby.) Sam moved back to our home town just months before I headed off to college and I met her once. Since then, we’ve met each other mostly at funerals. We vowed that we would connect sometime simply for fun. That time finally happened.

Myrtle Beach, SC

Dorothea Taylor is one of my favorite instructors at Drumeo, my favorite online drum education program and drumming community. She’s relatively new to Drumeo, having joined the instructor team about 2 years ago. However, she’s not new to drumming, nor music education – she’s been playing for 56 years and working with students for almost as long! Dorothea preaches the benefits of using rudiments (think marching bands – yup, she started out in a drumline) on the drum kit – and rudiments are what I most need to learn to take my drumming to the next level. Her no-nonsense, disciplined teaching style resonates with my learning style.

Monroe, NC

My friend Lloyd has only ever sold one guitar, and I bought it. We met online through the Blues Guitar Unleashed forum, which we were both using in our quests to become the amazingly excellent blues guitar players we are today. Since that seminal transaction, we’ve gotten to know each other pretty well through our online interactions. We have met in person once or twice, and we have tried and failed to meet in person at least one other time. This time, it was relatively simple for Sue and me to adjust our northbound route between Florida and Vermont to include Monroe, NC, which (not coincidentally) is where Lloyd and his wife Maurette have chosen to make their home.

Visit with Mom

Shortly after she and my dad moved south (almost 30 years ago), my mom announced that, despite her having lived all her life in New Hampshire, Florida was now definitely her home and she would never even consider moving back to New England. Of course, the rest of our family remains in New England. However, with regular calls and in-person visits a few times a year we’re able to stay sufficiently close. The motorhome turns out to be a perfect tool for the job…