So, at 1:00 this morning we had a knock on the door of our truck as we were peacefully snoozing away. Of course, it was just as you would expect…a prostitute peddling her wares. Now this doesn’t happen with the frequency that it used to happen to us when we were on the road in the 90’s, however it does still happen. First, it was, “It sure is cold out here. Can I come in and get warm?” When that answer was no, then it was, “Are you sure you don’t want someone to keep you warm?”  When that answer was “My wife is already doing that”, it was “Do you have any spare money?” Bless her heart, she just didn’t know when to quit. We just laughed about it and went back to sleep. After all, why get upset with someone trying to make a living?

When the alarm clock rang, it was still doing the misty rainy thing. I think that someone upstairs is trying to prepare us for weather in Seattle.

We have made our way to Council Bluffs, IA and are headed for Rapid City tomorrow. I, for one, hope that the wind dies down because it is quite disconcerting to feel the truck trying to go everywhere on the road except where it is supposed to be.

Today we left from Remote Area Medical headquarters in Rockford, TN to head out for a clinic in Seattle, Washington. We are looking forward to seeing old friends and making new friends on this trip. It will be our last trip in RAM-1, and it is somehow fitting that it will be the longest trip.

It was raining and foggy when we left, although after we got over the Cumberland Plateau, the sun came out periodically. The leaves are beginning to change in the higher elevations of Tennessee and I snapped a couple of shots because when we return, I doubt there will be any leaves left on the trees.

In the Land Between the Lakes area of Kentucky, we were fortunate enough to see a huge flock of white pelicans resting on Lake Barkley. I suspect they will be loving the weather in south Texas this winter.

The wind has been blustery all day long, sometime with gusts up to 35 mph. RAM-1 was once a race car hauler, so there is a lot of area to catch the wind and Thom had his hands full for most of the day.   As we got near Paducah, Kentucky, the CB came to life and people began asking about tornado warnings, so on came the weather radio and sure enough, we were headed straight for that area. I pulled up the radar so I could get an idea of when we might run into the storm that stretched from Texas all the way up into Michigan. It certainly looked as if we might be in for a bad time at some point of the trip. A few minutes after we crossed the Ohio, the sky turned black and the rain came pouring down! I will admit that I am not too good with the rain, so I tend to close my eyes a lot when it is raining. (As we found out several years ago, you just haven’t lived until you have slid sideways down the road in a semi-truck.)

Happily, the very worst of the storm was over in about a half hour and then it became a slow drizzle.

Our plan was to make it to East St. Louis, IL for the night and this where we are sitting as I write this. We have had an uneventful trip so far and I am glad. Tomorrow we will be headed for Council Bluffs and I will be keeping an eye on the weather in case we need to make a change in our route because of snow and/or ice as we get nearer to Montana and Idaho.

We were fortunate to meet a soulfriend this weekend. His name is Isaac. Isaac is a geologist and an extremely talented artist. He did workshops on wire sculptures all weekend and his sculptures are incredible! when he and Thom met, you could be an instant bond. If there is such a thing as previous lives, I believe they may have been brothers at some time in the past. He came to our booth and played Beverly many times. You could see as he played that he was off in another world and his spirit was soaring.

When we returned home, we found the following on Facebook and I felt it was worthy of its own blog. Thank you Isaac for letting us know how much Beverly touched your heart. I know that our friend Beverly was  watching and listening from somewhere in the universe and was happy to see the look on your face when you played the drum named in her memory.




Ode to Beverly
Her smooth earthy voice beckons me to her sacred chambers, begging me to become one in her entanglement of love.
The closer I get, the more her voice resonates and sends shivers from my feet and throughout my body. Her sweet deep vibrations tickling the very core of my soul releasing me to a world unlike any other, a world in which my past lives join together in a soul reunion ca.using an explosion of love and growth. For that very moment, my feet had touched heaven running around and being embraced by the arms of the creator.
Tears had begun to form because this spiritual dance would be soon over but only for that moment. Thank you Beverly, you took me to places that sadly, many will never see.

We are headed home from CultureFest in Pipestem, WV.

As we drive down the road, I can honestly say that it was a wondrous, magical experience for me and Thom. I am sure that part of it was the fact that we were surrounded by people who were open-minded and believed in the diversity of people and how they live. There were numerous discussions and workshops with everyone having interesting input on many different subjects. However, I believe it all goes back to Lori, who was the organizer. You can tell that she has put her heart and soul into this festival and it shows in everything that is there. There were things for everyone to enjoy, from the small children all the way up to the great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers that were attending. We met farmers, faeries, dinosaurs, fire dancers and dragons. We sold items to people in overalls and tie-dyes. So many people came by our booth just to play Beverly, our Awakening Drum. There were morning jams with guitar, hand pan, flute and drums. There were afternoons and evenings filled with many different styles and types of music. There were late night drum circles around a huge campfire.

We enjoyed sunshine and rain, drizzly mornings and cool evenings. There were no shoe times and boot wearing times. The days flew past. It seemed that we would open the booth at 9:00 and then it would be 6:00 in the evening. There was lots of laughter and love. There were smiling faces and happy people. Lori was everywhere, doing everything. If you needed something she was always able to deliver. She is one of the best event organizers that I have ever met. At our motel on Sunday night (the first time we had slept in a bed in 9 days), the desk clerk raved about Lori and how she had helped Mercer Street in Princeton, WV become such a wonderful experience. She has boundless energy, makes tough decisions with a smile, and keeps things running smoothly all at the same time. This not to say that she doesn’t have help keeping the event running, because she does. Her volunteers are wonderful, they sleep in shifts and cover everything that goes on with a smile. They do what needs to be done and I believe that they keep coming back to help because Lori shows her appreciation to them in many different ways. It is obvious that she understands that by taking care of her quality volunteers, they will continue to return each year, which makes each CultureFest better. She does this by taking the time to make sure that the volunteers are given adequate rest time plus some time to enjoy the event that they are helping to create.

So hats off to Lori and everyone who made the 11th Annual CultureFest a success! I wish I could name you all. We appreciated meeting each and every one of you and wish we could have met everyone; the kitchen staff, the guards, the parking and gate people, the clean-up crew, the stage hands, the bonfire builders, the set-up crew, the fund raisers, and everyone else involved.

From a new vendor and workshop teacher, it was perfect!

Thank you for a wonderful experience.







 

Today we left our sons house in St. Clair, PA and headed down to CultureFest at The Appalachian South Folklife Center in Pipestem, West Virginia. We have enjoyed visiting with our son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. We hadn’t seen them since October of last year when our oldest grandson graduated from Army basic training in Ft. Sill, OK and we have really missed them. For the last few days we have lounged around, hung out in the pool, and loved on our family. It has been good.

Upon arrival at the festival site and met the organizer, Lori, whom we have been conversing with over the last few weeks. She is a friend of a friend, so this made meeting her even better! The site is beautiful and amazing. You can tell that Lori has poured her heart and soul into creating this festival. This is the 11th annual CultureFest and it was started to promote unity and respect for diversity. To bring people together and provide and enriching, inspiring multicultural experience to people of the community. We are very excited to be here.

When we arrived, we met many of the volunteers and were welcomed with hugs all around. When we began setting up the tent, the rain began to sprinkle. It was so light that you almost couldn’t feel it and lasted about 15 minutes, which we were happy to see. We wandered around the festival grounds and scoped out the area where our display tent will be. We will be in the healing pavilion, so this should be right up Thom’s alley!

I will try to keep up with everything as the weekend goes along, so we’ll see how that goes!

Let the festival begin!!!!!

It has been a few days since my last blog and I should have done this sooner.

We are finally returning home after 21 days on the road.

We have just completed another successful RAM clinic in Oklahoma City, OK where we made many new friends and saw old friends from past clinics in the area. We also missed some friends; Jenny, who recently moved with her family to Colorado; Rhonda, who couldn’t make it this year; and Joe, one of our RAM team who had to stay home due to health issues. We missed having them with us more than they can imagine.

We woke up this morning to a storm happening northeast of the city at sunrise. The sky was filled with lightning and beautiful colors. We both just stood at the window of the hotel room and watched it with awe until it had passed from view.

There are two rest areas on I-40 in Oklahoma before we get to the Arkansas state line. One of them is where the last picture of Rip, our big brown dog, was taken after the Oklahoma City clinic in 2010. His health began to fail rapidly at this clinic and our main focus was to get him home to his own vet.  Even now, as we pass this rest area, we still can’t bring ourselves to stop there and I try my best not to cry. It is hard to believe it has been over 4 years since we lost him. I can still remember sitting in the floor of the semi-truck with his head in my lap on the ride home, praying for him to last until we could get him home to Dr. B.

We had time between the Brownsville, TX and Oklahoma City, OK clinics to do some sightseeing (almost unheard of). Thom and I took the back roads up to Oklahoma City from south Texas and it was a wonderful change from the interstate. We went through small towns, around courthouse squares, drove through the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma, and across plains that were filled with sunflowers. We saw longhorn cattle, gorgeous lakes, and had lunch under a beautiful tree with a cool breeze blowing over us. Thom made the comment that it was almost like a Jeep trip, except we couldn’t explore the dirt roads. I made plenty of notes for places to return and we look forward to that day happening soon.

While we waited to set up the Oklahoma City clinic, we got the chance to visit a couple of interesting places.  The Cowboy Heritage Museum and Red Rock Canyon State Park were both very interesting and we enjoyed them each in a different way. They each deserve their own blog and so this will happen in the near future.

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas today we began to see storm clouds to the north of us. The sky was filled with roiling gray clouds and a tint of pinkish orange. As we followed the road, we made a turn toward those clouds and the wind began to pick up. You could see the dust flying high and you could feel the semi shake as the wind hit us broadside. In my mind, I tried not to envision pictures of trucks I had seen turned on their sides from high winds. It was both exciting and scary at the same time. I can truly understand why people are storm chasers. Seeing and feeling something that has so much power just overwhelms your senses.

A few minutes after beginning to get some rain from the clouds, we turned east again and left the storm behind us.

We are now sitting in a truck stop in Heth, AR and if all goes as planned, we will be home tomorrow.




 







 













 

In a rare day off for the RAM team, we were able to visit the beach and it was quite wonderful. The beach we chose to visit was at Boca Chica State Park, an undeveloped Texas beach park. On the way to the beach, we stopped at the site of the Battle of Palmito Ranch. This was the site of the last battle of the Civil War on May 12-13, 1865. The victory of this battle went to the Confederate soldiers, however they learned that the Civil War had ended 32 days earlier when General Robert E. Lee signed the surrender documents on April 9, 1865. As we stood at the site of the last battle, it was hard to imagine men fighting in the cactus and heat of south Texas. Although a beautiful area, it is such an unforgiving landscape.

 While at the beach, a large family was grilling their lunch and it smelled wonderful. Of course, Thom, being Thom, walked over to the husband and asked what spices he had used on the meat. We found out that there was a small grocery store where you could order all of the spices together and marinate the meat for you. They asked Thom if we would like to eat with them, but there were 7 of us and we certainly didn’t want to eat up all of their food, so we politely said no thank you. As we were getting ready to leave, one of the sons came running up to the van with a plate of food for everyone to taste and the mother arrived with hugs for everyone. You wouldn’t have thought that one plate could hold enough food for 7 people, but we all had plenty to eat. There was chicken, sausage, potato salad, pico, and rice. The food was sooooo gooooood. It made our mouths water just to look at it all!




We learn a lesson every time we step out of our comfort zones. In this instance, I believe that some of the team were amazed that people would be so giving of what they had for no reason other than kindness. It is a beautiful world with wonderful people in it. All we have to do is open our minds and be willing to interact with people who are very different from ourselves.

My first love for the drum goes back to my childhood. Like most kids, I played on pots, pans, and anything else that would make a noise. In 7th grade I tried playing the snare drum with the band and I loved it. The problem was that being in the band took way too much of my outside time and I really didn’t want to put forth the effort that it required to learn to play the drum.

I also had a friend, Larry, who was into drumming. He had a really nice set of kit drums and I would go to his house periodically and he would show me some of the basics for playing. That also was not working for me.  Although I enjoyed playing around on the drums, I could not focus on what it took to be a musician. In my teens, I was more interested in motorcycles, not learning to read music and practicing every day.

For those that know me well they also know most of the time I wander around like a lost puppy looking for something to get into. After a while, I get bored and I am off in search of something else.

Then, in my 40’s, I learned about hand drums. While living in St. Petersburg, FL, Judy and I were wandering around in a Pier One Import store. In a corner sat some African gourd drums. I began to look them over and they had a pretty hefty price tag on them. The clerk said they were really not made for playing but more for decoration in the home. I pondered this a bit and then I tapped one of them. I liked the way it sounded. I picked the drum up to take a better look. As I scanned over the drum there were many scratches all along the side and when you got to the bottom of the drum there was a piece missing from the base of the drum. I knew I wanted this drum. After some discussion with Judy on how much money I could spend, I asked the clerk what was the best he could do on the price of the drum. “What are they marked at?” he asked. I told him and he said that was the best he could do. I then pointed out all the dings and the big piece missing from the bottom. Of course, at this point, the manager had to be involved and after some conversation we managed to reach a price agreement on the drum. I took the drum home and played and played and played and played and played. I wasn’t playing tunes or rhythms, but I felt like I was a kid again banging on the pots and pans. It felt so good.

Judy began looking for a local drum circle in the area and read about a student doing a college project to bring the community together. This project was a drum circle on the beach in Treasure Island. We decided to check it out and had a wonderful experience. There were elderly people playing small gongs and small children shaking coffee cans filled with stones and everyone was smiling. There was something about being on the beach surrounded by happy people playing drums that made me feel joyful inside. I believe it was this drum circle experience that made me realize that drumming would become a way of life for me.

Each time we went to this weekly drum circle, the more I was consumed by the experience as a whole. Something about this type of drumming went beyond any attention span and put me in a place that calmed me completely. I would play that Pier One drum constantly,  never realizing how hard I was hitting, until one day as I was playing at the drum circle and we had completed our set I picked up the drum and a piece of the already busted bottom fell off.  I still have that first drum and play it, carefully nowadays, when it calls to me. Drums have come into my life and created something that allows me to shut myself down from all the stress that goes with everyday life.