2009 - Page 11 of 13 - ActiveSteve

The Order of Good Beer is Born!

Whew! Well, this post was meant to be written on Sunday, while all the events were ‘fresh’ in my mind, but best laid plans and all that ended up delaying it by a few days. You see, Sunday was a bit abbreviated in my mind, as I slept soundly quite late, then lacked any sort of energy to write coherent sentences on my computer. So what exactly caused such a derailing of my blogging ability? Well, the Order of Good Beer of course 🙂 And the logical second question you will no doubt be asking yourself is just what is the Order of Good Beer? Well, I’m glad you asked, for the tale contained in the following few paragraphs should be able to clarify that for you, as well as fully explain why we decided to throw a good old fashioned barn burner at our place on Saturday night. I had great plans of documenting the entire evening in photos as well, but that turned out to backfire too, and I ended up with only a couple clumps of photos. Some of very early in the evening, then a whole bunch when we devolved into crazed karaoke singers. You can view them all if you dare on the folder on flickr that I put up. Once you’re done, click back to here and read the rest of the story.

Race Reports

Persistence Leads to Consistency

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Welcome back, sports fans! I’m happy to report that ActiveSteve has had another successful racing weekend out in the snowy hills in Quebec. Yup, this was the second of four snowshoe races that form the Mad Trapper snowshoe series. This time, I was racing the “hilly” course, which was about 10km of pristine trails with lots of ups and downs. The weather once again was pretty much ideal for a race in the snow, albeit a bit cold. For those who don’t care to read the entire post, my results were pretty much exactly as they were last time, with me coming in 5th place overall, although at least this time I didn’t have to run it out with a competitor at the last second. I brought my camera out, but sadly, the batteries weren’t charged up, and I only got one shot of me at the finish. Luckily, my friend Andrew had his too, so I managed to steal a few of his shots to add them to a folder of winter pictures that I put up on flickr. In order to make up for it, I created a map with my GPS. Of course, it’s not quite as dramatic as when I make the map with pictures, but at least you can see where I did the race, and get an idea of the terrain. Once you’re done getting through that stuff, read on for the whole story.

Travelogue

Saudi Arabian Post-Script

Hello everyone. Well, it’s been over two weeks since we got back from Saudi Arabia, and I figure it’s time I try to make sense of the whole experience and maybe give people a sense of what traveling a bit in the Middle East is like. We had a lot of people ask us about our trip, and I was never really sure how to answer that question. The general answer was simply ‘different’. How can you summarize a place that is literally worlds away from your own home? Although I’m still not sure I can fully illuminate everyone, I’ll do my best to shed a little light on this corner of the world. For starters, I’m happy to report that we’ve got all of our pictures posted now in a single collection. There are pictures from Jody, myself, as well as pictures Andrea snapped with her new fancy-pants camera that she got over the holidays. Feel free to check them out on flickr. As an added bonus, I even put up a whole set of videos you can check out and laugh at. After you’ve gotten a suitable sense of our travels, come back here and read on.

Life in General

Winter Warmer in Toronto

Brrrr! Welcome to a chilly blog post from the frigid land up north. We’ve been suffering through a bit of a cold spell up here, wth windchills close to -40 degrees celsius. Of course, a little cold weather can never keep ActiveSteve down. Although I’ve tried to stay indoors a touch more, I’ve still been getting outside for some running and snowshoeing. I’ve also vowed that I have to get out on the cross country skis soon. After all, I haven’t used them since 2007, as a result of being in NZ last year! The cold weather is giving me a chance to catch up on a post I’ve been meaning to write about last weekend. You see, Matt, Rob, and I spent the weekend in Toronto doing what guys do best. Not a whole lot other than drinking beers and trying not to be too obnoxious to those around us. I’ll let you judge whether or not we succeeded. Before you read the whole post, you can click on over to flickr to see the set of pictures from the weekend (mainly Super Saturday shots).

Travelogue

Final Days till Farewell

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Back in Riyadh. Back in the diplomatic quarters. First couple days in the new year, last couple days in Saudi Arabia. So will go this tale. The time has come to wrap up the adventures in the desert for you all. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to write these posts, as time has elapsed since the events have occurred, and my memories and thoughts aren’t as fresh anymore. In spite of that though, I will be able to write to you all about our last couple days, as we did a number of interesting things that are worth writing about, including trips to more souqs, some more street food, some excellent shopping adventures, as well as a visit to Saudi Arabia’s national museum, a gem of a building. Rather than split the last couple days into two posts, I’ll just put them all in this one, and try to keep it succinct. After all, it’s time to move on 🙂 In an attempt to make it easiest on you, you may also want to just browse through the many pictures that we’ve put up from those last days on flickr. They’ll give you a good sense of what we were up to without even reading. However, when you’re done, come on back to see if I have anything interesting to say.