Happy Holidays loyal readers! I know it’s been a few weeks since an update from me, but I assure you, you haven’t missed all that much from ActiveSteve. In all honesty, I’ve been sort of lying low, getting myself in the groove for the holidays. Of course, with the arrival of my new nephew, Jody and I have been spending a little extra time over at the Hill-Meyer Homestead. Also, there has obviously been a lot of preparations underway for the upcoming trip to Africa. Can you believe that we’re heading out in less than a week!? Me neither. Which is why my spare time has been spend doing Christmas shopping, trip planning, working out, and getting my gear sorted out. Jody has been up to much the same. As part of those preparations, we’ve also managed to squeeze in a few extra hikes up in Gatineau Park. If you’d like to see some pics from those adventures, just mosey on over to flickr for a folder of pictures. Then, I can tell you just a little bit more about the preparations if you’d like.
As you might imagine, me being the gadget guy, I’ve been most interested in trying out a few new additions to my toys prior to the trip. Namely, playing with my new colour GPS unit, the Garmin eTrex Legend HCx, as well as my new camera, namely, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-TS1. The GPS unit is a couple years old, but has a great bang for buck. I’ve loaded up topographic contours for Kenya, and it has a great battery life. So, I’ll be able to come back with plots of every day’s activities, as well as pictures from the day on them for all of you to enjoy. The camera is the latest in Waterproof cameras out there, scoring high for its picture quality (Leica lens), as well as for the fact that it can shoot HD video (720p).
My plan on the trip is to shoot perhaps a daily video update, think of something like a 90s summary of the day. After all, I won’t be lugging any computers with me, and I’d like to give some perspective on what we’ve been up to so that I can upload them when I get back. Here’s hoping for a nice video at 5,800m+ when I summit Kili on New Year’s eve :-).
Anyway, that’s pretty much all I wanted to share for now. I’ve also been working on a few tweaks on the website, which I’d love to say are all working, but sadly, they are not. At least you can now easily share my blog posts with the world, and should be able to ‘rate’ my posts. I’m not sure who would ever bother, but at least the option is there. The other thing I’m trying to get working is the ability to post comments easier, using facebook or twitter, while also protecting me more from spam, which has been an issue.
Next up for me is my first snowshoe race of the season, which will take place Saturday! Yippee, let the snow come down, it’s winter racing season 🙂 Till then, stay cool kids.
