Tuesday, July 22, 2008

On The Road to Historicon

Der Alte Fritz is travelling along the road from Hesse Seewald to Historicon, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Bill Protz, Randy Frye and I loaded up our rental 15 passenger van with tons of lead figures, terrain and other assorted game goodies. We removed all of the seats, save for the front and second row seats and had the van stuffed to the gills.


The driving has been fairly easy as we trade off driving every two hours. The only difficulty was driving through a driving rain, thunder and lightning storm near Youngstown, Ohio. I turned on the old laptop to look at the weather radar and found that the only storms in the whole state of Ohio were in the exact area that we were at. Then Bill announced that we were nearly out of gas, and nary an exit could be found on the Ohio Turnpike. We finally found an exit and found a gas (petrol) station, much to our relief. Bill swears that we were coasting into the station on fumes.


We passed through Pittsburgh and settled in for the evening at Uniontown, PA. Tomorrow, we will stop at nearby Fort Necessity and Jumonville Glen, both sites of the French & Indian War. After that, we will continue the trek eastwards and make a stop at Gettysburg. I'm looking forward to seeing the brand new visitors' center and the refurbished Little Round Top/Devils Den area (they have cut back the brush and tree growth in these areas that didn't exist at the time of the battle). I haven't been to Gettysburg in about 8 years, so the changes should be significant.


On thursday, I will be running a BAR game featuring Austrians vs Prussians on some fabulous Herb Gundt made winter terrain. The game event number is T-101 on Thursday at 6PM. So if you happen to be at Historicon, then stop on by my game and say hello. Or better yet, participate in the game.


Painting Update
I have been in a bit of a painting funk or dry spell during the month of July. I have done a little bit of work on some Elite Napoleonic French artillery and crew, but have only completed 8 crew and a couple of guns. I wonder if I'm spending too much time on Napoleonics - perhaps this is sapping me of my will to paint. After Historicon, I think that I will try working on SYW figures again and see if I get the old painting mojo back.


I did paint one SYW Prussian 12 pounder and limber to use in my game. This is one of those Berlin Zinnfiguren models that I bought last year. Perhaps this will get me started again.
I will post some more updates each day at Historicon, but alas, no pictures until I get back home. I brought the digital camera and tripod and plan to leave no memory space unused. Well, goodnight and see you tomorrow. I'm looking forward to some sightseeing tomorrow.

5 comments:

  1. Sir, I believe that your intuition is correct . . . forget those Nappies and devote yourself to tricorn troops.

    I look forward to your reports on Historicon . . . I, like many others, will never get a chance to attend . . . I can only enjoy it via the experiences and photos of others.

    Have a wonderful time.


    -- Jeff

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  2. "I wonder if I'm spending too much time on Napoleonics - perhaps this is sapping me of my will to paint."

    clearly that is so ;-)

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  3. Jim
    Have a fantastic time - I look forward to the reports and the photos upon your return. Perhaps we have the makings of a fantastic road movie script...
    best wishes
    Alan
    p.s why not paint up some units for kleine kreig games as a change of scene/stimulating experience?

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  4. Taking Alan's idea, you can chose some new units . . . and perhaps later expand them to full BAR size . . . or perhaps you'll just keep them small (but forget those Nappies).


    -- Jeff

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  5. Sounds like a lot of fun your way- and good news about the Dutch WAS from Eureka- I was wondering if they would ever in fact see the light of day. Hope they live up to expectations.

    Look forward to hearing more reports "from the front"!

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