Posted by Kevin, on August 29th, 2005
Steve asked me to help him out with a one day race he was doing by being his support crew. This was for the one day Sea2Summit Solo race he was doing.
Turns out being support crew for this race was super easy. I only had to drop him off at the start line and then meet him at the first transition area where he switched from the kayak to his bike. I also had to feed him some food and make sure he took his hiking shoes with him. After that, I just had to load up the boat and then meet him at the finish line. A pretty easy gig.
Posted by Kevin, on August 26th, 2005
Got a letter in the mail yesterday from the CRA. They stated that my 2004 tax return had been reviewed and that a reassessment had been done. They adjusted my claim of $6881 for tuition fees down to $0. They stated the following reason:
“You can only claim the Private pilot license course when you are taking commercial flying lessons to become a commercial pilot or a professional instructor. When you receive certification from the educational institution that you are taking a commercial flying course, you can then claim the amount paid for all instruction.”
To me this is total bullshit. It’s like saying you can’t claim University tuition until after you graduate and get a job in the field that you were studying. I’ll be giving them a call to try to dispute it, but there’s really no arguing with the government so I’m going to owe them I’m sure.
Posted by Kevin, on August 25th, 2005
Last Saturday Ellie and I took a trip down to Brockville to a dog show that was going on there. Ellie wasn’t in the show, but we were doing a test.
Friends of ours, the owners of Blueheron Golden Retrievers, told us about the Canine Good Neighbour certification that the CKC does. They said that Ellie would not have any problem passing the test and that I should take her down.
The test was actually a series of 12 tests that she had to pass. Nothing that was very difficult at all, at least not with the amount of training that I have done with Ellie to date. She ended up passing with flying colours!
Posted by Kevin, on August 22nd, 2005
Wow! It had been a long while since I went flying! I checked my log book, and the last time I was flying was with Steve and JK on our trip down to Brockville and back in April. I was definitely due for some flight time.
I booked a plane and Brad for some time yesterday. When I got to the club, the plane I had booked was offline, but fortunately we were able to get another 172 instead. Brad and I flew some circuits (in a pretty good crosswind) and now I’m current again. Need to make sure I keep it that way this time. Not only because it costs me more when I need to go flying with an instructor, but also because I miss it when I don’t fly.
Posted by Kevin, on August 18th, 2005
Did an hour tonight. Got to try out my ‘new’ heart rate monitor, which I bought off of Steve. I didn’t read about it at all, I just strapped it on and went. It was beeping like crazy for the first little while and the largest number I saw was 208. I don’t think that could have been my heart rate, I figure the thing was still calibrating itself, but who knows.
Here are the vital stats from the heart rate monitor:
Exercise Time: 1:02:00
Average HR: 161
In Zone: 00:38:22 (when I wasn’t in zone, I was above)
I’m not convinced that it has the correct max heart rate for me but after I read a bit, I’ll know for sure.
Posted by Kevin, on August 15th, 2005
I put my new GPS Receiver mount on my mountain bike handlebars tonight and went for a spin. Talk about sweet! I left the display on the ‘trip computer’ the whole time which gave me: distance, moving time, stopped time, overall average speed, speed, max speed, moving average speed and total time. It was easy to read which made me happy.
Numbers: 20 km (plus a short cool down); just under 48 minutes; 25.2 km/h average speed with a max of 31.7 km/h. Nothing stellar, but I got to try out my new GPS mount AND my new biking shorts. I like them both.
Posted by Kevin, on August 14th, 2005
Another Sunday, another ride in the Gatineau Park with Grant. Actually, this time there was four of us, Grant, Steve, Trev and myself. By the end of the ride though there were only three of us left…but I’m not going to get into the details of that.
Anyways, as usual, it was an 8 am start from the Lawson’s place. We started our ride under some heavy cloud cover and things didn’t get any better as the day went on. We got rained on a bit, but nothing serious.
The plan was to do the ‘loop’ down to the base of Camp Fortune and then up to Champlain Lookout. In total, from door to door (at Grant’s place) the loop is 56 kms. Due to the above mentioned loss of one of our riders, Steve and I ended up doing more like 60 kms.
Posted by Kevin, on August 8th, 2005
Another year, another International Beer Fest at Matt and Alix’s place. Good times as usual. I once again managed to bring a beer that nobody else brought – this time it was a New Zealand beer called Steinlager.
Rob took some photos and we uploaded them before he left for the night. Nice work Rob!
Many thanks to both Matt and Alix for their warm hospitality! Looking forward to next year’s event.
Oh and before I forget…thanks as well to Dave who drove me home the
Posted by Kevin, on August 7th, 2005
I had the priviledge of being part of the first annual “Mad River Float” which took place on the Madawaska River up near Calabogie, ON just this past Saturday.
Many thanks to Jim for sending out the invite and organizing the event. If my memory serves me, I believe there were about 10 people and three dogs who took part. Naturally Ellie came with me, outfitted in her brand new PFD. She did pretty good, but she isn’t in the kind of shape I thought she was. I’d say she swam for maybe half the time, the other half she just floated along with me – it’s a damn good thing I had that PFD for her or I think my arms probably would have fallen off by the end of the float.
Posted by Kevin, on August 4th, 2005
So earlier this week I got ‘hit’ by some script kiddie who, just for the hell of it I guess, decided to change all the index files on my server to say, “SPYKIDS OWNZ YOU”. Yeah…whatever. Nice work there loser.
Anyways, I’ve also just acquired a new rack (thanks Gregg T) which I’m going to put under my stairs, so I figured this would be a good opportunity to do a fresh install of e-smith onto a box that is rack mountable. That’s what this blog is running on now. I’ve only transferred my blog over for now, and not my old picture gallery. I’m planning to eventually move all those pictures over to Flickr anyways.
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