2010 - ActiveSteve

Learning about Gatineau Health Care system the Hard Way!

Hello everyone! Just thought I’d take the chance to write a short blog post on something that happened to me recently which highlighted to me exactly how terrible the Gatineau health care system really is. Luckily, I’m okay, and am glad that’s the case, as I’m about to spend the next few paragraphs venting on the shortcomings of having moved my health care from Ontario to Quebec, or more specifically from Ottawa to Gatineau. The picture that accompanies this post at least gives you an idea what happened. You can already imagine if that’s what happened to the bike, I must have taken a bit of a beating right? Well, read on for the sordid tale, as well as the follow-up that it entailed. I promise I won’t ramble on too much 🙂

Race Reports

Relaxing my way through October…

Greetings all! Looks like it’s high time to fill everyone in on my latest fun and excitement. As I’m typing this post, I’m actually sitting in the billiards lounge at the Couples Resort near Algonquin Park while Deanna enjoys a nice spa treatment! Yup, we’re taking a great vacation at the moment, and I have a bit of time to write a quick post to catch you all up. Luckily, the catching up will be pretty easy to do, as there are no race reports to write up for the month of October. When you were all last filled in, I had just wrapped up a 2-day charity mountain biking tour in Gatineau Park. At the conclusion of that, it was time to start my month of laziness and recovery. As is usually the case for me, I try to take a the month of October as a month for recovery from the race season. As I managed to squeeze in a couple pretty challenging races this year, including my furthest ever running race (as part of the 3-day Ultimate XC), I definitely needed the break, since my left knee is once again starting to bother me. However, that doesn’t mean I did absolutely nothing. Read on to see how I rest and recover 🙂

Riding for Charity…

Good day friends and followers of ActiveSteve! As has been my theme as of late, this post is coming to you all just a little bit later than I would have wanted it to. In fact, I’m going to detail for you all an event I took part in a full 3 weeks ago! Yikes! Where does the time go, right? Well, in this case, my time went into a Toronto trip, and preparations for a Timmins trip, as well as my continued string of focusing more on having fun rather than telling the world all about my exploits :-). So, what event am I referring to? It was called Velogaroue, and was a 2-day staged Mountain bike ride through Gatineau Park. Note I said ride, not race! Yes, that’s right, it was a social thing through and through, and I wanted to make the most of it with the fall colours. It was the inaugural year for the event, and one of the big goals was to raise funds for a charity, whichever charity you wanted. I chose to support the Ottawa Regional Cancer Center, as I didn’t take part in the annual adventure race earlier this year that normally benefits them. For the full story of the weekend, please read on. Also, you can browse through some pictures I took of the weekend, as well as click on over and check out a custom map that I made of the whole ride!

Race Reports

Fall Classic Delivers the Thrills!

Well, hello again all my friends! I’m back with yet another fun race story to share with you all. This is one of my staple races that I like to do every year, the Frontier Adventure racing Fall Classic, a 12-14 hour adventure race. It’s just one of those races that is always a good time, and is a fitting close to my summer racing season, meaning that at the end of the race, I can enjoy a few beers :-). I had registered for this race quite some time ago, but even a week before the race, I was team-less. However, that wouldn’t prove to be any problem. Read on for the whole tale of why, and don’t forget to check out my pictures from the race. You can also check out a whole pile of other pictures here.

Race Reports

Living it Up Through Labour Day

Welcome back to another installment of “What the heck has Steve been up to all summer”. In this post, I’ll cover off the remainder of the summer up to the first weekend after Labour Day. I had another pretty exciting race lined up, although the tale ends up as the dreaded story of the ‘double DNF’. You’ll have to read more of the post to get the full story, but rest assured, it’s another classic ActiveSteve race screw-up :-(. I’ll also fill you in on some Toronto fun at Dream in High Park as well as Buskerfest (pics here), and wrap it up with a little about the week that Deanna spent with me here in Ottawa/Gatineau on vacation (pics here). It was a great way to close out August, and help get over the disastrous result at Logs, Rocks and Steel. Read on my friends, and don’t forget to check out the pictures on facebook as I go through the stories!