Meg and I had a fun time yesterday riding out to Kuiper's Farm near Elburn to do some apple picking. It was a gorgeous weekend and this is something we have wanted to do for a while.
Nothing particularly interesting about the ride itself, but I can tell you that you can put a bag of apples on a motorbike.
My volume of books so far this year hasn't been really high, but that is probably because the majority of the books that I am reading seem to be in the 800+ page range. I have continued to work through the Malazan series and I am now on book #7 with Reaper's Gale.
This book so far has been the hardest to get through and it is really a slog. I personally just don't have much of an interest in the story line that is happening in Lether and the characters really are not that interesting. I am close to 50% of the way through the book and we have finally be reintroduced to some of our Malazan favorites and I did get one new character called Beek, who seems like he will certainly turn into a great character in the future.
I think after this book I will need to take a break from the Malazan series and catch up again on some of my Sci-Fi reading. I am really looking forward to reading Unstable Prototypes, which is the follow up to Joesph Lallo's Bypass Gemini. I also have on my radar to get back into the Entire of the Rose series. I read the first book in that series several years ago around 2001, and while I wasn't a fan of the main character, I did find the world very interesting.
I would also like to read the follow up books to N.K. Jemison's Inheritance Trilogy. A Hundred Thousand Kingdoms was one of the best books I have read in the past few years and I really would like to see where that world goes as well.
The summer tennis season ended this past week. I broke strings on two of my rackets and I figure that sort of sums up my season this summer so far. All of my matches were pretty close, but I couldn't pull any of them out. I finished 2-5 for the summer session and frustrated is the mildest term I would use.
I can't quite say exactly what it is that has me not playing well. In fact I feel I am mostly playing good tennis, but it seems like I am either hitting winners or hitting unforced errors into the net. Perhaps it is a patience thing. Let's just hope the fall season plays a bit better.
So I was playing a tennis match this evening and on the courts behind us a man with his son and his son's friends were also playing around, just hitting the ball. I saw that the guy fall at one point out of the corner of my eye. It appeared he broke his wrist, but it didn't seem like a big deal at the time. He was holding his wrist, but did show any major visible pain and he was walking around fine.
A couple of minutes later I hear one of the boys screaming and I turned around to see the man collapsed along the fence. I grabbed my water bottle and my towel and ran to him as fast as I could, as did most of the people on the courts. The first gate though was locked and I had to go the long way around, outside the courts. Another man playing basketball got to him right before I did and started CPR on him. He said that the man wasn't breathing, but I am unsure. The man was definitely not responsive.
His son, probably, 13-14 was sitting on the ground with his head on his knees just screaming. I went over to him and hugged him and tried to get him to walk with me away from the situation, but he wouldn't move. He was just frozen. A minute or two later the man was finally revived and I saw him sort of jerk back to consciousness.
He was very alert when he woke up and was trying to stand up almost immediately. He had no idea what had happened and was being argumentative with us. We kept trying to just keep him laying on the ground with his head propped up with my towel, sipping on some water. He eventually stood up and started walking around very wobbly, but talking about how he was fine and how he broke his wrist and needed to drive to the ER. I eventually had to stop him and look him dead in the eye and explain to him that he had just been unconscious for several minutes and that the man in the red shirt next to me had just performed CPR on him. It didn't seem like it was registering with him. His son was pleading with him to listen to us. He must have been in shock, because he kept playing with his broken wrist and showed no signs of pain.
The medics were there quick, probably within five minutes. They were talking him through various questions asking him his phone number, and address. I am guessing they were trying to determine his state of mind or find out if he had a stroke or something. His son was pleading with him to go in the ambulance. Eventually the police officer asked us all to step away and few minutes later they must have convinced the man to get on the stretcher and go in the ambulance.
Incredible.
This past weekend I had a chance to do a nice quick ride down Route 113 near Kankakee. There is a nice thirteen mile stretch along the south side of the Kankakee River through the state park down there. If anyone is in that area, it is worth hitting up this little stretch for a pleasant ride. Unfortunately it seems like the "New Google Maps" is terrible for trying to load GPS data into it. I'll put that in another post, but in the mean time enjoy this quick video of the ride.
Today was literally the worst ride I have ever ridden. I had a tour over at Koval Distillery in Chicago today so Megan and I took the bike over to that. I figured it would be fun to drive through some of the Chicago neighborhoods and the lake on the way to the distillery. It was a miserable experience. The traffic on I-55 in both directions was crawling. What should have been a 50 minute ride each way turned into a 90+ minute ride each way. It was hot and miserable. I have never been so uncomfortable on the bike before and it didn't help that I had a passenger that was also hot.
The tour of the distillery itself was cool. It lasted only about 35-40 minutes, but it was interesting to see how whisky is made. I was surprised at actually how small the distillery was. There was a back portion that we didn't get to see, but the building was fairly small. Overall it was a fund trip and made me appreciate Whisky and the Koval brand more. I came away really enjoying the millet whisky that they make. The Bourbon had a really creamy flavor to it as well. If you find yourself in the area, definitely check out the tour there.
This spring so far has been a pretty fun time for video games. It has been my sort of go to stress relief after I come home from work. I have been playing quite a bit of Titanfall since its launch back in March. The game is basically just Call of Duty, but the formula still works and it remains fun to jump in and play and hour or two. There has been quite a bit of complaints from some people online about the value of the game for online only. I never quite understood the issues with those arguments. People spend $60 on COD all the time without touching the single player at all. A new map pack is coming out in a couple of weeks that I am looking forward to play.
I also picked up Super Mario 3D World a few weeks ago for the Wii. That is a gorgeous looking game and if anyone had an qualms about the Wii U producing some good looking games, just look to the Nintendo products for it. It is your standard Mario game in many respects and has all the fun you expect there. I have liked playing it in short bursts of 30-45 minutes, which seems to get me through 2-3 levels before I hit a road block. If you are trying to be a completionist and collect all the stars, the game can be quite challenging. Mario Kart 8 is coming out at the end of this month and I am really looking forward to that. All of the video and screenshots that have been coming out so far make the game look quite phenomenal.
I have also been slowing still chipping away at Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning on my Xbox 360. That is another really pretty game, and it fills my sort of mindless RPG niche at the moment. I wouldn't say that it is a great game by any stretch, but the fight mechanics are solid enough to keep me going and the world is just too pretty not to look at. I thing that drags the game down a bit for me is all of the sidequests, which all come across as a bit meaningless. They all feel like sidequests from an MMO and they are extremely numerous. Overall it is worth playing if anyone comes across it.
So this summer I hope to get Megan on the back of the motorcycle and do some trips. Part of this involves here getting some gear, but it also has involved her having some sort of "backrest" for the back of the bike to lean against. My bike doesn't have a ton of options for this, but after doing quite a bit of research this winter I opted to go with the Givi system. It was cheaper than the BMW system (and the case looks better) and it didn't involve me purchasing an entire new seat for the bike.
After getting the rear rack on the bike, I am not thrilled with how it looks, but it looks fine. It just detracts from the minimalism that I like on the bike. The Givi gear seems to be really well built. I just feel that the top plate they have is a bit thick and it unfortunately does not have any utility for strapping gear down when the case isn't on the bike. I may look into trying to fabricate a replacement aluminum plate which could be thinner, but we will see. Again, it doesn't look horrible.
I can't deny the utility of the top case though. I used it riding to work last week and the 47l case can hold quite a lot.
Despite everything that has been going on lately, I have still been reading some books. The most notable of the books I have recently read have both been graphic novels. I read The Sandman: Dream Hunters, which is a wonderful novel in the Sandman universe. It is apparently volume #11 in this series, so I will have to go back and read the other novels. The book had a wonderful fairy tale sort of feel to it.
I also read a book call Kabuki, Vol 1: Circle of Blood. This is a pretty adult graphic novel that follows a group of assassins who are modeled after these TV personalities. It is a bit hard to describe from that angle, but really just picture a dystopian future where a shadow organization is trying to control the world around it.
Jumping back over to novels I read an excellent indie novel called Bypass Gemini which was written by Joe Lallo. I picked this book up as part of the Storybundle way back when. The book was a very pleasant surprise and was an excellent fun, light sci-fi read.