The Adventure Continues...

So, I just had a really great time in Philly playing with Lacy James at L'Etage for her CD release party, catching up with an old friend, and meeting new friends the whole weekend long.  The guys in the band we hired were all amazing professionals, most of whom played on the album.  And I got to toast 10 years of friendship with my friend Virginia.  

On Friday night we headed out there, late unfortunately, because, for Lacy, there was an overwhelming amount of stuff to get done so she was forced to push it down to the wire. We made it to Turtle Studios in South Philly just in time for rehearsal and met all the guys. Getting started right away we pushed on until just past midnight so that we could try to touch on each of the 14 songs at least once.  By that point, though, everyone was pretty much exhausted and Lacy nor I had even seen our respective hosts nor dropped off our bags.  Lacy and I discovered soon that the friend she was staying with lived ridiculously close to the friend I was staying with, which made the whole weekend's logistics just slightly less complicated.  And made for an easy decision on my last night there.  

Early Saturday morning we all reconvened at the studio and began fine tuning each song so the guys could all lock in the structures and we could coordinate things like who counts in which songs and for Tony, our percussionist and hammered dulcimer player, could learn the ins and outs of the occasional keyboard parts he had to play when both Ross and I were playing guitar.  It was so much fun working on a show like this with so many instrument changes and it really does keep you on your toes.  I had to play the electric and acoustic guitars, the keyboards (both piano and synth, sometimes multiple synth parts on the same song) and the mandolin in addition to singing backup vocals on three of the songs.  Tony was all over the place with different percussion toys and drums on different songs, the dulcimer on two songs and keys on a few more.  Even Ross opted to play the bells on In The Garden, a tune off Lacy's first album.   The only people who stayed put were Jeff on bass and Alec on the drums...and of course Lacy on vocals.  

After our Saturday rehearsal stretched until 2pm, we gathered up our stuff and I went to finally eat a decent meal (I had been eating mostly fruit and nuts to save time the whole morning) at a place called Silk City diner.  Steak and Eggs has never tasted so good.  Then I finally met with Virginia, with whom I was staying.  Poor Cylar, her daughter, was sick and miserable but we hung out with her the rest of the afternoon while we waited for the babysitter to come. Then we took the bottle of wine we had bought while out on a walk with Cylar to a restaurant called Figs close to V's place.  The food here was amazing and I didn't have to worry about gluten because all of their sauces are advertised as gluten free.  So, that was nice.  I believe I ordered the crab-stuffed sole with mashed potatoes and haricots verts while Virginia had this duck breast with some kind of bread and spinach.  It was pretty tasty, too.  

After our dinner, we went to meet some of her friends at a bar sometimes referred to as the most Philly bar in Philly.  Bob and Barbara's.  Home of the Citywide Special (a PBR and a shot of Jim Beam).   We were crashing a girl's night and stayed here a good hour or so listening to good jazz while I got to know some of her Philly friends.  Every time V ordered the Citywide, I ended up drinking the shot half, due to my dietary restrictions.  So, by the time we got to the next place, a combination beer and bowling alley in the Northern Liberty neighborhood often referred to as NoLibs, I was ready to call it a night. Luckily, so was V so we went back to relieve the baby sitter and turn in. After all, Sunday was to be a long day and I wanted to be at my best.  

A good eight hours of sleep later, I woke up refreshed and we hit up another local restaurant called the London Grill for brunch.  This place had a build your own Bloody Mary bar and several different infused vodkas, the most interesting one being bacon-infused, understandably listed at the top of the Vodka menu. I'm not really a Bloody Mary person but I figured, "why not?"  After all, when in Rome.  I enjoyed it, too, until I got a little too experimental, after going back to look over the other ingredients they had, and dumped too much liquid smoke in.  Before it was just tomato juice, celery bitters, pickled watermelon and a host of spicy things like chipotle pepper sauce, black pepper and the like.  

Kevin, Virginia's husband showed up part way through brunch because he had been visiting a friend of his, the previous night so we got to catch up a little bit too, which was nice.  I left them around 3, so I could reconnect with Lacy to pick up our equipment which was left at the studio all weekend.  I found her and her friend at a local coffee shop, OCF, (which had gluten free options for all the offerings!) across from the Eastern State Penitentiary and, after they finished their food, we walked back to her friend's place to get some merchandising details sorted out because her friend would be helping with that at the show.  Then we trucked it over to Turtle, picked up what we could and went to load in at L'Etage.  

The venue is above a creperie type restaurant on Bainbridge and N.6th Streets called Beaumonde.  Cool thing about this place is that, on our way back from Raleigh back in December, we stopped through and asked them if they would make their crepes without the crepes (as in just a pile of ingredients). They were accommodating and, in fact, said they do it all the time.  Gluten free seems to be catching on all over the place.  The bartender was even nice enough to check several dishes for me with the cooks in the kitchen.  We ordered and ate upstairs after having set up (which took almost no time at all) and sound checked. The stage at L'Etage was weirdly shaped (essentially a raised and elongated rectangle with banquets on three sides) so set up was a bit of a challenge but, even with six cooks in that kitchen, we were able to come up with a set up that took advantage of a long table that usually sits up there that we used for the keyboards and laptops. Lacy and I set up on either side of it at the front of the stage and everyone else behind us.  Tony and I were dancing around each other the whole time as my set up was basically right next to his and he had to use some of my setup (namely, the keyboard) and I had to keep going behind him to pick up different guitars.  

All in all, the performances were a success and we were well received by a diverse crowd, most of them either my friends or Lacy's friends and family and members of her production team and the producer from her first album.  We all had a great time and stayed behind for a few drinks after the premier of the video for Old Languages, which was also well received.  I had a ton of fun performing again and especially with such talented musicians.  All of whom were highly professional and pulled together an astonishing fourteen songs in an incredibly short amount of time.  I had the advantage of knowing them all ahead of time (some more than others) for the most part and having rehearsed them with Lacy a bunch, but they had to learn a lot on their own and piece it together without us there.  

Luckily, we made it work and were even able to improvise some parts that we didn't have the instruments for. The show at Drom in the East Village in a week and a half is going to be tons of fun as well but will present new challenges as we will have a slightly different lineup.  I will be playing guitar on more songs and Tony will play keys where I am unable to.  But the challenge of realizing recorded music in a live format is part of the fun of this whole experience.  I have been performing with Lacy for just about two years now and having a blast working with her.  She is such a creative person and her music presents all kinds of new challenges to me but it is always refreshing to be challenged musically.  It always inspires me to do more with my own music and reminds me how much I love performing live.  Up until Lacy and I teamed up I wasn't really performing live and would get something I dubbed "rock out envy" every time I went to see an awesome band. Now, I'm finally feeling in my element again performing.  And closer doing what I want to be doing.  

Anyway, we had one last night of drinking, just Lacy and I and her friend in the Fairmount neighborhood.  It was so damned cold that, after storing our stuff at her friend's place and parking, we slid into the first open bar we could find and chatted the night away.  This morning I actually ate at that cafe with the gluten free options, OCF cafe and we headed out of town from there, the Philly adventure over for now, arriving in Brooklyn with just enough time for me to decompress for half an hour before coming to work.  

This week we'll hopefully get to rehearse some and prepare ourselves for a slightly different experience. Next week's show at Drom is on the 28th of February, so if you're in NYC I expect you to come out and support!  It'll be legendary! Plus, there's the premier of the video for Old Languages directed by my good friend Mohammad Maaty.  Show starts at 8pm! 

Perspective...

I'd like to talk about perspective tonight.  I've been thinking a lot lately about how easy it is to be down on myself for not having accomplished enough, not having arrived at certain milestones I hoped to or expected to have arrived at, or just not being busy enough at any given moment. I try not to get overwhelmed with the sheer number of ambitions I currently have, and struggle constantly with how not to neglect any or all of them. 

I'm just finishing the end of my first work week post vacation and I still don't feel fully acclimated and back on my routine. I even kept up with music work while I was gone, both on the film score and the dance music and did some editing for the videos from the Galapagos Art Space show back in May.  I even almost got another voice over gig and planned ahead enough to bring my equipment and software to Raleigh in case I had to voice something while I was there. (Two thumbs up there because I totally would have pulled it off had they actually offered me the spot). 

I had a good 9 day vacation, the first part of which was spent here in the city, visiting with my folks who drove up here to hang out and meet my girlfriend one day, driving upstate the next day with them to my family reunion in East Greenbush, NY.  After this it was back to Brooklyn for a night then down to Virginia the next morning to see my sister and her family, then the very next day on to NC to laze around my parents' pool and see my other sister.  As if this wasn't enough driving, my folks needed to turn over their rental units in Boone, NC near Appalachian State University so I hitched a ride to see my brother.  After an afternoon enjoying Boone culminating in a fantastic jam session, we drove back to Raleigh the next morning and I spent two more afternoons by the pool right up until I had to fly back on Thursday to NYC.

After such a fun filled and, somehow, simultaneously lazy week, it would be easy to feel overwhelmed getting back to the city.  Funny enough, when I examined what I was most concerned about, it was the one thing that I had neglected (in fact, was forced to neglect in a way): Voice over auditions.  Now, forget for a minute that, on any given day, I'm at the mercy of the automated casting system with the sites that I'm a part of and whether the spots they send me are even a fit for my voice.  Besides there not being that many gigs I would have applied for, I had a lot of other things to do.  Chief among them taking it easy for a few days.  And I most certainly did.

I finally came to it today, though, what would make me feel better about the past week: looking not at what slipped through the cracks but what go picked up, essentially.  Then, taking a step further back, looking at those things I have accomplished so far this year (it's only slightly more than halfway over, after all).  Versus what is yet to be done.  I mean, if you think about it, changing my perspective as such is probably more likely to give me the boost I need to knock out those remaining tasks, than sitting around kicking myself, am I right?

So, let's wrap: in the last week, while I was supposedly vacationing, I finished editing Tania's videos from the Galapagos show, made some more revisions on the Samurai score, before my vacation even started I hammered out a mock-up for the dancer I'm writing for now, and discovered that, should I happen to get a voice gig when I'm in NC visiting my parents, packing my suitcase with a mere 8 extra pounds of stuff (i.e. audio equipment), is all I need to do to ensure that I don't miss any opportunities.

Looking at this entire year so far, what have I done?  I've gotten my first 6 paid voice over gigs, scored four short films and a promo, and had a world premiere of one of my pieces at a world class venue in New York City.

Since, I got back to the city, I also got organized and looked at my expenses and cash flow and realized that after all of the above, I am not operating my business at a loss like last year.  Granted, I'm not making all that much money in the grand scheme of things but, in keeping with the theme of this blog, I choose to focus on the positive. 

Either way, missing out on auditioning for a week is not going to kill me.  And just the simple act of counting up all those accomplishments has lifted my spirits quite a bit. I think I can relax now and enjoy the start of my weekend.  And you all should enjoy the links I'm about to post to the Galapagos show.

http://www.timdaoust.com/2012/08/improvisation-with-tania-stavreva/
http://soundcloud.com/composertim/quivering-filament-of

The Time Management Ninja...

I gotta admit I was almost stumped there on how to squeeze in all the activities I had planned this week.  But my grad school time management skills have not yet failed me.  I figured out a way to go to almost every yoga class I wanted to, make up one of the two make up co-op shifts I owe before my vacation starts, pack for said vacation, stretch my remaining clean clothes until I have time to do laundry on Wednesday, fit in rehearsals with Lacy and two of the three open mics we wanted to do, a meet up with Tania about the video from Galapagos at my place Thursday morning and find some quality time with a friend I've been seeing.  Indeed I might even have time to meet another friend for drinks before she moves to Florida next week and, god willing, train my cat to stop peeing on my couch (bought some Nature's Miracle no spray spray on the way to brunch after church this morning).

And on top of it all, I have time to still work a full time job and juggle two music projects.  Regrettably, voice over is taking a break this week, but that's okay because I got another gig from the guy out in Oregon I've been voicing videos for and have finished that already.  The two music projects are the Samurai film, for which I await instruction on the next round of revisions, and a mockup for a collaboration with Marie-Christine Giordano, the dancer whom I met at the bus stop a few months back who knew Lacy from their days at Martha Graham.

That's a fun project and it'll be a nice change from all the film work I've done lately.   So far we've sat down at her studio, bounced around ideas and came up with a palette of sounds which I'm currently trying to creatively string together into something coherent.  Little by little.  It's coming along well and I'm really psyched for this project.  I love working with dancers but I also love a project where I can come in early on in the process.  More on this later.

I have an exciting week with Lacy coming up too.  We're reconnecting with the open mic scene while she simultaneously scouts locations for some potential gigs.  On Wednesday night at 7pm we hit Bar 82 in the E. Village and on Thursday we will try out a new one: Lucky Jack's on the LES.  I'm psyched for both especially the new one.  Later that night we will go see her friend Tom Tallitsch, a jazz musician she's worked with, at The Garage in the W. Village.

And all this is made more exciting by the fact, that after this Tuesday, I don't have to be back at work until the 3rd of August, a full 9 days off!  My folks will be in town Friday and we will likely do a leisurely day in Brooklyn, potentially Botanical Gardens or something else outside…perhaps even the Intrepid museum, which I discovered I can get into free with my NY1 badge.  Saturday we will head upstate for the Cousins by the Dozens family reunion.  Then Sunday we drive to Virginia to see my sister's family, Monday it's to NC to see my other sister's family and laze around by the pool.  Then Tuesday, I go see my brother in the mountains of NC, with a potential jam session still on the docket the last time I spoke with mon frère.  Then, it's back to NC for at least one more full day of lazing by the pool.  I know.  It sounds like a lot of travel.  But the pay off is I get to see everyone.  But I am going to get sick of cars.  I'll probably blog later on this week and as I'm traveling.  For now, I'm going to sleep though because this crazy week I have planned starts tomorrow morning at 8am!

Birthday...

Third birthday in New York. By now I've built up enough friends here from various different circles that I managed a gathering of 13 friends Friday night at Heathers bar in the East Village (well 14 if you count one friend's guest).  It was a fun time.  Really.  I only paid for one drink because there was no shortage of people willing to buy them for me (heck, even the bartender bought me a beer!), the bar never got too crowded and a close friend from out of town who stayed with me paid for the cab ride home.  This is the kind of birthday celebration I was after, lots of friends, free drinks and free cab fare home.  I find myself less and less wanting gifts and often would rather have experiences for my birthday.  Stories to tell, friends to laugh with and drinks being drunk. 

When I arrived home, though, there was a bag of gluten free cookies and a Lindt dark chocolate bar with chilies sitting on the kitchen table from my cousin.  So, I did get something tangible for my birthday...tangible and edible.  And I also got something intangible but rather unforgettable...a hangover.  But mostly stories, too.  Today was a whirlwind day, sort of, but was also relaxing and fun.  And there are a few anecdotes to tell...and even pictures!

The friend who stayed over was none other than Karishma, who was visiting from LA where she now lives with her husband.  This morning we went to brunch (which, as per my earlier FB status consisted of bacon and mimosas, among other things...we joked at one point that I should have asked them to bring my side of bacon out with a birthday candle in it).   My cousin came along and we met two friends of Karishma's there at Korzo just down the block from me.  The brunch there is always good.  Hell, everything there is good.  Even the things I can't eat, so I hear.

After brunch, Karishma and I, went off on our own to Staten Island to visit Snug Harbor, a really beautiful and secluded botanical garden that is relatively unfrequented and therefore a nice spot to laze away an afternoon and feel far removed from city life.  I had been once before two years ago but didn't really explore the garden all that much.  We kind of just stayed in one area of it, and while we saw some beautiful parts of it, we didn't get the full scope of the place.  And I'm not saying I did this time either but I did wander down a little and stumble on a castle-like structure that was connected to a fenced in hedge maze leading to a secret garden.   At this point, our time to get back to the city was dwindling because I had tickets to see Mike Doughty at City Winery at 8pm (doors were at 6:30pm) and needed to touch base back at home and grab my phone charger...checking Facebook to see who's posted birthday wishes on my timeline sure runs your battery down.

Mike Doughty is one of my favorite artists these days and, though, I recently saw him at Brooklyn Bowl with some friends who also know all the words and had a great time at the show, I caught wind of the City Winery residency and had to snag up tickets.  It's an intimate venue and how cool is it that it's a winery in the city and they make their own wine and serve it on tap?! I picked table seats right next to the stage and must have bought them four months ago.  At the time I didn't have any clear idea who I'd go with.  My brother had been planning on coming to the city this weekend but that plan fell through before I could even buy the tickets but I figured, it's my birthday, I wanna do something fun for me.  So I bought two and figured I would sort out my date for the night later.  So, I ultimately invited a friend I just met a month ago the weekend that I ran into all those old Greensboro folks.  It was a good night all around, the food and wine there is amazing (I had the 10oz Ribeye because again, it's my birthday and I can) and the music was great.  Even Doughty's opener was a crowd pleaser and sort of stole the show a little.  Bobby Bare Jr. is a Nashville, TN musician with a sinister and comical edge that lit up the room and cracked us all up, singing songs about killing your loved one like "One of us has got to go." Hilarious!  Apparently, he's worked with Shel Silverstein and written songs with him, one of which he performed early on in his set.  Brilliant.

Doughty came on strong and was funny the whole night as usual.  Played just about everything I wanted to hear and heckled and poked fun at the crowd when they'd start shouting out requests.  "No, I'm not gonna play that one tonight," "Yeah, maybe later," or "I'll play this one now 'cause someone called out in the back of the room," were common retorts.  He even stopped and explained the whole Soul Coughing back story when he got tired of saying no to requests for Soul Coughing songs.   I was happy to hear "Thank you Lord for sending me the F train," among others.

I was not, however, happy to hear the douchie bridge and tunnel f@#$bags at the table behind me who were celebrating their friends' anniversary and wouldn't stop chattering through the set.  Doughty stopped before the second song and said "I'd just like reiterate my talking policy..." saying essentially that if the people around you want you out he'd have no problem bouncing you.  I wished he'd have made good on that one.  After the second time he commented on the chatter, jockie douche bag behind me was muttering something about breaking Mike Doughty's glasses, like he knows he's the one being called out.  I mean, I get it, no one likes being called out but Ooooo, it boils my blood when some ass bag starts disrespecting musicians, especially musicians I'm trying to appreciate on stage.  A guy two seats over from me with a bad Kenny G haircut even asked him to be quiet and got a nice healthy "go f@#$ yourself" out of this clown...at which point, I craned my neck around to get a good look at him.  As I suspected premium Grade A bridge and tunnel trash, only there to drink and eat expensively while being an asshole to everyone in the room.  I tried oh so hard to enjoy the rest of the show and shut out the images of the entire bar ganging up on him in the alley.

I'm sure if he'd have gotten much more belligerent, he would have gotten booted for sure.  But thankfully, he calmed down...I think he probably had a pretty disappointed or embarrassed significant other tethered to him that put a lid on the worst of it.

Anyhow, the rest of the set was gold and I really enjoyed it.  Doughty did his little routine where he says "this is the fake last song!" and then stands on stage with his back to the audience after he plays it pretending like he's not going to play another three songs...but of course, he does. 

After it was over for real, we left the bar and my date had to go to Williamsburg.  She was meeting a friend who was staying with her and didn't know his way around the city on his own.  So we parted ways and I opted to walk through Soho to Prince St.  I got maybe a block away from 6th Avenue before the rain started to pour down out of nowhere.  Rain which thankfully held off through the better part of my day outside but which soaked me to the bone at the very end of my night.  All I could do was laugh and try in vain to hail a cab but ultimately, I wound up with a soggy ride on the N train home to Park Slope where I now sit typing this.  Not too shabby a birthday all around, even with the drenching.  I'm content. 

Tomorrow I meet another set of friends for lunch and then, Tania and I are playing a concert in Times Square area to raise money for her album release at 4pm.  Wish me luck with that.  And let's hope I don't get rained on again.  Here are pics from the day today:

2012 Birthday best shots

Swarthmore and Philly...

Just back from Philly today, having ridden on a Bolt Bus for the first time since the accident.  That was fun.  But so was Philadelphia and the concert last night at Swarthmore College.  Every spring and fall they do an alumni and student composers' concert at Swarthmore and Lacy, being an alumnus, was invited back to perform again.  We did her song Moon of Fire which we've been practicing and have performed a handful of times at various open mics lately.  I think she's going to post a youtube video of our performance, too.

The other performances at the concert were all great and there was such a diversity of styles and genres represented, from folk songs, to pop songs, to contemporary concert music to vocal music to duets to small ensemble pieces with percussion, even some electronic music.  I even got to meet some of the alumni composers, one of whom is a professor at NYU, another of whom organized the event and was a phenomenal pianist.  Some of the composers were not present at the concert, the more well-known of them, like James Matheson, a pretty big orchestral composer who has had works performed by the NY Philharmonic, and Peter Shickele better known as the fictional composer, P.D.Q. Bach.  Yes, I had no idea that the P.D.Q. Bach attended Swarthmore College until Lacy clued me in.  And I had forgotten that until Saturday night at the concert when they introduced some of his more serious work that he composed under his real name, Peter Shickele.

So, overall I had a good time.  Murat, my friend the oud player, who helped out on the score to Mohammad's film, showed up with his girlfriend, too.  They live in Philly and drove out for the event, despite the snow (I mean, I guess the snow wasn't all that bad…it only provided me with a slushy, hurried walk to the subway after work and wet socks on the way into the concert hall and was not enough to deter me…although it cause some cancellations on Amtrak).  Anyway, we all went out after the concert, deciding to meet in Center City.  Turns out they both live down there as does Lacy so it was convenient.  After we each found parking, we met back up in the lobby of Lacy's building and began wandering in the cold to find a watering hole and, after trying a few places, wound up at Fergie's Pub.  Chatting about everything from music to dance to Occupy Philly, we stayed out until almost 2am.

Hence my tiredness right now.  Sunday morning I got up around 930 and Lacy and I took off eventually for a walk around Center City checking out the architecture and a few random fun things, like the Sound of Philadelphia Souvenir Shop at the Gamble and Huff Studios on the Avenue of the Arts and the Magic Gardens on South Street.

Philly

The Magic Gardens were pretty damn cool, I thought.  Mosaic artist Isaiah Zagar created these mosaics covering every outer wall of this and other buildings in the South Street area.  Composed of his own tiles, mirrors, glass bottles, bike wheels, tiny statuettes and I even saw an old toilet bowl, the work was part of his and his wife's attempts to revitalize the area.

We didn't tour the inside due to time constraints since I had to catch the bus at 3pm and we still wanted to catch brunch.  We might have gone down to the City Hall area to check out the Occupy Philly demonstrations but only really had time to do a drive by on the way to the train station.

The Bolt Bus came pretty quickly and, though it was rickety and devoid of wifi, it got me to my destination just fine, with just one weird moment when the A/C started whining pretty loudly just outside of the Lincoln Tunnel.  Freaked us all out but thankfully nothing more eventful than that happened and I caught the first C train at 34th and 8th and was home in no time.

Went straight through to the overnight shift without a nap because I'm crazy like that and tomorrow I hope to start working on the piano and electronics piece again.  An update on my progress there soon and hopefully I'll even get some VO work done tomorrow afternoon!

Conquered by the Adirondacks...

Okay, first of all, my left leg really hurts right now.  I'm debating going to the doctor about it.  Backpacking did not help it at all, obviously, but it feels way worse.  Worse enough that I'm taking Ibuprofen right now, something I haven't done in years.

The camping trip was a lot of fun though.  Even if we did get cut short and even if I did come off the mountain feeling pretty crappy.  We drove up to Lake George, NY from Albany, stopping briefly to get a few things at an Eastern Mountain Supply store, and lunch, in Saratoga Springs.  Here's a link to the hike that we did.  The Tongue Mountain Range.  I said it was fun but the following description is going to make me sound practically sadistic. 

We were supposed to hike up to the first lean-to about 3 miles in, camp and then do part of the loop, possibly camping further in and making it back to the car early Sunday morning.  We revised this plan when we saw the lean-to was free and decided we'd take what we needed in our day packs leaving the larger ones behind in the lean-to, so that we could make good time around the loop on Saturday and camp in the same spot Saturday night so we'd be near the car.

Then, of course, that plan got blown out too.  We knew as we watched the sun set from a clearing near the lean-to, a rain cloud slowly creeping up, that the weather was going to figure pretty prominently in our plans for the next day.

We couldn't start a fire because everything was too damp, though we tried for an hour or so.  An earlier attempt to use stove fuel to get something going proved futile even if it did almost singe my eyebrows.  (This, immediately after J. Scott said to me, as I was trying to light the fire a bit too cautiously, "I didn't put that much on there." Famous last words.)  Our decision to cut things short, though we made it the next morning upon seeing the rain finally start in earnest, was actually somewhat influenced by this inability to ignite anything.  The camping stove was leaking fuel too, so between that and our lack of campfire, hot food wasn't an option.

We slept pretty soundly in that old lean-to but shortly after we woke and saw the rain starting and felt the cold chill in the air, the lean-to began to leak, first above my head and then above J. Scott's.  A futile attempt was made to repair the camping stove but peanut butter sandwiches ended up being the breakfast of choice.  We then agreed on a plan to hike back to the car, drop our packs and take a smaller pack each, filled with snacks and water, back up the mountain to explore the shorter Dear Leap out-and-back trail.  This took us to a nice vista of the lake and the town of Hulett's Landing on the far shore.  The wind was so heavy that even from our height we could see white caps in the lake.

Dreaming of diner coffee and steak and eggs, we hiked back up the steep incline and back to the car.  Both pairs of socks I was wearing were thoroughly soaked when we arrived at the car because my boots are no longer water-proof apparently.  When I sat down in the car, I felt like I had fever and my bones were chilled.  It was a bizarre sensation, but I guess it was I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and a nylon wind-breaker over it and the hike had simultaneously heated me up and chilled my extremities.  Though I had wrapped my knee before attempting the hike, it throbbed something awful, too.

No matter.  We had called my aunt before setting out to inform her of our predicament.  She offered to have us over so we could get out of the rain and put us up for the night.  Before heading down there, though, we found a little street side diner where I got my much sought after steak and eggs and was able to charge my phone and call my aunt to talk logistics.  We took our time getting down there and made sure we showed up with food and drinks...never mind that it took a wild goose chase around the towns of Coxsackie and Athens and several back roads in between to find a grocery store that was actually across the street from our first stopping point in Coxsackie; the liquor store.  I'm a terrible navigator and was not able to redeem myself the whole weekend.

Anyway, as a result of my plan and my aunt's hospitality, I had a nice relaxing evening as opposed to trying to sleep out in the rain again.  She made us a dinner of ham and cabbage with potatoes (just the thing on a cold evening) and J. Scott and I watched the Florida Gators game until my aunt returned from her defensive driving course.  That night I slept like a rock.  Forget that the Adirondacks beat us.  We were comfortable.   

This evening I still feel pretty sick though and my leg is not happy at all so I'm taking the night off work to recover.  Hopefully, I can stay off my leg for a day and give it some time to actually get better.  Because this Wednesday, I have plans to go to the Statue of Liberty with a friend.  And I'm pretty sure there's no elevator there.

Coming back home to Brooklyn was interesting.  The contractors worked in my apartment at a break-neck pace this weekend and did sort of a sloppy job.  The new sheet rock is stained through brown from the dampness of the bricks and it doesn't even look as though they did anything but make it worse, at least aesthetically.  If I don't hear from my landlord tomorrow about our demands as per the rent for this month and our security deposit, he'll be hearing from me.  With any luck, we'll be looking at new apartments by the end of the week and not this:

Messed up Kitchen

The prospects for this week are starting to look worse than that other week I was complaining about a few entries ago when nothing would go right.  This time, I have a bum leg, I'm getting a cavity filled on Tuesday, I'm still in a crappy apartment and I could go on but I won't.  I found a four-leaf clover today while waiting for the bus in Albany and couldn't help but hope that my luck might change soon.  We'll see.

Bolt to Philly Part Deux, Amtrakin' it back!

So, that was effing crazy. a half hour after I closed my laptop we were slowing to get off the turnpike and someone hit us from behind. Before it happened I was only marginally aware that there might have been something happening. We were slowing pretty fast and our driver hit the rumble strips a little but we weren't in any danger of hitting anyone. Then, a huge thud and my neck swung forward. We were stopped again just as soon as it happened so the truck that hit us couldn't have been going all that fast though my neck did snap back a little. We all looked around and checked ourselves and made sure the person next to us was okay and then the bus driver began shouting toward the back of the bus to make sure everyone was okay as well. At this point, I had to hand the lady in front of me her shoes as they had slid back. Turning my head to look out the window behind us, I saw another car half spun around and crumpled like a tin can. A second later I heard the bus driver shouting back to the passengers to get off the bus. I went for my bag and then realized it had slid to the seat behind me. Once I had all my effects, thanking my lucky stars I hadn't opted to bring my electric guitar with me to the studio (it would have surely been stuff under the bus in the luggage compartment), I followed the other passengers off the bus. We all then gathered on the shoulder of the highway and as I turned back to look at the bus I saw it:



Our bus was the front end of a vehicle sandwich. The other slice of bread being an 18 wheeler and the meat was a smaller semi. The juice running down the shoulder I assumed was gasoline. About this time I started to notice the other cars. There was one ahead of us which had been rear-ended and I'm assuming was the accident that we were slowing down for. The other cars were off behind the two trucks and I'm not sure how many more there were besides the one I had already seen. I recall, shortly after the initial hit, seeing another car careening off into the ditch just off the shoulder. This one disappeared so I'm assuming the driver, having had such a close call and come out relatively unscathed, decided to keep on driving.

Not so lucky, my fellow passengers and I were being held on the side of the road, subjected to legal red tape. We were told to all stay together and write down our information and then someone with the paramedics, who had arrived almost instantaneously, came around and starting asking who wanted to go to the hospital to get checked out. A few people, probably litigiously motivated, took tags from this guy of varying colors depending on, I guess, the severity of their supposed injuries. I felt nothing but a little soreness in my neck and was hoping, between phone calls to Lacy and my parents, to be able to leave at some point, already hatching a plan to have Lacy meet me at the exit once I filled out the form they were handing out.

While I was waiting for someone to hand me a form, I looked down and saw about ten ants crawling on and under my shirt. Apparently, there are ant hills all over the highway shoulder and I was standing right on top of one. Those bastards bit me too!

At this point, once I had handed in my form to the bus driver and scratched all the ants off of my body, the woman to whom I had handed her shoes approached me and asked me if I was headed anywhere, complaining about the fact that they didn't want us to go anywhere. I could see we were of the same mind and I offered her a ride if we could get out of there without too much trouble. I was simultaneously coordinating said ride with Lacy on the phone. The first time we try to abscond, we were stopped by one of the guys with the tags. Yammering about there being a process and blah blah blah whatever. We feigned compliance and then waited for the next opportune moment and bolted, no pun intended. In fact, it was more of a sneaking than a bolting. All the emergency workers between us and Exit 4 on the New Jersey Turnpike couldn't be bothered with our apparent escape.

It was a short quarter mile hike to the exit and during this time, I found out that Margot was from NYC but had a biomedical business in Philly and therefore took this trip all the time. She was relatively unfazed and like me had business to attend to. We made it to the gas station on the corner of highway 73 and Fellowship Rd. and Lacy met us shortly after but not before I made a few phone calls and accidentally broke the soap dispenser in the men's room sending a cascade of that disgusting neon pink soap down to the floor. I didn't tell the management.

The ride to Philly was short thankfully. Lacy informed me that when I called her it was only about 30 minutes before I was supposed to arrive. And the session at Turtle Studios went well. We only really needed to lay down a few takes of a few different ideas on the guitar and get started with mixing it all in. The guys handed me a blue Les Paul and hooked me up to their Vox amplifier, miked me up, tweaked my sound and handed me a headset. The room was huge and filled with all manner of musical instruments, the most notable an organ and a beautiful Steinway grand. At around 12:30 I had to go back into Philly with Lacy in order to catch the 1pm Amtrak back to NYC and here I sit typing this here blog entry. Hoping to god that nothing jumps in front of the train before we get back to Penn Station…and then I go to work.

So, in short, I'm unscathed but very lucky. Just goes to show that even a semi and an 18 wheeler can't stop this train from gliding down the tracks. Notice I didn't use a bus metaphor.

Uncle Gary

The Hudson River is flying by me outside at the moment, with all it's glorious cliffs on the New Jersey side. I'm currently riding the train up to Beacon right now where I'm meeting a family friend. I'll be staying tonight in Stanfordville with my parents and that family friend (a family friend that lives down the street from the house I was born in!). Saturday morning, we're heading up to Albany for my Uncle's memorial service, who passed away last Friday. It'll be nice to see family but it's with a heavy heart that I go. He was diagnosed with cancer a little too late.

My uncle was a great, fun-loving, jovial, easy-going guy who died way too young. I will always remember him as this laid back sarcastic person with such an arresting belly laugh that you couldn't help but laugh along with him when you heard it. I remember him teaching me how to fish when I was 8 or so, showing me that the best way to extend my bait was to rip the poor earthworms in half, which I did…multiple times. And I recall him always being quick witted. One day, as a young kid, probably on the same earthworm visit, when I hailed him with his full title, Uncle Gary, one too many times he began referring to me as Nephew Tim. I respond to my nephews the same way now.

Always young at heart, one of my favorite memories of him was recent, when we all were visiting at Thanksgiving two years ago in 2009. Groggily napping off a turkey binge on the couch I overheard him and my cousin talking about whiskey. Gary's line was, "I like a good sipping whiskey." Opening one eye and turning my head I said, fully awake now, "me too." As I was about to turn back over and go back to my napping, he says, with one eyebrow raised, "Really?" So, the three of us, my cousin, Gary and I, tiptoed down to the completely-finished basement room of their recently moved-into house where Gary had a makeshift bar set up. Feeling a little delinquent, but not too terribly much, we all sipped Crown Royal Reserve whiskey for the next hour until we were found out by one of the other aunts (Linda, who is part Irish and objected that we didn't invite the only person of Irish descent to our little whiskey party).

Beyond sneaking around like a teenager, I will always remember my Uncle Gary when I'm on a boat or near water. As long as I've known him, he and my aunt have lived near water and had a boat of some kind. Gary was in his element on the water. I remember rowing around Lake Elisabeth with him, kayaking in Pamlico Sound in NC, and most recently, tooling around Sleep Hollow Lake in Coxsackie on his pontoon boat. One of their favorite vacation spots was the Outer Banks of NC where he happened to be the same week of my honeymoon there with my ex-wife, staying in a 3 story rental house on Hatteras, an island away from where my ex and I were camping. Kayaking and wind surfing were primary activities but one morning, Gary found crab traps floating in the sound right by the shore line. So he immediately and enthusiastically drove to the grocery and bought turkey necks to place in the traps to catch crabs with. By the end of the day, we ended up with about 14 crabs in total which contributed to the massive cookout we were already planning on having on the top deck of the house.

So the memories go. I'm certain there will be a lot of laughing tomorrow in addition to a little bit of crying. He is at peace now but will be greatly missed by us all.

Right now, I sit finishing this blog at my friend's house in Poughkeepsie, about a stone's throw away from the house where I was born. Man, does it look different now, too. They've fenced a portion of the yard, put in a pool, rebuilt the stairs, it seems, to the front porch that my sister knocked me off when I was barely 3 years old (long story...and it wasn't her fault), and they paved the driveway as well. The family that lives there has adopted 5 special needs kids and probably wanted a relatively safe place for them to live. Anyway, it's weird seeing it again, barely recognizable after all these years. I should be getting off to sleep soon. My brother is sharing this room with me and I might be keeping him up (by the time I was done proofing this blog he was already snoring on the bed). Good night for now.

Burning both ends of the midnight oil...

Blogging from my phone while sitting in my favorite park. I uploaded pics from the upstate trip the other day.

Best of Upstate NY October 2010

The trip was fun and renting a car was actually not a total disaster. Though it did take a little extra time picking it up, but only because there were people in front of us who couldn't make up their mind whether or not they wanted the insurance or not. We were on the road before 10:30 though and with the help of my mix cds, we had a relatively smooth trip, minus one minor traffic jam on the thruway (...and yes, I said mix cds...I programmed the whole trip!).

We were the only people at the orchard when we arrived so we had the run of the place. We picnicked and then took our bags down to the orchard to explore. Not very many apple varieties were still on the tree but we picked a peck each and, after buying some goods at their store (a pumpkin pie and some apple salsa among other things), we headed down the thruway again to the sculpture park. Because of a truck passing us at the wrong moment, we accidentally missed the exit and, with time running out before closing at the park, I opted to pull an illegal u-turn to get us back on track in lieu of going 20 more miles and paying another toll.

In the end we had about a half hour longer to explore what was a beautiful sculpture park. It was opened back in 1960 and is probably one of the biggest collections of its kind. Some of the work was even commissioned for the park. One in particular being a spot where the earth itself was sculpted into a row of hills.

Meanwhile, I've had some interesting developments here in the city. Last year around this time I got a message from someone who had been scouring the internet looking for music he could arrange for his orchestra in Phoenix. He found "Of Slowly Falling Rain and Autumn Chill" and liked it enough to request a copy of the score. I obliged because I saw it as great exposure but later that day I realized that, if one person likes my music enough to play it others might and i'd be doing myself a great professional disservice if I didn't put it up online and sell it. So I did and I haven't had a bite since. Granted I haven't exactly advertised it's existence but I'll get to that.

Yesterday, in the middle of what was turning out to be another one of those days where I'm feeling like complete shit because of some extraneous factor, probably money, I got an email from someone else who had stumbled on my webpage while scouring the internet for music. She wanted to know how she could buy my music because she had liked a certain song and wanted to use it for a dance piece. This was great, I thought, but it raises a couple of issues. The first being how and what to charge. I, at one point, had an online store but have been spending so much time lately revamping my music and wondering if any of it is "finished" enough to sell, that I haven't even considered keeping up such a venture. Of course, now I'm reconsidering. The other issue is whether to charge for the music as though it were a regular music download and let ASCAP do the job of collecting royalties or to charge this person as though I were licensing them the music for their personal use. I opted to give her the choice because after all, she didn't tell me much about the project other than that it was being thrown together for a show which is happening tomorrow at Triskelion Arts in Williamsburg. Of course, she chose the cheaper of the two evils and I obliged anyway, figuring, all potentially damaging precedent setting aside, at least it's exposure. And exposure of a different sort. Having something posted on the internet, though it is more widely available, does not feel as exciting as having my music played, no matter how small the audience is. Case in point, it was the dance performance a few weeks ago that exposed this person to my music in the first place. When someone's name appears in the program of a performance, they seem more real than a webpage.

Of course, the object now is certainly to make my webpage make me seem more real. That is what the past few days have taught me. That and you should always check on all of your webpages and email accounts as often as is possible. When I went to go check on my online store and see if it was still up on Myspace, I noticed an email from April in my Myspace inbox from someone who said she works A&R for a music supervisor in L.A. and was interested in my music. I immediately started kicking myself and wondering how in the hell I could have missed that. Then, of course, I emailed her back and apologized for missing the email and directed her to my webpage and the rest of my reel.

This all just leads me to the final point I've decided to take from all of this. Be prepared. If you're going to put music out in the ether, be prepared to deliver more of the same...i.e. keep your chops up. Don't neglect it either and let it sit up there and get old. Refresh it all the time. Incidentally, this is why I haven't advertised my music's existence aggressively. I haven't been ready before now for people to actually be interested in buying my music either to perform or listen to but now, or at least within a few weeks, I will be. That's the idea, at least.

I actually find it to be quite lucky that all this happened the week before I sit down and talk to my web designer about what I want from the new website. It brings up some great points and ultimately is going to shape how well my webpage works for me and harnesses the massive marketing power of the internet.

In other news, I sat down with the Bulgarian piano player and talked ideas about how my work is going to fit in with her upcoming concert plans. She may play the dance piece, Collapsing Elbows, and potentially a cycle of three piano sketches (one of them being the one my choir director will play at the Brooklyn UU next month!). She has great ideas and I'm quite excited to be working with her. I'll keep you all updated on what will happen next there. The first concert may be around New Year's.

For now, I should go and start burning that midnight oil. Lots of work to do!

Blurb #20

Leaving for Upstate New York tomorrow...we're renting a car in downtown Brooklyn and driving up to Stone Ridge Orchards to do some apple picking and then heading down to the Storm King Sculpture Park. Should be loads of fun and I just barely remembered to bring my camera. While I was checking it to see if the battery was good, I realized I never uploaded these:

Best of Owen and Raleigh

...from my stay in Raleigh back in August. There are pics of the NC Museum of Art with my brother and a few shots of Josee's kids. I'll post tomorrow if I have time with pics of the leaves and apple picking. See you around!

Massive Excitement!

Massive excitement here. Lots to report. The voice over demo is here so it's time to hit the ground running. When I received it in my email, I almost immediately uploaded it to my web page and posted it up on my voice123 profile. All that's left to do is figure out what I'm going to do about hard copies of the demo on CD (I.e. designing the cover and labels, etc and ordering materials) update the look of my website and then start marketing like crazy while simultaneously auditioning as much as I can. So, in effect, I still have a ways to go.

That having been said, I still feel like this is a real turning point. Maybe, turning point is the wrong phrase. It feels like I can finally move on a ton of things whereas before there were only so many things I could do. A lot of planning and no implementation. Everything after this will feel like real action instead of just tentative planning.

Anyway, after an overtime week this week I'll finally get a day trip out of the city. I'm renting a car with Stephanie and heading upstate for hopefully some apple picking and definitely a look at the Storm King Sculpture Park near Beacon, NY. Getting out of town will be nice and I promise to post pictures.

The business cards are also here...if I didn't mention. They finally arrived on Monday and I've been trying to contain my excitement about them as well, to no avail. They look awesome. A nod to Mollie Craver and SunSign Graphic Design.

Later next week I'm hoping to meet with the piano player I had talked about. We'll discuss her playing one of my pieces or me writing a whole new one for her. I've got some innovative ideas there that will remain secret for now.

Outside of music news, I've recently been going to yoga classes at a studio called Abhaya in DUMBO. It's Anusara yoga which until meeting Stephanie I was unaware of. It's nice. It takes the technicality of Iyengar's school of yoga and combines it with a much more fun loving user friendly approach to the poses that makes it far less intimidating than other styles. I've been going three times a week for the past month and I feel pretty amazing. I'm learning a lot too and getting more flexible in the poses. The studio itself is amazing (it's on the 6th floor of an old building on the waterfront in DUMBO) and the teachers are all great. One of them I had taken classes with before at Mala in Cobble Hill.

So, the yoga has made a change in my life in that it has been easier to keep a routine going. Since I have to plan around classes I find myself much more aware of how I spend my time during the day...and since I'm planning more I get more done...hence getting the piano piece finished. Hopefully I can keep up the trend.

The next few weeks to months should be pretty exciting. Watch first for the change in the look and feel of my website. After that, I'll probably have more to say about the wonderful world of voice over. Soon, in fact, I may start doing some volunteer recording for Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic. More on that later though. For now, it's off to work.

Blurb #18

Just a quick blurb from the road...well, technically I'm not on the road. I'm sitting in my friend Jeff's living room, up later than I've been since the night of the wedding Friday night, trying to figure out what to do with my time tomorrow. See, I haven't really planned very well this weekend. I've planned well enough but too much of it has been on the fly. That's been nice while hanging out with my friends here. It's been relaxing to just hang out and not feel like I absolutely have to be a tourist just because I'm in Boston. In fact, the only times we've left the house this weekend were to go and eat or to throw the Aerobie in the park nearby with the dog, Lola. It's been great.

Anyway, Jeff and Debbie work tomorrow so I'm on my own for getting around and killing time...which would be no problem except my bus doesn't leave until around 2pm, so I'm up currently trying to figure out whether South Station has baggage lockers. The only answers I've found are on yahoo answers or other forums so I'm not sure if I can trust them. Luckily, I did find a number to call tomorrow morning so I can find out before I leave.

Jeff and Debbie live in Medford so I gotta walk to a bus stop and then take a train from Davis Square in to the city. But that should be no problem. When I left NYC on Friday, I had to stand up with my bag on my shoulder for the whole subway ride to Grand Central Terminal. I evidently survived that. I'm not saying it'll be fun though...but, hey, I brought this on my self.

Beyond my travel woes, I must say I've had the most splendid weekend so far. Matt's wedding in Groton was quite the party. Set at a small Catholic Church in the village on a breezy August afternoon and ending at a small restaurant in a barn that served local food from the adjacent farm. Probably the most exquisite filet mignon I've had in my life. Additionally, a great 9 piece band serenaded us while we danced between courses. And as for courses, there were 7 of them. All proceeded by a cocktail hour on the porch outside.

Pictures, are below. Later in the week I head to Raleigh...my cat probably hates me right about now. Oh well, Good Night.

Matt's Wedding:

Best of Matt's Wedding

Also, included are photos I shot in Boston with my friend Mary Kate the last day after I typed this blog.

Boston:

Boston August 2010

Camping in the Adirondacks...

It's too bad that such an amazing weekend breathing fresh mountain air, sleeping in a tent and cooking all of my food over a fire had to end with me finding my bike missing from the courtyard upon my return to New York. But such was the case. The cable lock alone was left dangling from the fence and the oblivious security guard would only say, when pressed, "I got here at 6:30 tonight." Never mind doing rounds around the courtyard when beginning the shift. All I could do was report it to the police and tell the super. Come to find out though, after talking to him, another bike had been stolen over the weekend as well. So maybe now he'll fix the lock on the front door to the courtyard.

Anyway, the camping trip, which was my friend Matt's bachelor party, was a much needed respite from the constant hum and din of the city. The campgrounds were near Warrensburg, NY in the Adirondack mountains, so the trip required a train ride to Westchester County and a subsequent car ride provided by Matt's best man, Chris...who was an hour and a half late picking us up from Bronxville. Once underway, it didn't take me long to get mildly dizzy and car sick but Albany was only two hours away up the Taconic State Parkway, thankfully. We were planning on meeting two more in Albany (the Bills) and picking up a load of groceries and booze and then making our way on up to Warrensburg, hopefully before nightfall. But these things usually never go exactly to plan.

The Super Wal Mart in Albany is a mini city. Two levels of retail spread over an area the size of ten city blocks, and just about anything and everything available, including a disappointing array of organic produce, cheap clothing and household supplies and, you guessed it, hand gun ammo. The nature of these stores is that they suck you in and convince you, by using prices that don't end in 9, that you can afford to throw one more thing into your cart...continually. So, after an hour or so, we left with a lot of food and camping supplies that we may or may not have needed...the most obvious frivolity being a $7 machete that, thankfully, the best man paid for. It was worth every penny come to find out.

We got underway around 7:45, with daylight fading all around us along with the prospects of having any kind of natural light under which to set up camp. The campsite at Camp Dippikill, owned by the Albany University Student Association, consisted of several cabins and a trail heading out to a lake surrounded by campsites. (scroll to the right to see the lake...we were on the east side of it near the spillway)

View Larger Map
There was free wood and canoes for general use and a series of hiking trails, one of which led to a gorgeous summit with 180 degree views. All this was great but would have to wait until daylight. At that moment though, we had to deal with lugging the night's food and booze along with all of our packs about a mile down the path and around to the opposite side of the lake. My back was killing me about a quarter mile in.

Fire started, tents set up, booze poured and music going on the iPod speaker Chris had lugged out there, we were set for the night. And what stars! Man, I missed the mountains and this was my chance to finally taste the outdoors in NY State. Quite refreshing. And dinner consisted of merely grilled steak and asparagus, punctuated with handfuls of potato chips and gin and tonics. Healthy enough, right? After dinner activities around the campfire included listening to really loud Dave Matthews on the iPod, recreational slashing of anything we could find with the dull machete that somehow made it from Super Wal Mart all the way to our campsite, telling "your mom" jokes, drinking and stoking the fire all too often. Matt and Chris might have gone in the lake after a while, too...did I mention the night time low temperature was 40 degrees F? Chris' shivering question, "Why did I do that?!" was probably the funniest thing and the hardest I laughed all weekend.

Though my sleep that night was delicious, it was, unfortunately, interrupted by one of the Bills hurling "your mom" jokes (leftover from the previous night's witty banter) along with pine cones at my friend's tent. Apparently he had been crowded in the best man's tent and couldn't sleep. About the time he turned the iPod back on, I told him to shut it so we could all sleep seeing as how it was only 8:30 a.m.

After finally getting up around 11 and having a breakfast of bacon and more bacon (I actually had some peanut butter toast as well), Matt, the Bill that wasn't up early and I took off for the summit, which was a shorter hike than our trek to the campground from the cars. I snapped some photos of the views of the surrounding peaks and the Hudson river below (forgive the quality as they were snapped with my cell phone since my camera battery died while I was snapping the other photos of the campfire the previous night):

Matt's Camping Trip

Upon returning to the campground I swam in the muddy lake for a bit and then a few of us decided to head back to the car to get food for that night. Earlier that morning my friend had swum across the lake (immediately after he had woken up) to the boathouse to fetch us a canoe to cut the hike in half. So we loaded up the canoe with an empty pack and ourselves while Chris debated coming with us. After relating an incident where he had capsized a canoe once while trying to get in it, he promptly, though surely inadvertently, reenacted the scenario for us. Luckily for me, my bathing suit was still on. Unlucky for Bill, his iPhone was in the empty pack and it didn't turn on for hours.

We recovered, emptied the boat and tried it again though the whole trip to the boathouse, with three guys in one canoe, was uneasy and fears abounded of falling back in the lake, this time in the deepest part. We made it safely to the boathouse though and hiked back the rest of the way to the cars but, unfortunately, when we returned to the boathouse, loaded with food and booze, all of the canoes were out on the lake, filled with college kids. So we had to hike the rest of the way but it was no big deal. Later on, I hiked over to fetch back another canoe for the next morning's ride back.

The highlight of the trip for me came that evening and was actually during a moment of solitude. Matt had brought a South American hammock and had slung it between two trees by the lake shore and I perched myself in it with the book I'm reading and a glass, er, cup of red wine. The air was perfect, mid 60s, the sky at sunset was beautiful and I had just enough residual light to finish off a chapter resting in probably the most comfortable hammock I've ever been in. A nighttime canoe ride rounded off my silent meditative moments and then I rejoined the guys for some more ridiculousness before going to bed relatively early.

The following day's hike back was not nearly as exhausting to me somehow as the hike in on Friday night. Probably the mountain air and a general feeling of being well rested. Our ride back was smoother as well, punctuated by a stop in downtown Albany for lunch at a burrito place called Bomber's, and an impromptu stop at the NY Giants training camp. Something I probably would have never been interested in doing on my own but which was actually kind of cool.

We finally left Albany around 4:30 p.m. arriving at the train station in Bronxville just shy of the 6:27 train to Grand Central. I had to wait another hour for the next and was cursing myself for not having the time for a nap before my overnight shift at work. I managed though. I always seem to.

Now, I prepare for my trip to Massachusetts for the wedding and my subsequent weekend in Boston. Today I had another coaching session at Edge and have planned out the rest of my sessions up to my demo preparation. Getting excited. More on that in another entry though. I must sleep for the moment.