Bikes, Grinds and Life

Bikepacking the Lower Sunshine Coast

My sister in law and her boyfriend extended an invitation for my wife and me to join them in Lund for the May long weekend. I jumped at the opportunity to fit in a multi-day excursion on my Salsa Fargo, to leave the Wednesday before the weekend. After some quick notes on how to disassemble and…

Soma Wolverine

The paved roads in and around Kelowna provide a bounty of scenic routes for the road cyclist through the city and to the orchard footed hills surrounding the gorgeous Okanagan Valley. The local logging industry provides a whole other realm of fun, however, clearing gravel paths into wild and forested areas. These roads to adventure do…

Marinoni Piuma Supreme

This past November I picked up my new bike, a Marinoni Piuma Supreme. I knew I was going to buy a road bike, and almost decided to grab an end of season sale BMC with Shimano Di2. Meshkat from The Lion’s Cyclery here in Kelowna suggested the sturdy and light steel frame of the Marinoni…

Fish feeding as a service

This is my fish, Juicebox. I try my best to remember to feed him but sometimes it gets a little busy around here. I’d been itching for a new project to end off the new year, so I thought I’d join up what I’ve been working on with IBM Watson and Slack chatbots together with the…

Getting Things Done: from Evernote to Google

I have been an Evernote user for 7 years – just one less year than it has been around. It was my tool of choice for school notes, for personal writing, capturing articles for later reading, and once for a big move to catalogue the contents of boxes with photos and descriptions. At some point I read about…

DIY Chatbot with IBM Watson

Yesterday IBM announced that they are rolling out an integration between their IBM Watson artificial intelligence platform and Slack’s built in chat bot “Slackbot”. If you are unfamiliar with Slack, then you are not yet part of the nearly 3 million users that use the chat platform to collaborate and communicate in groups and teams. Slackbot…

Rescuing My Time

I like to minimise doing tasks that cannot be categorised as focused uses of my time. Work time is for my 9-5 job, relaxation time is for recovering my energy, time with family and friends is to maintain the bond with those I am close to. The time in between these major categories goes to things like…

on Going the Distance

I’ve been running on and off for a pretty long time. My first memory of running was at an elementary school track meet. As far as I remember it was kind of a surprise to me, that I was going to race in a track meet, never really considering myself a runner. Perhaps my phys ed…

Insert Coffee to Begin

I am addicted to coffee. There, I said it. I love the way my brain feels when I drink it. It makes me smile, I think more clearly, the world around me seems better. I look forward to that very first sip in the morning, and I love it after lunch. I’m even now thinking…

Winter is coming

Sorry for the probably overused title, but it’s true. Kelowna is a glorious summer playland of sun and heat and the spring and fall are also very excellent with their colors and easy temperatures. Living here for the past 6 years has exposed me to four distinct seasons. In Vancouver, I’d grown used to four…

Single Speed Bianchi Steel

I bought this Bianchi Pista brand new in 2014 from ChainLine Cycle in Kelowna. For the first time in a long time I owned not a single bike and it was time to change that. It was an end of season sale bike so the price was right, and the steel frame is perfect for…