I discovered this piece while looking for music to play in the background of my wife's D&D campaign. We had heard rumors of a haunted piano bar, so I looked for ghost-themed music and came across Bolcom's 3 Ghost Rags. I had played the Graceful Ghost when I was much younger, but hadn't realized it was part of a series of 3.
The piano bar ended up not being haunted, but instead was in a time loop. When the three rags played all the way through, the loop would end with a catastrophic meteor strike killing everyone in the bar and we'd start again and had to figure out how to escape the loop. It ended up being because the pianist had made a deal with a demon to become the "greatest pianist of all time" and we had to destroy the piano and then defeat a crazy aberration hidden in the basement.
Anyway, I really liked "Poltergeist", so I decided to learn it. The ending could be... a little more polished, but I decided this take was good enough. It's got a cat, after all.
We had some flight vouchers from a cancelled trip that we had to use and my wife and I happened to both have time off in the summer, and of course our 7-year old son was out of school. Summers in western Washington are great, so where could be fly to that was at least as good but wouldn't exceed the cost of our vouchers? We decided on Glacier National Park, as it's only fully open during the summer. This is a trip report. Most of the pictures are of animals since after I switched to telephoto lens, I usually did not switch back to something that could take landscapes.
Prep
Since none of our family are avid hikers, we did a series of training hikes near where we lived that I thought were very important to prepare us, especially for Grinnell Glacier.
Rattlesnake Ledge
Mashel Falls
Mt. Pilchuck
Little Bandera
I would say that I thought that Mt. Pilchuck and Little Bandera would normally be more technically challenging than Grinnell, though shorter, but as you'll see later in Day 4, nature decided to up the challenge.
Downloading offline maps for Google Maps and the official NPS app proved very handy for navigating.
Day 1 - Sunday, August 25 - Travel Day
We found out that SeaTac airport was under some sort of cyberattack. When we checked in at home online, we were advised that checked bags may not make it to the destination. We had planned to check a bag because hiking poles are not officially allowed on flights. However, we had read online that often TSA lets them through if they are fully disassembled, so we decided to risk bringing them in carry-on.
Security did let us through with hiking poles.
A second hiccup was that the rental car agency, Alamo, did not have any compact SUVs available, which was the option we had booked. We had to decide between a full size car, a pickup, or a minivan. There was some concern about the conditions of the roads which had made us prefer a compact SUV, but after doing some research on the phone, we found that the roads were either fully paved or pretty well-kept gravel that anything other than a sports car would be able to handle and that the bigger risk was that large vehicles would find parking and going through the narrow parts of Going-to-the-Sun Road more challenging. So we went with the car for the best fuel efficiency.
We messaged our AirBnB hostess whether or not they had bear spray we could borrow at the place in Whitefish, and she let us know that some previous guests had left some. They had also left bug spray. We bought food for breakfasts and lunches and sunscreen that we were originally planning to bring in the checked bag.
Day 2 - Monday, August 26 - Hidden Lake
We had heard that parking was dicey at Logan Pass unless you got there before 6:30 AM and we didn't really want to get up early enough to try that. So, instead we aimed for getting the express shuttles at Apgar visitor center. We got in line at 7:35 AM and got on the fourth shuttle at 8:25 AM. It was technically not "express", because it made stops along the way, but still one of the smaller shuttles that went all the way to Logan Pass without a need for a transfer.
Hidden Lake was my wife's favorite hike. Beautiful peaks, meadows, trees, and of course, the lake. We saw a good amount of wildlife. The descent to the lake and the climb back up was pretty steep, but nothing like Bandera in Washington state that our family had done before.
My wife was not enthusiastic about the plan to drive from Whitefish to Many Glacier early in the morning to do Grinnell Glacier on Wednesday, so she checked for cancellations at Many Glacier hotel or Swiftcurrent Motor Inn and found one! So, on this day we drove the Going-to-the-Sun Road over to the east side of the park and entered Many Glacier to hike to Lake Bullhead.
We saw much less wildlife this day. While some people reported seeing a bull moose near Lake Bullhead, we ended up not seeing any. We stopped by Fishercap Lake and ate lunch at Red Rock Falls on the way. Our son enjoyed tossing rocks into each of the lakes. We did see a few things, though.
Green Comma butterfly
Paddle-tailed Darner
White-spotted Sawyer
Canada Jay
Day 4 - Wednesday, August 28 - Grinnell Glacier
So, while the previous days had highs of 60s and 70s, today had a high of 40F with rain and snow! We bought gloves and my wife bought a beanie from the gift shops in previous days in anticipation of this, and they definitely came in handy. We double-socked and brought a bunch of layers. The normal Grinnell Glacier trailhead was closed for repairs, so we parked at Many Glacier hotel around 6:25 AM (because we were worried about parking) and enjoyed breakfast inside the hotel before heading out.
I was looking forward to trying to spot some elk or moose at Swiftcurrent Lake or Lake Josephine, but sadly did not see any. Our back-up plan was to just hike to Lake Grinnell if things seemed too miserable, but we ended up deciding to stick with the glacier by the time the trail forked.
The cold rain turned to snow as we headed further up. We sort of had views, but obscured by fog and snow. The hike itself had nice varied terrain and interesting water features. My wife spotted a bighorn sheep sleeping in a field below:
About 1.2 miles from the top, my wife and son decided to turn back due to the snow sticking to the ground. My son didn't have any hiking poles and it was getting pretty slick at spots. I pressed on. But here's what it looked like at the top:
There were some pine siskin foraging in the snow.
At some point, I realized that my hands had gone from warm to wet and painfully cold. I also then noticed that water had made it past my waterproof boots and that my socks were soaked. I had two layers of wool socks on, so my feet never got too cold, but I had to keep on flexing my fingers to keep them from going numb.
I'm normally a pretty slow hiker, slower than my wife and son, but I half jogged on the way back down just to generate heat. I did spot the bighorn sheep still in the field, now awake and eating. But it was extremely difficult for me to get any shots through the snow with my cold hands and this ended up being the best of the lot:
After making it back down to Lake Josephine, I headed to the boat dock hoping to skip the last 2 miles back to Many Glacier Hotel. I had originally bought a boat tour to gain entry into Many Glacier before my wife managed to snag reservations at Swiftcurrent Motor Inn. But the next boat wasn't for another 20 minutes and there were already so many people waiting that the operator said I was likely to have to wait for the one after that, another 45 minutes after the first boat. So, I decided to walk the last 2 miles back.
When I got back to Swiftcurrent Lake, the paved part of the trail, the people a couple dozen of feet in front of me started backing up and talking loudly about bears! There were two cubs and a parent sort of strolling on the path towards us and we had to back up quite a bit before they decided to cut across the plants and then cross the bridge across Swiftcurrent. As there were people in front of me with bear spray in hand, I took the opportunity to take some photos.
The way back after that was uneventful and I re-united with my family at the lobby of Many Glacier Hotel and drove back to Whitefish.
While the weather and lack of views were unfortunate, I felt like the hike through the snow was quite the adventure and the bear encounter was exciting.
Day 5 - Thursday, August 29 - Avalanche Lake
We decided to end with Avalanche Lake and to take the shuttles again. Logan Pass was closed in the morning due to snow, so we figured everyone who wanted to go there would probably end up parking at Avalanche instead. Plus, we didn't want to get up super-early after the grueling experience yesterday and figured with the larger shuttles running to Avalanche compared to the small ones that go to Logan Pass that we wouldn't have to wait as long as we did last time.
We got to shuttle line around 9:20 AM and discovered that so many people were parking at Avalanche that many of them had improperly parked in the over-sized vehicle turn around loop and thus, they couldn't actually run the larger shuttles. Apparently, there's no tow trucks and it didn't sound like they even fine people who are improperly parked. Plus the reservation check line for Going-to-the-Sun was 20 minutes since they had to explain to everyone that Logan Pass was closed due to snow. We didn't get to Avalanche until 12:20 PM or so. But that still left plenty of time to do Trail of Cedars and Avalanche Lake to cap off our trip.
I didn't find the Trail of Cedars to be as wondrous as any of the previous hikes, but I appreciate there being a very accessible hike.
The Avalanche Lake hike was very nice. A lot of cool water features, woods, some views, and Avalanche Lake itself was very pretty.
Creek
On the way to the lake, we noticed a lot of people stopped looking into the woods, so we stopped to ask what was going on. Bears.
After waiting 10 minutes or so, the bears decided they wanted to cross the trail. The crowd of people parted ways like the Red Sea and backed up. It was a cub and a parent.
At the lake itself, we mostly saw birds. Our son played with rocks at the lake and we relaxed for a while before we headed back.
Stellar Jay
American Dipper
? were flying low and fast across the lake
Day 6 - Friday, August 30 - Whitefish and return home
Since we had a flight in the afternoon, we took the time to relax in the indoor pool and hot tub of the community building the AirBnB belonged to and then walk around the Whitefish shops and eat lunch at Buffalo Cafe before taking our flight home. We accidentally navigated to the Kalispell airport before going to the correct one, but we had plenty of time to fix that. Our hiking poles also made it through as carry-on and our trip home was pleasantly uneventful.
Photography notes
Pictures were taken with a Sony a6400. All of the animal shots were taken with the Sony 70-350mm G, with shutter priority set to either 1/1000 or 1/1250. I also used a Cascade Mountain Tech trekking pole as a monopod, fitted with a Ulanzi U-80l mount. I carried the camera on a Peak Design clip attached to my backpack.
Both the Sony A6400 and Sony 80-350mm G are weather sealed and I took advantage of that in the Grinnell Glacier hike with all the snow and rain. So, it went through hours of rain and snow and did not seem any worse for the wear. I would not have managed to get pictures of the bears on the bridge if the camera were not readily accessible. However, when the hotshoe contacts got wet, I'd get annoying messages about incompatible accessories and would have to remove the hotshoe cover and dry it off a bit with my gloves. Luckily, this didn't happen when I chanced across the bears. I hear a piece of electric tape does pretty well to prevent this.
I'm happy to say that we've recently realized a long standing dream of mine: to be able to play D&D using physical minis and dice on a digital tabletop. This is a write-up describing the set up, in case it helps others considering something similar.
Here's a picture of the set up in gaming mode:
...and here it is in normal dining table form:
The key components:
A television laying flat to display the maps on.
A table with built-in storage to hide the TV when not playing.
Software that makes it easy to display the maps and manage encounters.
The Television - 43" Hisense A6H
With a TV, you need some way to level it and some plexiglass to protect the screen. I went with a case from digitaltabletops.com for around $525, as they seem to make it their business and are clear about which TVs they're sure their case works with. I would give them a 4/5:
Definitely accomplishes the primary goal of leveling the TV and protecting it, and it looks pretty good.
There's some minor cosmetic gouges in the wood that are hard to notice unless you are looking.
There was not enough protection during shipping and two of the corner legs were broken off. I was able to super-glue the pieces back together.
There's a minor gap of a few millimeters between the screen and the plexiglass due to the lower bezel of the TV. I can understand how that's impractical to eliminate this gap in a case meant to accommodate a variety of TVs. You can still easily tell which square a mini is in.
The TV is a 43" Hisense A6H. It's relatively cheap at $240. It's the largest size that fits horizontally inside a wide Wyrmwood Modular Gaming Table with player desks on each side. It has wider than average viewing angles, which is more important for our use case than typical TV usage. It doesn't have a raised bezel on the top or sides, only the bottom, so there's not much of a gap between the plexiglass and the screen. It's 4K, which seems good considering how close people will be viewing it. It has Chromecast built-in, which can be handy for casting the maps from Chrome without needing to use an HDMI cable, but I've found that our network connectivity is not robust enough to avoid video compression artifacts.
Its main downsides of not being bright enough for usage in the sun or not having dark enough blacks for usage in the dark aren't relevant for our use case of playing in the evening with the lights on.
Alternatives considered
The Frame TV from Samsung is more expensive ($700 for an old version) and has worse viewing angles. But it lays flat, so you don't need a case to level it, though you might want to raise the TV up a bit. Since the plexiglass doesn't have to integrate with a case, you can make sure that it's completely flush with the screen to minimize the gap. Not having seen this set up in person, I don't know if I would have preferred this over what I have now.
A projector is smaller and completely eliminates the gap between minis and the picture. But it's difficult to get a bright picture in a lit room, casts shadows, and the light fixture in our dining room prevents us from ceiling mounting it. It'd also be a pain to bust it out and put it away again.
The Table - Wide Wyrmwood Modular Gaming Table
The table is a medium wide Wyrmwood Modular Gaming Table in rustic elm. It's one of those gaming tables with removable leaves and a vault to store ongoing board games, puzzles, and other similar things. For example, a television. My family is very happy with the table. It's beautiful, very solid, and perfect for this use case. There's plenty of reviews and videos about this table, so I'm going to avoid going over well-covered features and instead focus on some of the points that are specifically relevant for why we chose it, more subtle considerations, or things that surprised me.
The table is 31" high, which is higher than the standard dining table height of 28-30". Since it's listed on their site, it shouldn't be a surprise. What surprised me is how much the additional inch bothers me. You generally want the surface to be at elbow height or lower. It's probably the thing I like the least about the table, but lowering it would risk the table getting in the way of bigger people's legs. It's just the cost of having a 4.5" gaming vault, which is needed to fit the TV case with a height of 4". We just plan on getting used to it.
I specifically got this over some similar tables due to its leaves system being water resistant to spills with its magnet, groove, and gasket system. I didn't want a liquid spill to immediately soak the TV. Some tables deal with this by having a single piece of wood instead, but that's pretty hefty. And it's actually pretty convenient to lift just the end topper up like a lid to access the insides.
Some people have reported warping of the topper leaves over time, especially on wide tables. If it warps within the first few weeks, Wyrmwood would definitely cover replacement, but I was concerned about it in the long term. So, we got the finger-jointed topper leaves which should be more resistant to warping as it is glued together from multiple pieces of wood. While I don't prefer the look, my wife does, and it was cheaper.
Our wood choice has knots that were unfilled for us. We would have preferred them being filled with clear epoxy. Some people have been complaining that theirs were filled with non-matching wood filler, so I don't know what is standard practice for them.
The magnets on the topper leaves trigger the sleep behavior of my wife's laptop. So, she has to be careful of her laptop placement.
Table Layout
This part is likely not relevant to most people, but it's the part I spent the most time planning around. It's figuring out the table layout.
Since our primary use case for using the gaming vault is D&D, we had the issue of needing to provide a surface for people's character sheets, laptops, and so on. Some of the options we discarded:
Doing this in the vault did not seem very comfortable.
The table edge is not wide enough by itself.
Wyrmwood sells player desks for this purpose, but we didn't want the table to be any longer to fit in the room. So while we could use player desks along the width of the table, we couldn't along the length.
Wyrmwood also sells hobby vaults that could help, and having two hobby vaults on each end of the table would do the trick, but they reduce the overall capacity of the table--making us unable to store the player desks in the table when not in use.
What I really wanted was to be able to keep some of the topper leaves on at the end. But the way they stay in place is with rubber studs intended to be at the corners of the table, so they only stay in place when all the topper leaves are installed and are quite loose otherwise.
So, what I ended up doing was putting some cabinet bumpers on the sides of the player desks and using the player desks to stop the toppers from moving. It's still not extremely secure this way--with enough force, the player desks can be moved sideways--but in practice it works just fine with our group. Others have suggested just using cabinet liners.
I did get one hobby vault for the DM. But so far, we haven't really needed to access the inside of it in the middle of a game. And it turns out if you leave two toppers on both sides of the table, the player desks with furniture bumpers fit in the middle pretty much perfectly resulting in all of the toppers being very secure:
This also gives more storage space overall. The downside would be inability to access this storage while stuff is on the toppers, as you'd have to lift it up vs sliding the hobby vault lid forward, and the increased height compared to just using the hobby vault. We'll be evaluating which set up we prefer.
Software - Foundry VTT
Foundry VTT is pay $50 once software, which I prefer over subscriptions. Since my use case is playing locally, I don't need a hosting service. Foundry seems very popular and has a great variety of third-party content and modules, some of which make hybrid play with physical minis on a TV very easy. The key ones for me were:
Lock View -- Easily size the grid to physical 1" squares on the TV and lock the view so that token movement doesn't trigger panning near the edges.
Monk's Active Display -- Hide unnecessary UI elements.
One of the things that I like to do when I run games is to play music and sound effects, but it gets hectic to manage. Foundry supports automatically playing music when switching to a scene, and a module called Automated Animations supports automatically playing a matching sound when you roll an attack or cast a spell. JB2A is a module that can supply the animations and on their Discord is a link to a bunch of sounds.
Alternatives considered
I play Level Up Advanced 5th Edition (A5E) rather than D&D straight, and it turns out Foundry has gaming system support for it that seems already pretty complete and has active development. I hadn't realized that when I bought Foundry, but for that reason alone it's going to be hard to beat. But here were my thoughts on other options prior to buying Foundry:
Arkenforge. I actually bought it when it went on sale since it's explicitly made for in-person play. However, having the option for remote play is nice and Foundry just has a lot more support in pre-made content and modules. I also preferred the Foundry UI over Arkenforge.
Roll20. During the pandemic and after the DM of one of my groups moved, Roll20 was what he ran and I deeply appreciated being able to continue playing. But it was always a little flaky and its advanced features require a subscription.
Fantasy Grounds. I haven't actually tried this one, but did look into it since I've been hearing about it over the years. But it seems general impression I get is that it doesn't seem to be improving as quickly as Foundry.
Maptool. This was my first VTT that I used over 20 years ago, but as it never comes up as a recommendation I figured it had been superseded.
These are just some notes I took when trying to figure out the differences between Level Up Advanced 5E (A5E) and original D&D 5E (O5E). They aren't necessarily complete or particularly organized, and I'll probably update this later.
Race has been divided into Heritage (biological) and Culture (where you were raised).
Ability attribute bonuses are based upon your Background instead of either Heritage or Culture. In O5E they were in race. This mostly means A5E characters should use A5E backgrounds and O5E characters should stick with O5E backgrounds.
Destiny define your character's primary motivation and gives more structure to how to gain Inspiration and spend Inspiration. There is also a Fulfillment Feature where you gain a special ability upon reaching your destiny. Inspiration is also in O5E officially for good roleplay, particularly if it's not in a way advantageous to the party, but in practice DMs rarely grant it and all it often allows for is advantage.
Expertise is not just double your proficiency bonus. Instead, it is a bonus die that starts at 1d4 and if you have stacking sources of expertise, they increase the die size. There are more sources of expertise than in O5E.
Flanking is an optional rule in 5E. In A5E, it's a default rule that grants expertise to the attack roll.
Characters get skill specialties that grant expertise (e.g. specializing in flattery grants expertise to Persuasion checks when appropriate)
Culture and Engineering are two new skills.
Classes are different. Some of them have changed names, but even the ones that have the same name are different.
Monk -> Adept
Barbarian -> Berserker
Paladin -> Herald
Marshal is a 4E warlord
Rangers don't get spellcasting by default and have more exploration features than most classes.
In general, they wanted to make martial characters have more interesting
options than just move and attack, so they all have maneuvers that
require Exertion to use and a pool of Exertion that refreshes typically
on short rests. Think of them like martial spells.
It's also noted that martial classes are supposed to have more out of combat utility than they used to.
Exploration is a more emphasized pillar in A5E compared to O5E.
There are more rules about journeying and activities characters can take while doing so.
Food and water are abstracted away into Supplies.
Fatigue replaces Exhaustion.
If you gain more than 1 level of Fatigue, normal rest becomes insufficient to restore it and you need to find a Haven (known safe place) to get good rest to reduce Fatigue by 1 each long rest.
Strife is the mental equivalent to Fatigue.
Criticals
There are criticals with saves now
There are also criticals with ability checks
Combat
There are critical failures and successes with saves now.
When healed from 0 or fewer hit points, you gain a level of Fatigue.
Attacking from above gives you an expertise die. (I have the higher ground!)
You can use a bonus action to fight "back-to-back" with an adjacent ally. Your passive perception increases by 2 until start of your next turn or either of you move. You cannot be flanked.
Dragging an ally uses your reaction and movement costs are tripled. It still provokes attacks of opportunity.
Pulling from below -- if you are 5 feet below your target and not smaller than the target and you aren't grappled or restrained, gain an expertise die on strength checks and saving throws made against it.
Press the attack -- before you take the attack action, you can use a bonus action to designate one creature within your reach not already the target of a press the attack action. Until the beginning of your next turn, melee attacks against that creature gain an expertise die, unless you have disadvantage. Target can use its reaction to Fall Back.
There's Sprint in addition to Dash. If you are unencumbered and not wearing heavy armor, speed quadruples. If encumbered, then triples. Must be a straight line. Can only sprint for number of turns equal to Con mod for free. Otherwise, constitution (athletics) check with DC 10+ 1 per previous check. Failure gains level of Fatigue. This fatigue goes away after one minute of not sprinting. You can't sprint if you have Fatigue.
Basic Maneuvers instead of making an attack: disarm, grapple, knockdown, overrun, or shove.
If you have the Extra Attack feature, the bonus action for an extra attack with the off-hand weapon allows for two attacks instead of just one.
Massive damage rules -- if you get knocked to 0 or below and the hit dealt 20 + 3xLvl or more damage, make a DC 15 con save or die instantly. If you succeed, you get one level of Fatigue and Strife.
Taking damage when at 0 hit points can be an extra failed death save, level fatigue, or level of strife, attacker's choice (or just DM's choice if there is no attacker)
You can convert a critical hit against you into a normal hit at the cost of using your reaction and suffering one fatigue level. Or sacrificing your shield. Fatigue gained during the combat only takes effect after combat is over.
There's a Doomed condition where minor healing isn't sufficient to heal from imminent death. 7 or more levels of fatigue is one way to get Doomed.
There are rules for Strongholds as another way to spend your gold. They always count as Havens.
There are rules for Followers. They They feel more like contractors to me. Another way to spend gold, 1-time fee.
Feats
There are new feats. Some old feats have changed. Some have been renamed.
There are multiclass feats.
There are feats that have prerequisites.
Spells
Just because a spell has the same name doesn't mean it's the same spell. E.g. fireball has been nerfed to actually follow the spell power guidelines. In O5E, it's actually overpowered due to its iconic status.
There's some rules for actions characters can take between adventures during their downtime, including training or modifying their spells.
So, there's the music sheets site that I'm subscribed to called MuseScore. I got an email from them on Dec. 8 with holiday music suggestions and this arrangement of "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" by David Dinh caught my attention. I've been obsessing over it to get it presentable by Christmas, and while it's a bit on the sloppy side, I'm pretty happy to get this far after two weeks!
I've been working on this piece since the Kapustin Toccatina. While I could improve upon this take, I'm thinking of moving on to other pieces. I might try for a better recording later, in which case I'll replace the one here. This piece has a lot of fast jumping chords that just take a lot of repetition to get the muscle memory right.
Rachmaninoff originally didn't give this piece a title as evocative as "Little Red Riding Hood", but decided to reveal his inspiration later after others wanted to arrange it for instruments other than piano. Listening to it, I feel like Little Red Riding Hood just gets caught and eaten by the Wolf.
At work, if I find myself explaining a topic multiple times, I decide to write it down on wiki so that I can give a quick summary and then just link to the wiki for more details. Lately, I've been finding myself relating the same story multiple times, so I figure I'd go with the same strategy outside of work.
This is going to be about how Leon learned to ride a pedal bike, without training wheels, at age three and a half. I think I didn't know how to ride a bike without training wheels until I was eight or something.
Current best practice regarding teaching kids how to ride a bike goes something like this:
The hardest part of riding a bike is the balancing and steering, which actually has nothing to do with pedaling and can be done safely and early with a balance bike, which is pretty much a bike without pedals or brakes and depends solely on a person's feet.
We got Leon a balance bike (a Strider) at age 2. He mostly walked around with it rather than actually balancing or coasting until he was 3 or so. The best way to learn coasting is to find a gentle downhill incline.
Kids that use balance bikes are used to being able to move their feet forward and backward and thus have a hard time dealing with coaster brakes (i.e. a brake that engages by pedaling backwards). So, a balance bike kid should switch to a bike without coaster brakes.
Because the CPSC requires bikes below a certain size have coaster brakes, it can be tricky to find a small bike with hand brakes and no coaster brake. The Woom 2 comes with a coaster brake due to the CPSC requirement, but the company sells a freewheel kit for cheap because they believe the CPSC requirement to be outdated. We bought a used Woom 2 that still had the coaster brake and Leon did indeed have a lot of trouble not accidentally engaging the brake. So we bought the freewheel kit and it worked out a lot better.
It can be very helpful to remove the pedals from the bike at first to treat it as a balance bike with hand brakes. Most balance bikes don't have hand brakes, so this means that the kid is learning one thing at a time, in this case, using the hand brake.
We definitely did this for Leon and had him get used to balancing on the new bike going down hills and learning to use the hand brake.
There is no training wheels step, because learning how to balance and steer was dealt with in step 1. I think it took roughly a month or two for Leon to learn to use the pedal bike.
Some other miscellaneous tips:
Personally, I recommend biking gloves in addition to a helmet both because kids usually find them cool and I want to minimize the chance of an injury putting a kid off of wanting to learn how to ride. You are way more likely to fall on onto your hands than head, though of course the head is more important to protect.
A lot of kids bikes are very heavy and thus may be less fun to use. Woom makes some pretty quality kids bikes. They aren't cheap, but they're also reasonably easy to buy used and sell for around the same cost.
Since I really enjoy cycling, I really wanted to maximize the chance of Leon enjoying it and having family cycling trips. I'm happy to say that he does enjoy his time on the bike and that he learned way earlier than I did.
Here's a video for the first time Leon managed to pedal on the bike for more than a few seconds!
