Climbing every cello mountain, a decaptiated cello, and the D.C. metro

Autumn Hiscock has been looking for a 7/8 cello, and in a moment of serendipity has been lent a beautiful, albeit currently decapitated, unlabeled old German cello which is not quite 7/8 but close enough. She had recently tried some cellos in a shop. "I tested the two 7/8s and as I noted before they were lovely and balanced, smooth, and very easy to play in the higher positions. I would be happy to own either of them. But I didn't fall in love with them enough to rent one." (emphasis added) That's the key to choosing an instrument--you have to fall in love with it.

And how did Autumn's beautiful "mystery cello" get decapitated?

Here's another story on the mountain-climbing "Extreme Cellists, who also have a blog, and I couldn't help but think that with all that climbing, one of their cellos is at risk of decapitation, if it hasn't hapened already. I hadn't noticed in the articles I posted Thursday, but they raise money for charity with their climb. And they sound quite nice in this video:


And finally, KateR (aka "pooplord") has a nice post about traveling with a cello on the D.C. metro: " . . . apparently on a weekend train, it's a conversation starter. Not even necessarily for conversations with ME so much as everyone else's individual conversations." Worth reading.