Hello friends! I’ll keep the post short, but I did want to say first off, thanks to everyone who sent me a warm birthday wish, be it card, phone call, wall post or email. It’s always great to get a little love on your birthday. This past weekend marked yet another year going by for ActiveSteve. And what better way to spend that occasion then being active? The weather has been particularly uncooperative towards the end of last week, but that didn’t stop me and a group of friends from setting up a nice long bike ride for Saturday. All told, we were out there over 7 hours, 6 of those hours pushing hard on the mountain bikes all over Gatineau park. I’ve set up a nice folder of all the pictures, as well as put together a custom map of the ride for all of you to check out. It was certainly a large and great part of my weekend fun, but there were some other treats in store the rest of the weekend as well. Read on for a little bit more about the festivities.
As you might imagine, I opted to take it pretty easy on Friday. I didn’t leave the office till almost 7pm, so I wasn’t really in the mood to do a whole lot after a long week at work. The idea was to get as much done then so that I wouldn’t have to log in to the office on my birthday. Happily, I was [mostly] successful. Had a nice big pasta meal at home with Jody, then just relaxed. Next day, the weather was plenty awesome for the ride. Although it had rained non-stop all night and into the morning, the 6 of us who headed out from Aylmer were lucky enough to have the rain stop before we took off. There was obviously still some mud, but all in all, conditions were superb. Not too hot, not too windy, and not too many bugs. The ride was outstanding, and I felt pretty strong the whole ride. Certainly stronger than some parts of last year’s 100k ride, where I fell off the pace a few times and struggled up a few of the bigger hills. No such problems this year. Things are looking up for Rideau Lakes cycle tour as well as the mighty BC Bike Race!
What’s that, you haven’t sponsored me yet for BC Bike Race? What are you waiting for? Get on that and sponsor me right now 🙂 If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out my BCBR mini-site.
The ride was once again capped off with some awesome home-cooked chili with chips, bread and beer, as well as an amazing chocolate cake that was brought out for my birthday. I’m truly spoiled.
Jody came out to pick me up, and told me that Al and Matt had suggested checking out some live music at the Elmdale Tavern. Sounded good to me, after all, I earned my beers. Long story short, I went a little overboard. We were at the bar till the wee hours, then retreated back to Al and Matt’s to keep on partying. Before I knew it, it was after 4:30am! Oops. When Jody woke me up at 6:30am to head home, I realized that there would likely be no riding that day. Too bad, I had hoped to do another quick 70k loop in the park on my road bike in the morning, but we had a prior engagement for later in the day.
What was the engagement, well a nice little bbq (which just turned into a lunch on account of the rain) at Lydia and Mike’s. There, I finally met their cute baby Mateo, and spent a low-key afternoon with friends. My reward? Another awesome cake, this time a cheese cake. All told, I racked up 3 birthday cakes if you count the ice cream cake my co-workers lavished me with. Thank goodness I have a sweet tooth 🙂 Speaking of which, off to the dentist tomorrow!
Before the visit, I was also lucky enough to connect with my sister in Saudi Arabia, and catch up on all their latest news, as well as get a special birthday song from my favourite niece Helena. She did a bang-up job singing to me, but I was sad that my skype wasn’t working, so I had no video. It’ll be awesome to have them back in town, especially knowing that my 2nd niece or nephew is on the way.
To cap off the weekend fun, Jody took me out for an awesome meal. We tried for Keg Manor, but were too late to make reservations, so we headed off toe Moxie’s in Kanata instead. Good choice though, as I was lovin’ my chicken and ribs combo. Jody laughed at my messy meal, but it was just what I wanted 🙂
That’s enough of a post for now, as I have to go off to bed soon, and start prepping for the big Rideau Lakes tour this weekend. 354km of riding in 2 days. I ordered a video camera for the event, so hopefully I’ll have some cool clips to share. Stay tuned for that stuff 🙂 Till then, stay relaxed everyone, and stay thirsty my friends.
