Hey gang, just wanted to let you know that my new domain is born! I finally broke down and got my own domain name, to more accurately reflect the direction this site is going to take. Please say hello to https://activesteve.com! Over the next few months, I’ll be totally re-formatting this website to become my more ‘professional’ race-oriented site. I’ll introduce a new style, some new features, and hopefully sub-sections. You’ll still get the same riveting tales, but differently organized. I’ll keep personal and travel tales in one area, and all race-related goodies elsewhere. This is all part of my re-branding strategy that I’ll be undertaking in order to better market myself in hopes of securing some sponsorship deals for next year (no, not CDN Gov. sponsorship, but real ones!). With all the racing and travelling for races I plan to do, including NZ, I need to start soliciting people for help! In the meantime, if you’ve got links to this website, you might want to rename them to activesteve.com, in order to make sure the traffic gets attributed to my ‘official’ site from now on! Thanks, and please stay tuned for the exciting changes (as long as I can find the time to implement them while juggling two jobs!).
You may also like
Howdy folks! Have you been missing me of late? There really hasn’t been that much to fill you all in on that would be of great interest. Basically, I’ve been training and packing and working. Boring, right? Also ActiveSteve has been operating out of a temporary location, and that hasn’t been all that conducive to doing much other than the things I’ve listed. However, that is all about to change tomorrow, on April 1st. Why you ask? Because I’m pulling up stakes and heading to a whole other province to my new house! Yup, it’s moving day! Get the keys at noon, and movers should show up at the old place soon after. I imagine you are all now wondering what sort of casa I managed to find in a short period, right? Well, you’re curiosity will be rewarded. For starters, just check out the folder of pictures that I put up on flickr. Afterwards, read on for a few more details.
Thought I’d pop in another post on the progress being made on the bar front. Things have been going so slowly that I ended up actually taking a day off work to get some work done on this project! Actually, I had a ‘personal day’ that was going to expire if I didn’t use it by the end of the month so I figured it would give me a chance to get a little extra work done on the bar, not to mention get laundry and my taxes done! Pictured to the left here is my attempt at capturing what the oak pieces look like after two coats of stain and three coats of varnish. Shiny, isn’t it? What you see is the product of almost 2 weeks of effort. Every step takes me an evening, because you have to let the stain / varnish dry thoroughly before either sanding it or re-coating it. Plus, most of these pieces had to have both sides done, doubling the time! The good news is that I have about 2 other ‘groups’ of pieces that I have to work on, and most of these are simpler pieces with a lot of 1-sided finish coming up. After those are all done, it’ll be the true building time. Can’t wait for that stage! I have to question the people who submitted testimonials on the website where I got the design saying it took them 3 weeks to build the bar! Okay, maybe they truly meant ‘build’ and not prepare. In my opinion, there’s no way on God’s green earth someone could possibly do all the cutting, routing, sanding, staining, varnishing, dry fitting, and putting together this whole bar! NO WAY!! Maybe if they worked full time on it. Naw. Granted, I had to learn a lot of things along the way (namely how to properly use a table saw and router), but just these last few steps of finishing take so long…
Howdy sports fans. Well, I guess this really isn’t a sports-related post, as my season is sort of over for 2007, but there are sports and games involved. That is, if you consider drinking beer and schnapps a sport! Yup, Jody and I returned to our October tradition of heading to Oktoberfest in Kitchener-Waterloo. In the past 7 years, I’ve been there 5 times, and Jody has been there 4 times. Each year, a different crew of us head down to Alix’s parents place, where we sleep in the basement, have a delicious Turkey dinner on Saturday, and of course head to the local sights and Festhallen for some Bavarian treats. Although there’s not a whole lot to tell you about the weekend (you sorta have to be there to understand it), I’ll still give you a little sense of the fun. Also, you can head over to Flickr to check out some pictures from the weekend. On with the tale.
Greetings humble readers! Well, as you can see by the date stamp, it’s been a couple of weeks since I last wrote a post. Don’t assume that means that you haven’t all been in my thoughts, or that I haven’t been doing anything interesting. Quite the opposite! There’s big news on the Steve front of ActiveSteve.com. Specifically, I’ve accepted and started a new job since I last posted! As a result, there was a flurry of activity on my end, but a distinct lack of time to write all about it. Rest assured, I haven’t given up on my scribing duties, just had a slight lapse. Anyway, here I am, in time to write a little story about some training I did about two weeks ago. As you are aware, Adventure Racing doesn’t sleep in winter, and as such, I was trying to get in some cross-country ski training before my next winter race. Conditions were pretty much perfect, and I was supposed to meet with a team-mate of mine to do about a 20km loop in Gatineau Park. Read on for this gripping story 😉 If you’d like to see some pictures head over to Flickr for the folder of pics I took.