Yup, there it is folks. Al and Matt are tying the knot finally! This promises to be a great time, and no doubt I’ll see a lot of you there. If you’d like to read more about the wedding, why not head over to their Wedding Website?
16/02/08 to 18/02/08
Wow! Well, I’m back from another great weekend of tramping in the wilds of New Zealand. This time, I was tackling the Rees-Dart Track, as well as tacking on a full-day hike to the Cascade Saddle and back. Normally, they rate this as a 4-5 day tramp, but I was doing the whole thing including the Saddle side trip in 3 days. Perhaps that’ll give you an idea of why I took a day off when I got back. The third day was definitely killer, and took me 9 grueling hours of hiking to finish off. However, I’m getting a little ahead of myself, and I’m aiming to fill you all in on at least some of the details of those three glorious days. Read on for the details, and check out the maps (day 1, day 2, day 3) and the pictures (day 1, day 2, day 3). The day 3 map is highly abbreviated, as the batteries were dead fairly early that day. Oh well.
Greetings race fans. Fancy title, isn’t it? I’m sure some of you are wondering just what the heck I’m talking about. Well, […]
Howdy all! I guess it’s high time that I write a bit about my recent last-minute vacation down to the Caribbean, isn’t it? As I mentioned in my last post, as a result of changing jobs, I decided to take a week off between the two jobs to refresh myself. Incidentally, for those of you who are wondering what this new job is, well, let’s just say I opted to stay in the Government for now. I received a promotion in the CRTC, and as such moved up a few floors, got a coveted window cubicle, and have an entirely new workload. Whereas before I was a Senior Analyst, dealing with applications and tariff filings, I’ve now moved into a Network Evolution Policy role. This means that I’m much more self-directed, and will be researching and reporting on a range of interesting topics such as net neutrality, digital rights management, new media, and so on and so forth. As you may imagine, this is much more interesting to me than what I was doing before, so I’m cautiously optimistic about this new post 😉 Staying in the CRTC has also guaranteed that I can still go ahead with my plan to take a leave of absence and head to New Zealand. However, there have been a few high-level changes to it. First, I’m only going for 4 months instead of 6 months. Second, I’ll be leaving at the beginning of December, rather than the beginning of September. Regardless, it’ll still be an awesome trip no doubt, and will carry me through the cold Ottawa winter! Anyway, I’m rambling on about work, when I should be telling you about Puerto Plata. Read on!
02/01/08
Howdy gang! I hope everyone had a brilliant New Year’s Eve and New Years Day celebrations. As you would have read in my last post, today, it was back on the road for cyclin’ Steve. My destination for the night was Rotorua, which is one of the major tourist destinations in New Zealand. Basically, in the South Island, it’s Queenstown, in the North Island, it’s Rotorua. As such, I have pre-booked 3 nights in the “In the Zone” backpackers hostel here. I’m in a 4-bed room, with 2 other guys, one of whom is here only to bike. So, what’s so good about Rotorua? Well, heaps I guess. The whole region is basically a hotbed of Geothermal activity. You can’t walk far without tripping over hot springs and the like. Also, it is a mountain biking mecca, having hosted the world mountain biking championships this year. And lastly, this is the prime area for Maori culture. So, as you might guess, I’m wondering if I need a third full day here as well. Read on for more about my ride into town, and first evening here. Check out the map too.
