Jeanine, Maya and I traveled to Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania this morning where we attended the wedding of Bethany Earle, daughter of Jeanine’s childhood and lifelong friend Kris, to Kyle Asplundh. We arrived early enough to tour the Glencairn Museum located adjacent to the Bryn Athyn Cathedral where the service was held. The castle-like building was the former house of billionaire businessman Raymond Pitcairn and his wife, Mildred Glenn. It consists of more than 90 rooms on 10 floors including a tower from which you can see the 15-mile distant Philadelphia skyline. My first wedding photo was taken from this vantage point as I noticed the bride in her white gown walking into the cathedral. I have known Beth since she was a baby and it is hard to believe she is all grown up.

One of my favorite pictures of the evening was this one of best friends and their daughters.

Every year I tell myself I should take a photo of the house when our burning bushes are at peak color. I have finally made good on that intention.

I arrived in the office early today and was able to take this photo of the iRobot parking lot before it filled with cars. Did I recently suggest that peak color was behind us?

I spent more than an hour with Maya this evening helping her to prepare for a big test tomorrow. At one point I became bored with her seemingly perfect recall of the material and asked her to duplicate a very complex page of diagrammatic notes from memory. The result was a near-perfect copy of the original information organized in nearly identical spatial orientation. It is clear that Maya shares my visual learning style preference but I am now convinced she may also have something of a photographic memory.

Maya was in top form today as Concord Carlisle faced arch-rival Acton Boxborough to whom they suffered their only loss this season. The match ended in a 1-1 tie. Maya played center midfield with a level of passion I had not seen in her before. Pictured above she launches a rocket from the 18. It was low and hard to the right corner. The goalie dove for the block but could not handle the ball, fumbling it in front of the net. A quick toe poke from our nearest striker would have won the game but the shot was not taken in time. Below Maya makes a sharp cut to beat a defender as she carries the ball downfield. She made a total of three runs and she beat as many opponents each time before completing passes to one of her attackers. I wish her brothers could have watched her play today. They would have been very impressed.

I tested my recovering calf for the first time with a three mile walk over my lunch hour. It was still a little tight but I finished without tweaking it again and experienced only mild soreness afterwards. My Nepal trek will cover a distance equal to walking from Boston to my home town of Schenectady, NY over a mountain 3.3 miles high. Expressed in these terms, it is easy to understand why I have to get back to my training regime as soon as possible if I am going to be ready for my adventure.

The fall season is coming to an end but there are still some very fine scenes to be found. With cold weather and rain on the way, I suspect that this will be one of my last autumnscapes.

Neighbors walking together to take a stand against hunger describes a CROP Hunger Walk (Communities Responding to Overcome Poverty). Funds raised by the Concord area CROP Walk go to the Church World Service for worldwide emergency relief of disasters, for refugee aid and for fighting the root causes of hunger through community development programs in 80 underdeveloped countries. One quarter of the funds raised provide substantial contributions to ten local supper/food pantry programs including Open Table which Jeanine now heads. Maya and her friends volunteered to man Checkpoint #4 where they greeted walkers on their final leg of the course offering them water and first aid (fortunately none of the later was needed).

Jeanine and I started the day with a couples massage at the Cranwell Spa. I opted for the deep tissue variation and asked for extra time on my recovering right calf while Jeanine enjoyed a Swedish style massage. We decided to spend the balance of the day in the Berkshires. Mount Greylock, our first destination, is the highest natural point in Massachusetts at 3,491 feet. The mountain is known for its expansive views encompassing five states and the only taiga-boreal forest in the state. We drove to the summit where stands the iconic 93-foot-high lighthouse-like Massachusetts Veterans War Memorial Tower. We paused for lunch at the adjacent Bascom Lodge which lived up to its reputation for extremely fine food, not something you would expect at such a remote outpost. We continued on to North Adams and finally joined Route 2 and gradually worked our way back to Concord stopping often to enjoy the scenery along the way.

I woke with the sunrise to explore the Cranwell Resort grounds before breakfast and my first meeting at 8am. Just as I was heading in, I came across a very healthy looking coyote who was also looking for a bite to eat. He was kind enough to pose for me in front of a lovely Berkshires autumn backdrop. Equally cooperative were my Home Business Unit colleagues who posed for a group photo during a midday break.

This evening we were joined by our significant others for a private tour and dinner at the Norman Rockwell Museum. Rockwell (1894–1978), an American painter and illustrator, is most famous for the cover illustrations of everyday life scenarios he created for The Saturday Evening Post magazine including The Four Freedoms (Freedom from Want, Freedom from Fear, Freedom of Worship, Freedom of Speech), pictured here, a series of four oil paintings he produced in 1943. The paintings were made for reproduction in the Post over the course of four consecutive weeks alongside essays by prominent thinkers of the day. Later they were the highlight of a touring exhibition sponsored by the United States Department of the Treasury. The touring exhibition and accompanying sales drives raised over US$132 million in the sale of war bonds. Rockwell’s obsession with the details of his work was matched only by the poignancy of the images he created. We dined in a room containing all 321 covers he created for The Saturday Evening Post.

In 1853, the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher purchased Blossom Hill located in the Berkshire Mountains just outside of Lenox, Massachusetts, where the Cranwell Mansion now stands. He loved the views from the top of the hillside and it is from this vantage point that he proclaimed, “From here I can see the very hills of Heaven”. He was active in the women’s suffrage and the anti-slavery movements and had presidential ambitions, which were ended by a scandalous affair, and so, it was left for his sister Harriet Beecher Stowe to claim fame through her anti-slavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. General John Rathbone purchased the 380 acre property from Beecher in 1869 and constructed a new home called Wyndhurst, enormous by any standards of the day and ironically referred to as a “cottage.” At the same time, on the backside of the hill, United States Naval Captain John Barnes, Flag Officer of the North Atlantic Fleet during the Civil War, erected Coldbrooke, now known as Beecher’s Cottage and part of the Cranwell property. John Sloane, a relative of the Vanderbilts and co-owner of the famous furniture firm, W & J Sloane, became the next owner of the property when he built his “cottage” in 1894. After tearing down Rathbone’s Wyndhurst and Beecher’s farmhouse, Sloane constructed another Wyndhurst, which rivaled the enormity and elegance of the first.He also commissioned Frederick Law Olmsted, the landscape architect who created New York’s Central Park and the Boston area’s Emerald Necklace, to design the grounds. It is this new Wyndhurst that stands on the hill today. The property was briefly run as the Berkshire Hunt and Country Club until purchased by Edward Cranwell in 1930 who deeded the estate to the Society of Jesus of New England in 1939, to be turned into a private school for boys. After prospering for many years, the school slipped into decline, closing its doors in 1975. Today Cranwell, with much of its original grandeur restored, is a premier four-season resort and was the site of a two day iRobot management retreat which I am attending.

Maya turns the corner on a defender as her coach looks on. She played nearly the entire match at center midfield and is really starting to look comfortable in the new position. Her vision of the field, ball control and strategic distribution are excellent, characteristics she shares with her older brothers. Her team shut out Wayland by a score of 3-0 and Maya had a very nice give-and-go assist to her close friend Sarinnagh who produced all three goals for Concord.

I am still limping but am well on the road to recovery from my torn calf muscle. I am feeling very confident I will be fully healed before leaving for Nepal on Thanksgiving Day but I have little hope of playing any more soccer this season. My day started with a 6:30 AM breakfast interview in Chelmsford with an employment candidate and ended at 9 PM at the Concord Wheelhouse where I participated as a judge in the OARS annual photography contest. The organization’s mission is to protect, preserve, and enhance the natural and recreational features of the Assabet, Sudbury, and Concord rivers, their tributaries, and watersheds.

At any other company, it would be considered unusual to encounter an employee standing on his desk typing on a laptop situated atop a bookshelf while being stared at by a creepy looking doll head. At iRobot few employees would even pause for a second look as this activity falls on the normal end of the weirdness spectrum. This particular engineer is one of our creative geniuses. If he wants to type while standing on his desk we ask if he would like us to fetch him a ladder.

Miss Maya and Jeanine went on a rare shopping spree this afternoon. I am pleased that neither is obsessed with buying clothes, shoes, and handbags to the extent that seems prevalent in today’s society. That said, Maya has grown into a young woman and was overdue for a wardrobe update. She is pictured here modeling one of her new fall outfits. I think she looks great even if she refused to let me photograph her face.

My soccer season came to an abrupt end this morning when my right calf muscle gave out again, this time with that distinct popping sound that indicates a severe tear. We were leading by a margin of 2-0 at the start of the second half when it happened. I watched from the opposite sideline as we went on to win 3-1, unable to walk to the other side of the field where my team was standing. After the game, my teammates retrieved my car and carried me to it. I spent the rest of the day icing the injury and sulking before I had to leave for a flight to Tampa, Florida for a business meeting. I borrowed one of Nicolai’s forearm crutches, without which I could not take more than a few steps. I have a new appreciation for just how tough Nico’s life is both physically and emotionally. At the airport a vendor was handing out free samples of ice cream to all that passed by. When I approached he dropped his eyes and turned away. On the flip side, many people went out of their way to accommodate my obvious challenge including a colleague I was travelling with who was kind enough to locate a wheelchair and push me in it. We joined our boss for a very nice dinner in the bar of our Clearwater hotel. The pain in my calf kept me up most of the night.

Jeanine and I got an early start on a mini excursion to western Massachusetts to enjoy a marvelous fall day. Grey skies gave way to a brief interlude of sunshine as we arrived at the French King Bridge. a three-span “cantilever arch” style bridge crossing the Connecticut River.

We descended to the eastern base of the bridge and across Millers River where we began a short hike (me with a 30 pound pack, in training for Nepal). After following a road to the top of a high ridge we decided to take a private trail that we suspected would take us down to the Connecticut River where we planned to follow the water back to our car. Discovering no such trail and somewhat unsure we could retrace our steps we were fortunate to encounter a couple living at the water’s edge. They informed us that there was no road access and offered to ferry us up river on their pontoon boat, an invitation we were happy to accept.

We continued westward to the town of Shelburne Falls where we paused for lunch and a stroll across the famous Bridge of Flowers.

We returned by late afternoon to pick up Maya who had spent the night in southern Vermont with her Coming of Age group and then went on a movie date to see Captain Phillips.