Friday night was sushi with Megan and the Crystal Castles at the Congress theatre.
Saturday was dinner at Brauhaus for some kitsch and German food.
Sunday was the Hot Chocolate 5K.
Above is a picture of some gifts and other things from this weekend. Overall quite and good time.
So one of the first things that I have noticed since getting my R 1200R is that almost all of the bolts on the motorcycle are Torx screws. That means all of my metric tools that I own will not work and I unfortunatley need to pick up some torx tools. As with most motorcycles, the bike did come with a basic tool kit, but to be honest it is something to be desired. It just does not inspire confidence for something that I would want to rely on when broken on the side of the road. So over the past couple of weeks I have been doing some research to try to find some tool rolls or kits that I can add to my bike. Unfortunately the pickings do not seem to be all that good and one of the only pre-made kits i have found is from Cruz Tools. Now, the kit looks fine, but it is not exactly what i am looking for.
So I have decided to build my own tool roll. A quick search online for what other people are using lead me to some nice R 1200GS links. These are of course not my bike, but the bikes are close enough that everything should work. Here are the links.
http://www.r1200gs.info/misc/toolkit.html
http://micapeak.com/checklists/R12tools.html
I am going to use these for the basis to build my kit over the next couple of months. Now, I personally am going to be buying Craftsman tools. I know that Craftsman sort of gets some flak these days, but in my opinion they are still the best hand tools around. I just have no frame of reference online for a lot of the other "no-name" brands and I always read about problems when pieces break or don't fit right and strip a screw from cheap branded stuff. I'll pay a bit more for the Craftsman stuff, but it will last forever and I know it will work properly when I need it. The last thing I want to happen is to strip a screw head in the middle of nowhere when I really need my tools to work. The extra $20 now could save me a ton of headache later.
So far I have picked up just an adjustable 3/8" rachet with an adjustable head and a torx head set T-15 through T-50. I believe I need a T-55 or T-60 as well, but this should probably get me through 80% of the bolts on my bike right now.
Additional items that I need to pick up will be some allen wrenchs, and appropriately sized wrenches for stuff like the oil filter, etc. Now I have been reading online that some people have picked up some open/closed end wrenchs. I am curious if these are really needed or if I can get by with just getting some equivalent metric sockets. It could save me some space.
Anyways, I will see how this builds out.
So yesterday I was supposed to do another group ride up to C9Y in Iowa. Unfortunately that ride was canceled due to scheduling conflicts. I opted instead to do a long ride myself to checkout the Illinois River Road Scenic Byway.
I knew from the outset that this was going to be a long ride, and it was. It was probably 500 miles. So instead of getting a nice start on Saturday morning, I ended up sleeping in until about 11:00 am. I didn'tget out the door until noon. I was determined to get his ride in so out I went. Overall I have to say the ride was just "so-so". There were nice bursts of some scenic areas, but I was surprised at how much of the road didn't follow the river and was just on farmland back roads. I was pleasantly surprised by how nice Peoria was by the river though. I want a nice little residential road up above the town on a ridge that offered a good photo. Now, I don't take a lot of photos on my rides, and I really should probably take more. You can see from the photo above however, that my photo obviously did not turn out. When I took the photo my phone said "processing" and I had thought it taken the picture. Clearly it looks like it took the photo after I lowered my camera down. Not a bad shot of the asphalt though, if I do say so myself.
So as I was traveling down I made it to the southern most point in about four hours. Remember I left at noon, so that means that I wasn't going to get back until 8:00 that night. Yesterday's high temperature was about 53 degrees as well. So after getting lost a little bit I was trying to make a high tail back north to get on the highway before dark hit. Of course, to add to my woe, I got pulled over for speeding and received a ticket.
Ultimately I did not get home until about 8:15 last night. I was freezing and tired and apparently I do not know how to take a photo. I did learn however that the seat on my new BMW is comfortable enough to go all day in. I road basically eight hours straight and did not have a sore butt.
It has been several months since I have posted a video game blog. That is partly because I haven't really played anything that has caught me as of late. The whole video gaming scene seems to be winding down for me at the moment as we are in the last doldrums of this console cycle.
The highlight over the past couple of months of course has been Portal 2. That is just such a good game in almost all of its design respects. There isn't a ton to say there that hasn't already been said.
One of the more weird games that I am playing right now is called "El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron". Overall the game is terrible. Gameplay is atrocious and boring and it is too Japanese. The one redeeming quality of it is that it has a very cool design aesthetic. The game has these moments that switch from cell shaded, to silhouette, to side scrolling cartoonish. There is even a brief moment that goes into anime. It is with this design alone that I am sticking it out to try and get through to see how it ends.
This past week I had the opportunity to attend my first out of state conference for work. It was the ICMA (International City/County Managers Association) conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
Overall the conference was fantastic and it really gave me a great perspective of how there are similar people who face the same trials and issues that I do in my career. There must have been probably 4,000-5,000 people attending in total.
Most of the sessions that I attended were very well put on and the keynotes each day were great as well. I was also afforded the opportunity to go off site for a couple of excursions, one of which was to the Boeing Mesa facility where they make the Apache Helicopter.
The only "negative" from the event, if you could even call it a negative was an observation that I had with some of the other attendees. Most of the the sessions that people attend are designed to get people thinking about different ways to approach problems in communities. In most conferences and newsletters that I receive these topics tend to be mostly the same and focus generally upon either how we need to do more with less or engage citizens more. What gets me at all these is that these are recurring topics so people obviously aren't trying to apply ideas that they learn. Even more than that though is that I am surprised by how many people during question and answer sessions asking for specific answers to their problems from the presenters. More often than not I hear questions like; "What are the top three things I should do?"
I was amazed at how many seem to miss the point. The point of these sessions isn't to tell you how to do something. It is merely a process to get your own juices flowing. What worked by the presenter most likely will not work for you and to think that it will is naive.
Let's not ruin the overall experience with that point though. Overall the entire conference was great and I cannot wait to go to next year's in Boston should i be afforded the opportunity.
View Ride Log: 09-30-12 in a larger map
Nothing spectacular for a ride this afternoon. Just a quick two hour jaunt near the Shipping and Sanitary Canal west of Chicago. While scoping this one out I notice a road that ran parallel to the canal and though that it might have offered a good view. Unfortunately it ended up being mostly industrial areas which at one point road right through the middle of an oil refinery. I even managed to skirt around the outside of a forest preserve.
View Ride Log: 09-23-12 - Starved Rock in a larger map
A little over a week ago I bought myself a new motorcycle. A lightly used 2012 BMW R 1200R Classic. The bike is gorgeous and is black with white racing stripes, spoked wheels and of course the great BMW boxer engine. I am turning 30 this year and starting to feel a little old, so I figured I would treat myself.
To christen the new bike I decided to do an afternoon run down to Starved Rock. I am slightly ashamed to say this, but I have never been to Starved Rock before. I was in for a treat, for the ride was not only a nice one, but the state park is beautiful. I will have to make sure and go back there this fall to go hiking with the changing leaves.
Despite my better judgement I decided to go ahead and buy it. I'm calling it my early birthday present to myself since I am turning 30 this year. It is such a sweet ride in so many ways and I am super excited to ride it despite my guilt. This does mean that my trusty ZR-7 will be trying to find a new home in the near future. If anyone is looking for a great commuter and weekend warrior bike, then let me know!
Have you ever had one one of those games where you couldn't miss a shot? You are just on and you are making incredible shots that you normally wouldn't make. Hit the angles, get the digs, make to impossible shots and return them like a pro? Yeah, that was my opponent today at tennis. I honestly did not play an awesome game, but I was putting some really nice shots into corners that most opponents would not have gotten to. The guy I played tonight not only got to my shots, but hit really solid winners back to me. More than once he would put a perfect a perfect lob over my head while I was at the net and it would land right on the back of the basline.
So I went on a really nice big ride last week up to the Grumpy Troll in Wisconsin with RTRC. I have come to learn that any ride lead by Martin in the group results in an all day adventure. I have no problem with that, but we were out riding from 9:30 until about 8:00 pm that night. Of course my GPS seems to have failed on me with dead batteries again so I did not get the route. I reeally need to keep a closer eye on that sort of stuff.
Also my saga for a new motorcycle is slowing continuing. I am sort of actively looking for something and have calls into two dealers. We will see if something develops, but I can't say that my experience with either dealer has been stellar as of yet. I feel like I need to pull teeth to get any sort of information out of them. You would think they would be making more strides to get me content when they have a person approaching them with a potential sale.
If it happens it happens, if not I will truck along perfectly fine on my ZR-7. Actually I suppose I should say I might. Even if this purchase through a dealer doesn't play out I have a real inkling to try and sell or trade my ZR-7 on Craigslist for a dual sport, likely a KLR. Something about the dual sporting really seems appealing to me and I figure at this point I will get a standard street bike again eventually so why not get the dual sport in the garage?
Again, I think we will just sort of see what happens.