Day 9: Interstate Tour 2018
Downtown Morris, Illinois
The first wave of wet weather set for this weekend had begun to roll over the campground as I rolled out for Morris. The Gebhard Woods Dulcimer and Traditional Music Festival was one of the first gigs that I booked coming into the mountain dulcimer scene back in 2007. It's laid-back, set in a verdant wonderland of green meadows and canals where the music flows freely and, sometimes, so does the sky. Over the years, I've had my concert set cut short twice by violent summer storms and, to be fair, it wasn't just the set that was cut short, but the entire festival shut down due to holy hell, a midwestern storm is coming, get out NOW and that's just the way it goes sometimes. The forecast was looking spotty, but it had cleared by the time that I arrived at Goold Park.
Wayne Simms and two monsters.
After a nice bike ride down the towpath of the I&M Canal, the sun had won over the mottled gray clouds and I took the Mavic up for a quick spin. The Lindseys and The Simms and I, plus a vendor, form a little four-unit RV camp on one side of the park. It was through talking with folks at these festivals over the years that got me thinking about getting an RV for touring. One of the most helpful has been Wayne Simms, who has given me some fabulous practical advice on dealing with motorhomes. He and Becky have owned five different coaches of varying sizes and are currently cruising in a Tiffin 31' Class A that's one hell of a sweet ride.
As much as I loved Rita, my first motorhome, it's still incredible to me that I toured in her for five years and didn't completely lose my shit. Compared to Imua, it was like traveling in a Soyuz capsule with a bathroom.
Imua in the middle. David and Annette Lindsey's rig is to the right.
Already, the plan is to upgrade, once again, in four years to a 31' motorhome (I'm leaning towards the Coachmen Leprechaun - like the one that we rented on this trip.) But I'm not eager to part ways with Imua. This is our third year together and, now that some of those first-year kinks are just potholes in the sideview mirror, she's a delight to drive and spacious enough to feel like a man cave on wheels.
She's a little short in the compartment department outside, but that's better than the zero outside storage that I had with Rita. Every year, I find a better solution for downsizing gear, packing better. Containers for product that have squared sides are so much more practical than rounded ones. The things you learn.
I was hoping to sit down and pick some after arriving at the park, but as I got deeper into my admin pile, there remained a situation that needed to be handled and I jumped on it.
Since probably 1998, I've hosted my data files with Finch Interactive and this includes all of my web sites over the years and media for Dulcimerica, the latter of which has over ten years of videos which are linked to Apple iTunes and hundreds and thousands of sites internationally. The day before I left for tour, they announced that they'd no longer be hosting commercial sites and that we had 30 days to find a new host. Needless to say, the timing was kind of sucky, but life's full of these tests so, what are you gonna do?
The tip of the iceberg - Apple iTunes page for Dulcimerica.
Gonna sit here, start the process and enlist the help of someone who can do some HTML coding. Signed up with Podbean, began transferring files and updating feed items, ran into some kind of cloud error with some archived files and all this on a personal hotspot with two bars so it's going reeaallllll slowwwww and it's not how I wanted to spend the evening. Sa la vie! Gotta be done. Thankfully, my emergency flare has been seen and some tech aide has been offered, so I need to take an inventory of what I've got, assign administrative logins, provide a clear and defined path to project completion and then, as the song says, "let it goooo."
Right now, we're "let it goooo"-ing to bed.