Road trip Condeixa (PT) to Weesp (NL): done

That's it. It's done.

I almost have no pictures from the trip. I was focused on driving and most of the trip was under rather bad light (cloudy night). Sun rise was when approaching Paris from Bordeaux direction. Paris was a nightmare (four hours to do some 20 kilometers), mostly because french people can't drive but also can't design roads (I'll write more about this on a latter post).

It was nevertheless a nice trip. Good music and some audio books made time fly. The car, despite being 11 years old, almost 250 thousand kilometers and carrying a ton of stuff behaved wonderfully. There is something so simple about just driving, going with the flow of traffic, letting your thoughts wonder. It's a nice experience. Hopefully I'll drive around a bit more (while we're still free to do so).

Even Paris was interesting, despite the exasperation that it causes while driving. I could see the Eiffel tower, the Notre Dame Cathedral and some other tall landmarks. It's wasn't a complete lost of time.

Uahu! This house in Weesp is from 1951 and it looks more cozy and comfortable than lots of the new houses being built in Portugal (where it seams size is more important than comfort).

I would really like to see the inside of this houses. The glass windows are a invitation to have a look but I feel that that would not be well received (no peeking inside peoples houses).

Anyway, after half a day rest I must get back to working on the assignments. When that is done, and only then, will I have time to go and explore this place. It seams that it's famous for it's chocolate and beer. I love both.

Getting ready

At last I have a bag for my windsurf board. Also today the winter tires should be mounted on my car. These were two of the things that are out of my own personal control that made me delay my departure.

As it is I shall soon start the biggest car drive I have ever done. More than two thousands kilometers to get to my new home. What an adventure.

There are still some tasks to be done before starting the ignition such as:

• prepare the route, with some annotations of places to rest;
• pack everything inside the car;
• buy backup parts for the car (light bulbs, tire repair, etc);
• buy supplies for the trip.

The bag is a simple gray bag, Mytic Boarding (warning: Flash sites), 5 cm wider that what was needed for my board but it was impossible to get the correct dimensions in short notice.

For tires I went with the Pirelli Winter Snow Control II. At 75% of the price of the Michellin Alpine tires it was an obvious choice.

Good marketing by Licor Beirão

My favorite liquor, Licor Beirão (careful, flash site), just started a marketing campaign using the current chaotic economical situation as theme.

Wondering why the I.M.F. visits Portugal so often?

Dear Angela/Nicolas, Portugal is giving its best. Happy Holidays!

Marvelous "cartoon like" look on both Merkel and Sarkozy.

Hurrey for Portugal!

Creation and innovation should be free

How creation evolves: Edgar Allan Poe wrote a short story in 1842, "The Masque of the Red Death", then in 1964 Roger Cormen directs a movie based on the story. A gothic band, Theater of Tragedy, releases in 1996 the album Velvet Darkness They fear (great cover by the way) with the song "And When He Falleth", that you can hear in the video bellow, with a set of dialogs between Prince Prospero and Franscesca taken from the movie.

This way the work of E.A. Poe not only live in literature but in other form of art, through out the times.

Thus does society evolve, building and rebuilding.

I know... nothing related to windsurf but it's has been really a poor month of wind so one does what one can to keep busy and entertained.

Difference of attitude..

Being careful with what you do while online and where you do it is becoming more and more important. Compare for example the term of service from Facebook and from Picasaweb regarding the rights to the content uploaded:

Facebook terms

[...]you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to use any IP content that you post on or in connection with Facebook (IP License)[...] This IP License ends when you delete your IP content or your account unless your content has been shared with others, and they have not deleted it.

Picasaweb legal notes

Google does not claim any ownership in any of the content, including any text, data, information, images, photographs, music, sound, video, or other material, that you upload, transmit or store in your Picasa account. We will not use any of your content for any purpose except to provide you with the Service.

Which one do you thing has more respect for content creators? When someone uploads anything into Facebook (even just a message) a licence is automatically granted to Facebook to whatever it wants with that content and the copyright owner of that content can't even decide to terminate the license (if someone else shared the content then Facebook keeps having a license to do whatever it wants).

Google on the other hand makes it very clear that no special rights are given to Google by using the Picasaweb.

This is my interpretation. I might be completely wrong but it sure doesn't look like Facebook is a proper place to share anything but very low quality stuff... which actually, if you use Facebook, is what it's happening. Most content on Facebook is define by it's low quality, both in technical term as well as content (artistic, intellectual, insight, etc) terms.

Waiting...

With a injury in the foot (heeling well), lot's of stress and work at my daily job and the assignments from a couple of classes from university that I'm doing I can't really get to do any windsurfing. That doesn't stop me from looking at videos in the net..

Now one of the things I wanted to have a good look is the light wind freestyle tricks. Check it out:

As the wind here in Aveiro has come to be rather light all the time this are the kind of tricks I can try to learn. They look fun anyway.

I have to get back in the water...

Cracked bone

Wind has been missing at Aveiro. Since my last post we didn't have any properly good session. So you can probably understand how eager I was to get on the water on Sunday, when the wind as rather gusty with speeds of 18 and gusts of 25 knots.

The problem was that I was quite far from home as I was at a wedding on Saturday in the far away Bragança city. Partying until 4:00 in the morning, then going to sleep, wake up at 8:30 and 4 hours drive back home. Fast lunch and off to the water.

In the water I could feel that my body was reacting in a sluggish way. The toll of partying hard, no sleep and driving for several hours was claiming payment... and pay I did have to. When doing a tack (so nothing special) my left foot managed, some how, to hard hit the mast. I heard and felt a crunching noise but no real intense pain. So I just kept sailing.

After a while my little toe on the left foot was feeling strange. It was as if something was wrapped around it and was dragging in the water but whenever I look there was no weed of anything else attached to my foot. I decided that a quick check was needed so I grabbed the finger with my hands to feel about a bit. When what would you know: my little finger was the thing that was dragging in the water! The joint was out of place so the finger was moving about. When the water pushed it it would just go with the flow.

I don't know exactly why but I decided to give the finger a bit of a pull. There was a bit of pain but the finger stopped moving like a dead fish. Then I made my way back and with the help of some friends (thanks guys) I took all my gear and put it inside the car and drove home. At home I took a pill and put some ice around the finger (that by then it was starting to hurt) and went for sleep (I was really wasted).

Morning I finally toot the advice of friends and went to the hospital. Nothing bad was going on. A cracked bone and the ligaments probably suffered a bit but two or three weeks should have me back on the water (according to the doctor, I think one week at most will do).

So today while I was reading news on the windsurf blog-sphere I saw this video and the beginning made me smile. I too have a injury in my foot. Now I just have to learn how to windsurf like this guys: