Long time no see

Hello All,

Welcome back to Outdoors Bike! I am extremely sorry for my nearly one year hiatus. I promise that will never happen again. To catch you guys up on why I have not been around I will spend this article going over life getting busy and my plans for the future of Outdoors Bike. My next post will get back onto track, so if you would like to skip this one, I will not judge you.

Around the same time of my last post, I started my own business. 3 in 1 Business Solutions has become my main form of income. The goal over there is to become a virtual bookkeeper/accountant. If you would like more information on the business, you can find it here http://www.3in1businesssolutions.com.

In the spring, my wife and I finally found the perfect house to call our first house! We bought the three bedroom bungalow in

My home away from home

April and was all moved in over Easter weekend. The Monday before the house became ours, there was really bad flooding in the whole neighbourhood, and the sellers were afraid we would back out because of it. They covered all of the repairs to the one room affected and installed a sump pump for preventative measures. We are still settling in and getting used to the extra maintenance/cleaning of a house, not an apartment. We still have to finish my office, but for now this is my work environment.

In July, we took a half month off to go to a mini family reunion in my wife’s hometown. I say mini because it was not an official family reunion. Our family, my wife’s sister’s family, and her parents all went to the same town for Canada’s Independence Day. It was nice to take some time off to see the place that moulded my Buttercup. It really reminded me of my home town, which I found to be quite intreguinging (I also grew up in a small mining town, however it is 2,990km [1857.9miles] and in a different country).

Our best friend.

Shortly after getting back from our summer vacation, our family grew once again. This time we brought home a pure-bred chocolate lab, Penny. We have been talking about getting a dog for a very long time (a.k.a. I have been asking my wife if we could get one since the day after we graduated from university). It took all of two minutes for my wife to fall in love with her, while my son did not share the sentiment. The first day, he was not sure what to make of her, and sometimes, even scared of her. This was odd behaviour for him, since he has been around dogs and labs before and never hesitated around them, however, all the dogs he was experienced with were full grown and had a lot less energy. By the second day of having Penny, my son was inseparable from her. Since then, they have taught each other a lot, like how to not bite. It is easy to see that they are going to be best friends for a very long time.

Have to make sure it works

Now that we had a dog and little one, who never stops running, we had to make sure that they would stay in our yard without having us to chase after them all day. That caused us to hire a contractor to put up a fence. This was a little sooner than we were planning, next summer was our deadline, but we could not keep up with the both of them. We found a great contractor (once I find out he has a website I will definitely put a link on here for anyone interested) who was able to craft what my wife had envisioned and keep to a monetary budget I was expecting. The result of his, and his crew’s, work is phenomenal! We are so pleased with the result. Come spring, we are planning on painting the fence white, to make our house one more step closer to being the ideal house we envision.

With all of this hoopla going on this year, I have neglected some of the most fun things I find in this life, getting outdoors. I have been able to log 174km running, 57km mountain biking, and 30km cross country skiing this winter. All for a grand total of……….. 261km. OUCH! I have definitely dropped the ball. I started off the year with a goal of 2,014 overall km this year (get it, 2014 km in 2014). At this rate, I will have done 492km on December 31. Like I said, busy busy with life.

Now I am getting back into the groove I was in this time last year. Albeit, it is the end of summer, but that does not mean we cannot have fun! Let’s look into the future for Outdoors Bike.

First of all, you will notice that “.wordpress” is no longer at the end of the address. That is right, this website has “taken off the training wheels.” By the end of the year, there will be a shop associated with this website so you can pick up some extra cables, brake pads, hiking boots, canteens, etc. Shortly after the shop goes live, I will start reviewing products for you. If you would like me to review a certain product, just let me know and I will review as soon as I can.

Hopefully, starting in the spring, Penny will be going on all running, hiking, fishing, and camping trips I partake in. I look forward to have another good companion by my side while I am in the backwoods. Some of you may be saying “hunting season is coming up” and you would be absolutely right. I plan on taking her bird hunting with me this Fall. I will keep you guys updated on those excursions.

I will be posting new articles a lot more frequently. At first, I will be posting on a weekly basis working my way to be a daily post. That should be exciting!

I believe that is everything going on here. Let me know what you guys have been up to in the last year. Have you logged more km/miles than I have in the new year? Have I beat you with running but not mountain biking? Has your family grown? Relocated? Would you like to start the list of items to be reviewed? I look forward to hearing from you guys.

Let’s rediscover the wonderful nature all around us!