Preview: Jumonville Glen, part 1 (modelling)

In January, Martine’s school is having a Family Game Night. Being the miniatures gaming nerd that I am, as soon as I heard this was going on I decided to prepare a kid-friendly miniature wargame for that night.

I decided the rules in Big Battles, Little Hands would be a good place to start. This is a great sourcebook for introducing kids and their parents to the concept of miniature wargaming, and provides two simple sets of rules appropriate for ages 6 and up: Milk and Cookies, and Blood and Swash.

Milk and Cookies is named as a parody of “beer and pretzels,” a term used to describe light and easy games as opposed to picky detail-oriented ones. These rules are designed for fighting battles between fairly large armies. They’re primarily aimed at the Horse and Musket period (in the 1700’s-1800’s), but with some modifications they’ll handle anything from Ancient times up to modern times.

Blood and Swash was developed for pirates fighting swashbuckling barfights, so it’s best for a lot of players, a small number of figures per player, and a tight space. I thought a pirate fight might go over well, so I’d probably go with Blood and Swash and maybe build a few pirate ship decks to play on.

But then, I visited Fort Ligonier and learned a bit about the area’s local history. I had no idea I was living a mile or two from a French-Indian War battlefield. After a bit of reading, I decided it would be nice to work towards fighting the first few battles in the French-Indian War: Jumonville Glen, the Battle of Fort Necessity, and Battle of the Monongahela.

Jumonville Glen was the skirmish that pushed the French and British to war in America, and eventually across Europe as well, where the larger conflict is called the Seven Years war. A very young George Washington led a group of around 75 Virginians and Indians in an ambush against a party of 30-40 French at Jumonville Glen, and crushed them before they even had a chance to deliver France’s ulitmatum.

The scale of this fight lends itself to Blood and Swash. It’s a simpler ruleset than Milk and Cookies, and requires fewer figures: a bonus, since this is the first I’ve done with the French-Indian War.

I picked up a few packs of Old Glory 25mm French & Indian War figures: British (also suitable for colonial regiments), French, and Indians. I started with 8 Virginians, 4 Indians, and 12 French: enough for up to 12 players with 2 figures each… what a mess that would be if they’re all 6 years old! It also works out to 3 units for each side, in Milk and Cookies… not a lot, but a start.

The Indians were quite fun to paint! I’m happy with how well they turned out. The rest of the guys weren’t as much fun and didn’t turn out as well. The French white coats were the worst, but at least it’s giving me practice shading white.

Jumonville Glen has a cliff, where the French sought shelter during several days of rain before Washington ambushed them. I obviously needed to construct this distinctive terrain feature since it’s the centerpiece of the skirmish. I built it as a step hill with a cliff face, out of white styrofoam. This leans towards the “useful” side of the scale, in the “useful” vs. “pretty” compromise that all terrain features have; but it still looks good.

I already had all the trees necessary to make it look like Pennsylvania woods. The only construction left is painting and cutting a piece of canvas to use as a play mat under the terrain.

Obligatory complaints and self-deprecation:

I’ve been using a few Osprey books as references for painting these guys. I’m not sure the pictures in Monongahela are very accurate however, since they don’t match the text.

The Old Glory British Firing Line figures are not perfect for either the British or the Virginians, according to Osprey’s images; but they’re close enough to pass for either of them. The French are missing their characteristic cartridge case, and instead have the same bag the British are carrying. I have no clue if the Indians are right or not, but they look cool, and that’s important.

The worst flaw here is my selection for the colonial troops. The Virginians didn’t get uniforms at least until several months after Jumonville Glen, so they were dressed in their own civilian militia clothing. However, since I want to use these figures later in the war as well, I’m willing to compromise. I’d be surprised if anyone (other than Daniel) points this out at game night anyway.

To help increase the number of troops for later battles, I got some Dixon French-Indian war figures on clearance. They’re labelled as “coureurs de bois,” illegal trappers, but they’ll pass as Canadian-born French for use at Fort Necessity and later. I have 8 of those and 4 more Inidians ready to paint now.

In my next update I’ll go over the rules changes I’ve made to Blood and Swash in order to make this a playable and interesting game.

Seas, Still Uncharted

I’ve finished painting a bunch more figures that I need to add pictures for. Most recently, I completed these additional ships for Uncharted Seas.

In the rear is another Battleship. In the middle is a squadron of 3 cruisers, and in the front is a Dragon Carrier.

Most of the ships are following my previous paint scheme very closely. I altered the specific colors used to dry brush the sails slightly, and darkened the ballistae somewhat, but it’s otherwise the same.

I wasn’t sure how I wanted to paint the topside of the Carrier. I’m not sure what the surface detail represented. I settled on a green that could be interpreted as dark weathered copper. I’m a bit surprised the colors go well together, because now I have a yellow-green, blue-green, blue, and yellow-orange on the same piece.

Frank and I haven’t had a chance to play Uncharted Seas again yet, but we have an ocean to play on now: I painted the other side of my outer space terrain board blue.

I’ve received the Firestorm Armada ruleset, also from Spartan Games, but I haven’t started reading it yet. I’m underwhelmed by the models. They’re probably much more impressive in person, since they’re upwards of 6″ long and very hefty. But they don’t make me want to paint them. If we play the game at all, we will most likely use our Battlefleet Gothic ships, or I might find some Battlestar Galactica ships to fight with.

Hot Dogs vs. Monsters

Last Sunday, Martine and I playtested the French and Indian War scenario I intend to play with kids at Martine’s school’s game night. She got bored in about an hour, which is probably good: I expect the game to take about that long, but her behaviour would be a lot better if she were around someone other than her parents. I hope it will play a bit faster with 4-8 players controlling 2 figures each, instead of 2 controlling 8 each.

After that, she wanted to do a craft, and wanted me to give her ideas. So, I drew a goblin and made a little stand-up guy. She took that idea and ran with it: she made a hot dog, whose combat prowess allowed it to deflect any weapon my Goblin was holding, and also to penetrate my shield.

Pretty soon she had an army of 7 hot dogs (with buns, of course) and one boss: a floating green tentacle beast. I had 2 goblins, a troll, 3 skeletons, a wolf, and my boss was a beholder (a giant floating eye with tentacles, I think it inspired her boss).

Then Martine asked me to make 2 trees and some rocks. She made a map to set up the board, a movement ruler and a rock-throwing ruler, and found a cardboard box to use as a playing field.

Then, she taught me how to play:

Hot Dogs vs. Monsters, version 1.0

  1. Players alternate turns.
  2. On your turn, do 2 actions.
  3. One of the two actions must be a move.
  4. You must move the full distance unless blocked by a rock or an enemy warrior.
  5. If you’re blocked by a rock, you can use an action to throw it out of the way to the side.
  6. Use an action to fight an enemy warrior touching you by rolling d10 and allocating that many damage points to the enemy.
  7. An enemy warrior with 8 or more damage dies and is removed from play.
  8. You can’t fight warriors who are even partially in the trees.
  9. You can only fight with the front of your warrior, but enemies can attack your side and rear.
  10. Bosses can’t fight each other.
  11. The game ends when one army is completely destroyed.

It’s a remarkably playable game, considering she’s 6 years old and made it up as she went along. There are even discernable tactics possible: hide in the trees one turn, and next turn jump out and attack before they can attack back. The rocks didn’t seem to affect play much, I’ll lobby to remove them next time.

As far as the rules: I think they were inspired by Hibernia as well as the French and Indian War game. In Hibernia, you take 2 actions per turn, and they’re both movement (and possibly fighting) actions. The miniatures game gave her the movement ruler, die rolling, and damage mechanics.

We haven’t finished a game, and might never finish it with these rules, though she did teach her friend how to play today. She had a wonderful time creating it, and I think that’s the most important part.

Ringmaster

Ringmaster is an Italian circus game. Actually, it isn’t: it’s a freely available, print-and-play, vaguely Lord of the Rings themed strategic wargame. It is Italian, though; or more accurately, originally written in Italian and then translated into English.

I was in the mood for a multiplayer wargame this past weekend, but don’t have any suitable titles on hand, so I looked for a Print and Play option. I found Ringmaster on the Print and Play blog, and printed it up.

I printed the board on photo paper (4 sheets; Marla bought a ream at Costco so I don’t mind using a few sheets) and mounted it on foam core. It isn’t perfect, but it came out really nice. The art and finish quality are a lot better than many low-budget store bought games. The cards are worse: they’re printed on plain cardstock and stuck into card sleeves so they can be shuffled more easily. Coincidentally (probably not) the 6 army colors used in the game match the 6 armiy colors in my old thrift store era Risk game, so that worked out well for the army pieces.

The game is completely card based, and uses no dice. During play, it looks a lot like Risk, but it’s more fun and not nearly as painful.

On each turn, first you can cast magical spells or use artifacts (cards). Then move armies from one or two adjacent territories to as many other territories you want. Any territory with more than one player’s armies has a fight. Finally, you get troop reinforcements and new cards based on the number of territories you hold, and it’s someone else’s turn. The first player to get 10 victory points (gained by taking other players’ territories, but not from holding your own) wins.

Combat is card based. The non-magic cards all either add combat value to the number of troops you brought to the fight, or modify combat values in some less direct way (removing defensive bonuses or nullifying the enemy’s cards). Whoever has the biggest number wins, and the loser loses troops equal to the difference.

The rules are easy and straightforward, but they do have a few questionable points. Unfortunately the author only speaks/writes in Italian, there are a few problems in the translation, and no FAQ is available. (We were entertained by “Take a card from an opponent casually,” where “casually” was clearly meant to be “randomly.”)

Theoretically the game should take about 2 hours to play, but it was our first time so it took us 3 hours. Somehow we often take a long time with wargames. We must think too hard or talk too much.

Ringmaster is quite a good light strategic level wargame. It has only a low to moderate feeling of randomness, due to the card-based combat. You have your cards before you decide to attack, which helps immensely, as I predicted in a previous blog post about randomness. There felt like a bit of a “runaway leader” effect, but it was mostly manageable by ganging up on the leader (although Frank won in the end anyway: no dice!) The end game is very much unlike Risk, luckily. Since you only need 10VP to win and not “everything on the board,” the game ends before it gets boring.

We played the “basic” version of the rules instead of the “advanced” version, and the Middle Earth theme is very light. You’re playing on a strategic map of Middle Earth, but there is almost no other thematic flavor to the cards or rules. Apparently the Advanced rules help that somewhat, by at least allying the forces of Good and Evil on separate teams, among other things.

This game totally hit the spot on Saturday, and I look forward to playing it again. It was a great deal more fun than dying at the hands of the orcs and dragon on the first turn of Wizard’s Quest.

Don’t Squeeze the Paint Bottle!

I told you, but would you listen? No, of course not.

This bottle of paint had lumps. It wouldn’t come out the nozzle so I squeezed harder even though I knew it was a bad idea. Too hard, it turns out.

I wasn’t aimed at my face, this is just the paint that bounced up off my palette. It didn’t actually get in my eye as far as I know.

My miniatures were mostly spared. I got a few spots on my boats (not painted yet anyway, mostly) and a few on Andy’s battle nuns, luckily in places easy to touch up.

Basic Impetus

At Legions today, we played Basic Impetus. This is a freely downloadable introductory version of the Impetus ancients miniatures wargaming rules. Rick and Jim played Polybian Romans, and Larry and I played Carthaginians. No one had really played the rules before, but at least Larry read them before we started.

The model basing uses the equivalent of 4 DBx sized bases for each unit. This is similar to Ancient and Medieval Warfare (AMW, which I also haven’t played), except you never need to remove bases so they could be permanently based on larger bases.

I couldn’t really field any proper armies without painting a bunch more stands, but I could fake it so we can play enough to decide whether to paint enough bases for two full armies. The common basing with AMW, also based on multiple DBx bases, would make this a useful way to encourage painting more elements. Incidentally, Command and Colors: Ancients also uses 4 blocks per unit, so with enough elements painted up I could play C&C:A with miniatures as well.

The Impetus rules are partway between highly detailed reductionist rules like Warhammer Ancients, and the extremely abstract DBA. Activation is IGO-UGO and every unit can be activated on every turn. Units have a few stats: Type, Move, VBU (both hit points and combat effectiveness), Impetus (combat bonus in the first round of combat), and VD (victory points for killing the unit, basically).

If the unit has a ranged weapon, it’s listed; otherwise all other weapons and armor are abstracted into the VBU number. Unlike DBA, javelins and slings are considered ranged weapons and not “close combat.” Some unit types such as skirmishers and light cavalry have special rules to fit their historical use, but for the most part everything acts fairly uniformly based on its stat line.

Movement is “normal” with one exception: when you meet enemies you must not line up exactly with the enemy units. Instead, you always overlap the lines partially on each side. This seems odd, but it ends up working well in practice: most combats end up with single overlaps, but no fights give you double overlaps.

When shooting or fighting, you roll a number of d6 equal to your VBU plus appropriate modifiers; each 6 or two 5’s are a hit. Those hits aren’t immediately applied to the enemy unit, but if a unit receives any hits, it must make a cohesion roll modified by the hits received. Failing the cohesion roll causes “real” damage by reducing your VBU for the rest of the game (or until you run out and rout).

The two-step combat system is probably the most fiddly part of the rules, but in practice it works well enough and isn’t too complicated. I think the whole “effectiveness equals hit points left” thing is based on the fact that historically, casualty rates in melee combat were very low, and almost all casualties were caused when one side was running away. The most important thing is to not run away in the first place.

In the game itself, I controlled the right flank with 2 units of Light Cavalry, 1 unit of Cavalry, 1 unit of Warband (strong light foot) and 1 unit of skirmishers. At first I did well: I was rolling lots of 5’s and 6’s, and pushed back the Roman flank. But later, the Romans started hitting me back. I kept on rolling 5’s and 6’s for cohesion tests, but I’m supposed to roll low on those, so I took heavy casualties. Eventually all five of my units were killed, and when one of Larry’s spearmen joined me, the game was over.

Overall, I enjoyed the rules and I expect Frank and Andy might like them a better than DBA. They aren’t as “weird” as DBA: you get to move all your units, you throw big fists full of dice, and you don’t need to remember a pantsload of seemingly random combat result tables. I’m hoping Daniel would still enjoy the more chess-like DBA, but I’m also hoping he ever has a chance to play it again…

The general character of the game itself was what I’d expect while learning a new rule set. There was a lot of “lively discussion,” rulebook consultation, and getting things wrong. The battlefield looks more impressive than a DBA game because the units are larger, even though there are fewer of them.

I’d like to give these rules a try, but first I’ll need to work up some armies and build some sabots (large bases to hold the individual stands) to make things easier to move around.

Attack on Ste. Marie

Date: 6 June 1944, 1300 hours
Location: Ste. Marie du Mont, Normandy, FR
US Orders: Capture the church in Ste. Marie.
German Orders: Prevent US victory conditions

Since Mike was in town for the weekend, I planned a “big” miniatures wargame scenario. World War II is still Mike’s favorite period as far as I know, and I have plenty of troops and terrain in 15mm to put on a good show. However, we haven’t played any WWII rules in several years, and I was planning on 5 players: 2 more than we ever had when playing WWII games previously.

I decided to use the Disposable Heroes rule set. Although we had never played these rules outside a convention, I remembered them being easy to learn and not too fiddly. We preferred Arc of Fire when we most recently played WWII skirmish games, but those rules take a bit more learning than I wanted to put in for one night of gaming.

Since I haven’t studied any World War II history in a long time, I decided to use one of the canned scenarios from the SkirmishCampaigns books I had on hand. I needed a big enough order of battle for 5 players without many vehicles. I chose Attack on Ste. Marie because it used a fairly large board and had enough squads to split 5 ways. It’s one of the scenarios from the “Normandy ’44- First Hours” scenario book. We played it once before, years ago, so I knew I had the terrain. I also wanted to build a game around my fancy French church, so I could use it for more than one game over its entire lifetime. After I set up the board, it really didn’t look very familiar, so I wonder what we did the first time?

In this operation, US paratroopers who were airdropped into the area only 12 hours earlier were tasked with capturing the church in the center of town. The German defenders were also heavily armed, highly trained paratroopers. To answer Mike’s question from turn 1 in the game: the Germans didn’t get artillery support because their observer in the church steeple was destroyed by US paratroopers using a captured German gun. I was worried about Disposable Heroes’ lack of hidden unit rules, so I didn’t give the Americans any artillery support either.

The Germans were defending with two Fallschirmjaeger squads, one platoon HQ, one artillery radio team, and one Panzerschreck team. The Americans attacked with two Paratrooper Infantry squads, two Infantry Squads, 4 Sherman tanks, and a jeep with MMG.

I broke all squads into two teams each, for unit activation purposes. The vehicles were one unit of tanks and one jeep unit, until we enough vehicles blew up, at which point we switched to one vehicle per unit/activation.

Mike played the German defenders, and Andy joined him when he arrived. Frank and I attacked with the Americans. When Dan arrived, he took over the vehicles, and finally I switched sides when Mike got bored (sick: he failed his guts check) enough that he had to leave (and there weren’t many tanks left). I’m sorry you weren’t feeling better, Mike! So I thought I’d write this up so you can see what you missed…

The Americans had 10 turns to capture the church, and the Germans only had to mount a static defense and prevent the capture. The dilemma for the Americans was: if you run into the open, you get shot (a lot); but if you don’t, you can’t capture the church.

In the first few turns, the American infantry found heavy cover within firing range of the enemy, and holed up. With both sides under heavy cover, no one was hitting the enemy very much; and paratrooper Guts scores prevented everyone from failing any morale checks. It turned into a trench-like war of attrition. Unfortunately Frank was playing the Americans, so my Germans (after Mike left) were pretty much impervious to his attacks.

The tanks were a different story: the first several turns each saw one or more vehicles destroyed. Finally Dan drove a tank out of range of the rockets, while keeping the enemy within MG range. At that point the rules demonstrated the pointlessness of bringing a gun to a knife fight: Dan spent so many turns trying to acquire his target that his infantry had killed it before he could shoot anything other than his pintle HMG at it. One more infantry squad would’ve helped a lot more in this rule set, than the 4 tanks.

In the end, the infantry ruled, which is to be expected in an infantry game. Dan’s Americans advanced from the West and were decimated in the open (as they should be). Frank tried to advance through the orchard in the north, but met with strong resistance from the occupied townhouses.

Finally, it was turn 8, but the Americans hadn’t made a lot of progress. They calculated that the only way to even reach the church was to send one or more units sprinting towards it while the rest provided cover. On the last turn, I pinned the sprinters just before they ran out of cover towards the church. The Americans cleared the final German out of the church tower that turn, but it was too late.

In the end, the Germans had 6 infantry left (out of 33). The Americans had 11 infantry (out of 48), 1 functional tank, and one rolling coffin (out of 5 vehicles). The losses were huge. By percentage they were slightly worse for the Germans, but unfortunately the Americans weren’t able to capitalize on their advantage.

Catalog of (scenario/rule) Errors:

  • The German paratroopers had an accuracy of 6 (not 5), but we never took advantage of this.
  • The Germans had two areas of Anti-Personnel mines. I have no clue where they were, since Mike left before anyone walked near them. Would they have made any difference?
  • If we had not made the two errors above, I expect the Americans would’ve needed more help: leaving off the Artillery support was probably also an error, under the circumstances.

Catalog of Complaints:

  • I don’t think the SkirmishCampaigns/Disposable Heroes rules translation worked well for this scenario. The Guts scores were 10 or 11 for most troops on the board, and the cover was heavy for almost all troops most of the time. This translated to “roll 1 to hit” (see also: we missed the German paratrooper ACC6) and “roll 10 to fail a guts check” almost always. There weren’t nearly enough morale effects in the game, but truthfully I would’ve expected fewer casualties than we saw, given the low hit rate we should’ve seen.
  • Less of a complaint than an observation: we use a few metrics to judge WWII skirmish rules. Grenades either suck or they don’t (we think they sucked in this game, but never actually used them to find out). Close combat is usually extremely painful, but sometimes it’s a huge waste of time (you’re better off shooting instead): in this case, we never found out. Vehicles are usually nearly pointless against infantry, but also hard to kill; in this game, they proved relatively easy to kill, but not very powerful against infantry. Lastly: M1 Garand rifles are usually not represented well. Either they’re too powerful compared to a manual rifle, or they’re equivalent to the weaker weapon. DH models them as equivalent during a “stand and shoot” standoff, but better when used to actively assault the enemy, and this felt pretty good in the few games I’ve seen.
  • We played in 15mm scale, with a very terrain-heavy board. I think the rules would’ve worked a lot better in 25mm scale with fewer layers of terrain than we played with.
  • I think we were playing with an old version of the rulebook, but a new version of the quick reference sheet for the rules. The old rulebook caused confusion in some areas, especially the pin/fall back/rout section. I’m really not happy with the writing used in this version of the rulebook, it needs much clarification.

Highlights:

  • I have plemty of ammo, so what if I need to roll a 1 to snap-shoot that tank with my panzerschreck. Hit! Penetration! Damage? no result… it bounced off a tread.
  • We learned a lot about the “Man Alone” rule: if only one guy in a unit is left, he can’t move towards the enemy, but he can join another squad. Frank had a donut convention with all of his squad leaders; they had as many SMGs as a Russian rifle squad.
  • Dan played the lawyer: since “half your figures shoot” rounds up, he left his individuals to fire separately instead of combining them, and got more dice. Besides, how dangerous can one guy be, really?
  • Oops, tanks don’t block line of sight, when you can shoot from the second floor of the building.

If I were planning on playing any more WWII skirmish games, I’d do one of two things: either look into a more recent version of DH available for sale, or just give up and spend my effort on Arc of Fire instead (more likely).

Overall the game was fun, and it allowed people who don’t know or care much about WWII or miniatures games to roll dice and kill the bad guys. But it did feel a bit like a luck-filled dice fest, and lacked some of the subtleties I remember from Arc of Fire.

I really enjoyed being able to set aside the time for a “big” miniatures game outside a convention, which is rare these days since I have kids who aren’t opponent aged yet. I wish Mike was able to enjoy it a bit more, though. I’d love to get another game set up for Christmas, but I’ll concentrate on something a bit less serious. Maybe we can play my French and Indian War scenario in Blood and Swash?

Thanks for a great game, guys! Until next time…

Update: Additional rules complaints:

  • It was not obvious when pin/fall back/rout units were supposed to make their mandatory move. We played that they wait until their next activation, but this ended up sticking them out in the open for too long. As Dan said, “Oh noes, I’m being shot at! I think I’ll stop here in the open!” I think we did it wrong.
  • Target acquisition for the tanks was confusing. We failed so hard for so long that I think we must’ve been doing it wrong.

Update: Epic Gruit

I hadn’t had any of my gruit in a long time, several months at least. I suppose with a limited quantity I wanted to savor it?

Well, today Marla was chopping a huge cabbage, and wondering what the heck to do with it, so I looked up making Sauerkraut. I was uninspired, bu I also remembered my gruit and decided to taste another bottle.

It tastes quite good. It’s sort of like a Belgian double style, with a bit of the sourness you’d expect in an Oud Bruin. There is a hint of the same herbal funkiness it has always had, but it’s toned down compared to what I remember from last time (Marla agrees).

So, I’m glad I still have some left; it would suck if it went bad and I wasted it. We’ll have to drink some over the holidays.

As I started to write this up, I went back and read my original post about the Epic Gruit. Coincidentally, I bottled a year ago today (November 22nd). The Epic continues, as all good epics do.

The Future is Here

Most people think “the future” involves jet packs and flying cars, but I disagree (even if you manage to make a jetpack that doesn’t ingest fossil fuels). The future, if there is one to be had, must lie along a different path.

In fact, the toys of the future cannot exist at all, in the traditional sense, because in the long run there simply isn’t enough “stuff” to go around. Inasmuch as the toys of the future will ever exist, they already do; but as William Gibson has said, “the future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.”

I recently saw the latest sign of this future in the state of my Netflix queue. For the first time, the number of entries in our “Instant” queue has outnumbered the number of entries in our “DVD” queue. This bolsters my hope that someday soon, I’ll be able to watch whatever I want whenever and wherever I want (for a modest fee, of course) without having to buy something or plan ahead.

Those of you who have been watching pay per view and Tivo for the last 5 years may think I’m arriving late to the party, but the Netflix streaming-on-demand service is different enough that I disagree.

Beautiful Fall Commutes

Fall is a wonderful time for commuting by bicycle. This fall has been particularly mild and enjoyable.

After the clocks fall back, it’s dark by the time I leave work. If I don’t have to get home quickly, I ride through Schenley and Frick parks. Almost the whole trip home is on trails, and avoids cars. Since it’s dark and a bit chilly, there are almost no dogs and walkers.

Once I’m on the Junction Hollow trail, it’s basically silent until I get to Squirrel Hill. My generator headlight is bright enough to keep the ride safe. Riding home alone, a silent bubble of light floating in a sea of darkness, gives me time to think and provides a good transition between “communicating with computers” at work and “communicating with people” at home.

It helps a lot that I commute often, and the route is familiar to me. I don’t spend any thought on operating my bicycle and I’m completely comfortable with the way it handles. Being familiar with the route allows me to anticipate the tricky parts, but cruise smoothly between them.

Most people who drive often occasionally experience the “autopilot” effect: “How did I get here?” Part of you drives the car to your destination without the rest of you even being aware of it or needing to pay full attention to it. I have the same experience on my bicycle, especially on the way home as my mind is processing the day’s effort at work. “I’m at the top of the hill already?” is a particularly nice revelation to have.

Unfortunately, fall doesn’t always last very long. But as long as there isn’t too much snow, nighttime park rides home can be very enjoyable in the winter as well.