Aerie Report, October 30, 2009

I attended my third torture therapy session today. Surprising to me is the lack of pain in the knee as we go through the exercises. There's plenty of cramping going on in the quad of my left leg, however. Every exercise seems to require that I tighten that big muscle. And when you're doing four or five different exercises in three sets of 10 each (that's 30 reps of each exercise), heh! I might as well be climbing 15 flights of stairs. Luckily, few of the exercises put any real pressure on the knee joint. The therapists has suggested I do a little more walking about the house without the use of either the cane or the leg brace. I'm cool with that as it means a little more freedom.

I've got three more sessions scheduled for next week and I'm hoping that the progress will continue at the same pace and I'll be able to start walking in the woods again soon.

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We had one of those "blah" days here at the Aerie. Our low for the day was just 46 degrees and our high was 50. Blah! It didn't actually rain, but it misted from time to time. The fog of yesterday remained just above us. The ceiling must have been close to 2200 feet. The tops of the new windmills across the way were shrouded in fog much of the day. The presence of fog usually means that things are quiet. Not so! The wind is actually howling. Again, just above the Aerie. Standing on the deck the sound is similar to standing on the cliffs above ocean's edge and hearing the surf crash against the beach. There's a constant roar in the tree tops but here's very little movement at ground level. If the winds blow like this, we'll never hear anything from the windmills. (The company rep said the sound 200-300 yards from one of these machines would be no more than that from a refrigerator across the room. And from visits to other new wind farms, I'd have to agree. They're pretty quiet--one might say eerily so.)

[UPDATE: While watching the West Virginia vs South Florida game on ESPN, the winds have found the Aerie. The occasional gusts make the very substantial log home creak and groan. They have to be in the 30-40 mph range.]