Spring 2009: I get by with a little help from my friends.

One of the coolest things about traveling with Barrage is the continual opportunity to meet up with friends who are now living outside Arizona, or even to reconnect with friends I haven't seen in years. I've been incredibly fortunate to meet up with quite a few this past spring. As is the tradition with this blog, I post the pictures of these reunions. Here goes!

With Christel McDowell, a good friend of mine from my days at ASU, somewhere in Minnesota! I only wish my friend Jay, her fiance, would have been able to make it, too! Oh well...there's always the next time I'm in town.

Grabbing pancakes after the show in West Chester, PA with one of my best friends from high school, Joanna Sung (sitting to my left), and two of her friends from Philly. I'm so glad I have friends from high school (which seems so long ago!) with whom I'm still in touch!

When we were in Rockford, Illinois, I received a facebook friend request--out of the blue--from my friend Seth Lagerhausen, whom I had not seen in probably 8 years or so...? When I was in the school musical in 7th grade, Seth was a 9th grader and we became friends at the time because we were both the same brand of unusually-short junior high student. For multiple years, I had searched for Seth on facebook and had, unfortunately, kept spelling his last name wrong (adding an extra 'u'). Here's the where the story gets crazy. Seth friended me while I was in Rockford (where he currently lives and goes to school), two days before the show, which he had been planning on attending anyway without even knowing I was in the group! Ridiculous--and we're still the same height after all these years!

In Cheyenne, WY, my friend Matt, who went to school in Northern Colorado at the time, came with his friend Kat. I was really nervous for Matt to see the show because he was my first musician/performer friend to come see it!

The Barns in Wolftrap, VA...literally, the hall is a barn.
One of my favorite venues from this past spring.

My friends Matt and Alan from ASU came to the show in Wolftrap. And because they had both previously seen the show earlier in the year in Maryland, they win the award for "First Friends to See Me in Barrage Twice!"

Also in Wolftrap, my family friend Jessie Underwood, who my parents consider to be the "daughter they never had," came with her friend Joey.

It was awesome getting to see Jessie because she and Joey took me on a nighttime driving tour of Washington, DC! [As a sidenote, DC is one of my favorite cities in the US.] And as proof, I took a picture in front of the Capitol!

After we finished up a tour in Florida in May, I had the lucky opportunity to visit my friend Ryan Caparella in Miami. Ryan came to our final show in Stuart, FL, and then I rode back to his house with him where I crashed on an incredibly comfortable air mattress for two nights before flying home to AZ. Here I am with Ryan, his awesome roommate Helen, and their house cat, Sam, in front of his house on the final day. [We didn't have a good surface on which to place the camera, so it's precariously teetering on Helen's sideview mirror.] Ryan, also a violinist, was one of my two roommates for six weeks at the Killington Music Festival in Vermont during the summer of 2007. It was great being able to hang out with him for two full days, and I hope to get the opportunity to enjoy his incredibly culinary talents soon again!

I'm so glad that I get the opportunity to see and hang out with all these people I'd rarely (or never) see if I was in Arizona full-time--it's truly one of my favorite parts of this job.

Here's to seeing more friends this summer and fall!