Walk in Thompson Park

My knee was feeling good today so we went for a 2.5 mile hike in Thompson Park.  It was a nice fall day.

NJSO Concert

We really enjoyed the concert today.  It was Xian Zhang's debut as music director and it was in NJPAC, which has much better acoustics than the other venues.  It was an hour's drive to get to the 1:30 concert and parking was tight.
The program was all Tchaikovsky, which seems fairly ordinary, but she is such a dynamic conductor and hearing it live really makes a difference.

• Polonaise from Eugene Onegin
• Piano Concerto No 1 with fantastic pianist Simon Trpceski.  Not sure we've ever heard a Macedonian musician before.
• Symphony No 5

Quilts Hung at Last

I took the quilts down from the great room walls so I could enter some of them in the quilt show last May.  We finally hung them up again today.

Quilt 47

This pattern is by Linda Warren.  I took a class from her in Tupper Lake this summer, but that quilt isn't finished yet.  This is another pattern of hers that I really like.  The fabrics are mostly from Jinny Beyer's palette collection.

Quilt 46

I'm slowly finishing several quilts I worked on over the summer.  The main fabric in this one is some I bought a few years ago to do a stack-n-whack.  But when I looked at it again, it seemed too pretty to cut up so I created this shadow box effect instead.

Another Great Concert

We drove to Princeton today for another great concert.  It was part of the Westminster Conservatory at Nassau series which showcases folks from Westminster Choir College.  The musicians were faculty from Westminster playing oboe, clarinet and bassoon performing the following pieces.
Rustiques pour tri d'anches by Joseph Canteloube
La Traviata by Verdi, transcribed for reed trio

A Walk on the Beach

The weather has been gorgeous ever since we have been back from camp, which of course means we really need more rain.  But today was especially nice with the temperature forecast to reach a record high in the low 80's.  So we drove the 45 minutes to Point Pleasant Beach were we had a very nice walk on the beach.  My knee even behaved so maybe the cortisone shot is finally doing its thing.

Red Bank Chamber Music

Today's performance by the Omni Piano Quartet was wonderful as always.  They played
Mozart - Piano Quartet in G minor
Joaquin Turina - Piano Quartet in A minor
Camille Saint-Saens - Piano Quartet in B-flat

Praying Mantis

This fellow was on the sidewalk when we went out for our walk.

Back to NJ

We drove back to New Jersey on October 4th, in time for me to get a cortisone shot in my knee the following day.  The leaves were just getting pretty in the Adirondacks so we should have stayed about a week longer to see the peak.  We'll have to remember that for the future.  The rest of our plans for the month were mostly canceled because my knee was really acting up.

2016 Paddling Summary

I only did 10 paddles this year due to my bad knee.  I hurt it again getting out of the boat at Blue Mountain Lake, so that was my last paddle.

• Blue Mountain Lake
• Cedar River Flow
• Floodwood to Polliwog
• Long Pond
• Massawepie
• Middle Branch of St Regis River
• Rainbow Lake
• Raquette River - Axton to Crusher
• Raquette River - Crusher to Moody
• Second Pond to locks and then to Bluff Island