Indoctrination

I had cmouse, purplebob, and bf over yesterday for gaming. First we playing a surprisingly quick game of 1856, which everyone appeared to enjoy. ( Commentary )

We then discovered that bf hadn't played Puerto Rico before, so we taught her that. narya fed us a very delicious pot roast. Then, in her words, she "kicked [our] sorry little asses at amoebas"; I never fully got Ursuppe but tried (with moderate but not extreme success) the "spawn cheap amoebas everywhere" strategy, beating the "active movement is fast and free" strategy and losing to the combination of Frugality and Tentacle.

All in all, a good use of a long-weekend day.

[Bike] Canton, then, um, oops

I had this whole weekend thing planned out so that when it finally quit raining I'd be able to go out on the three-day-weekend Monday and bike. But it quit raining early, and yesterday was already booked, so I didn't get out until today. The plan was a little lacking, but it started with crossing the Charles at Harvard Square, going down North Harvard Street to Cambridge Street to Brighton Center, then following Chestnut Hill Ave. to Route 9 to Lee Street to Clyde Street, and ultimately to West Roxbury Parkway. Go through Stony Brook Reservation, past Readville commuter rail, and ultimately wind up in the Blue Hills Reservation.

So this worked great. Cross 128 at 138 and head for Canton Junction...and the sky opens up. Oops. Try to not drown for a few minutes, give up when the trees start dripping too and head on. Get to the commuter rail at 3:15...there was a 3:00 train back into Boston, next train is at 5. Wander around the station for maybe 15 minutes before figuring out that Attleborough and Stoughton are on the same schedule card and the reason the "weekend" block doesn't mention Stoughton at all is because the train just doesn't go to Stoughton on weekends. Well, onward...get to Norwood Depot at 4:15, the next train there is at 5:07 but it's clear that Murphy has connected the weather to waiting for this train, so after 45 sunny minutes the train appears, it's a somewhat irritatingly slow local until we pass Readville inbound and are on the Southwest Corridor.

The T cleverly scheduled construction work on the Red Line over a holiday weekend, and bikes and bustitution don't play together, so biked (in the rain, of course) from South Station to Kendall, then T'd to Davis, and came home. About 27 miles of actual biking; with better weather, the plan likely would have been to come north from Norwood just outside 128 then come back in from Weston or somethere like that. (route)