More photos of the new board

As promised here are more photos of my new board:

It's a 2008 RRD Frestyle-Wave 100l Limited Edition board. Now I'm just waiting for the wind to come...Let's see if I'll manage to do a push loop.

Guincho, new board!

Yeah! I have a new board!

We went to Guincho, Portugal, with the idea of checking some windsurf boards. I found what I wanted. Yes!

The wind was playing tricks. When we arrived the sand was blowing and there were some 8 windsurfers. Then we went to Guincho Wind Factory to check a board that was there waiting for me.

The time we took to just go there, have a look at the board (and a new mast) and pack everything, was not that much (one hour and a half at most). I was still thinking that I was going to make some nice photos and vides...

When we arrived we were dismayed! The wind was completely gone. No one, aside for surfers that use only second hand wind energy (don't take offence, I'm just kidding).

I'll share some more photos of my new board soon... Here is a appetizer:

Óbidos Medieval Fair

A cousin invited us to join her, her sister and her mother at the Óbidos Medieval Fair and we promptly agreed to go - there were no plan for the weekend and it sounded like fun.

We took advantage to travel a bit on the West coast of Portugal. Beautiful landscape and wonderful places to go camping.

When we arrived and rested a bit we started to try out some medieval costumes.

Eventually we got to Óbidos centre (the old part of the village) and enjoy the medieval fair.

Trekking in the area of Lisbon and Sintra

A cousin of mine is starting a project (GreenWalk) of a company that organizes trekking around the Lisbon area. Nothing new except for a small detail: during the walk and 4x4 trip my cousin describes the morphology of the terrain, the reasons for what we see in the landscape, the different type of soil and rocks, etc. Not only did we got to see wonderful landscapes but we also got to learn how it was formed.

Here is the link a entry on his blog (in Portuguese) about this trip.

Another ride

It seams like pains induced by prolonged bike rides are short lived, so we went for another bike trip. This time we decided to go east, to Santa Cruz (wonderful city) and then ride through the Bosque de la Esperanza. Beautiful landscapes, great roads, good company and a motorcycle that is quite underpowered. What else can you ask (apart from a better bike)?

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Still no pictures uploaded. No patience for that just yet.

When we decided to come to Tenerife (it was a 5 minutes decision) we didn't dewed some much into details - like what to expect from such a small island. Asking around to some friends we were told not to expect nothing great. Well, maybe thanks to those advices our expectations were high but they were completely blown away. The cities are well arranged and clean, the people are nice, and the volcanic landscape provides a never ending moments of visual pleasure.

My advice, if you're coming to Tenerife, is to rent a bike the next day you arrive. You can go anywhere with it, park almost anywhere and mostly see the landscape as you ride in good mountain roads.

We're loving it!

Bike trip

Yesterday we decided to go for a bike ride, on a Honda Varadejo 125.

In the map is the route we did. I can tell you that after years without riding bike doing 160 km is pretty hard on your butt.

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We have some hundreds photos, and I'll upload some soon.

One thing that didn't work out that well was that the cable car to the top of the Teide last trip was at 16:00. It was 16:30 when we got there. We had no idea that it closed so early.

The best landscape was the one we found in the North West part of the island. It's hard to come to words with such breath tacking views. The road was a serpent going down on huge cliffs. In the bottom of a narrow valley a small set of houses, Masca, lives in what must have been years of isolation. Beautiful.

Beginning of May was a great time to windsurf at Aveiro.

In the beginning of this month I had some really great windsurf sessions. The one with the most violent winds was definitely on the 13 of May, winds averaging 35 knots but with strong gusts but also lot's of dead zones.

The most annoying thing with this kind of wind is that in on moment your a sitting duck, the board sinking in the water and a second later you're flying. The strain in your arms and shoulders rapidly wears you down. At the same time it's quite a challenge and I do love those.

Gybing becomes a question of looking into the water to see where the gust is and then using the gust to push you up to speed again.

All in all a great day. No at al like on the 3rd of May, where the wind blowing at 40 knots and my tiered hands of non stop afternoons of windsurfing were a conjugation that I could not overcome.

Of course the memory of what happened to me on the 27 of February didn't help.

On that day, with the weather forecast predicting a hurricane type wind me and other two valiant warriors decided to change our luck fighting the storm. All was going well until out of nowhere the gusts increased ten fold.

The Ria de Aveiro, usually a place of calm waters, become agitated. Small but with a very short period waves made it difficult to ride and as the wind gusts become stronger and stronger it was also impossible to keep the sail (4.1 m²). In the end a couple fishermen came with a rather heavy boat to pick me up. It was a really nice thing from them to do and I am truly grateful.

This storm did some damage in Portugal but as it moved North-West to France it even more troubles. I am happy to have fought and survived that day.

The two other wind warriors had two different stories to tell. One of then managed to get back by swimming with his gear. The other was dragged to the other side of the Ria, ending up with the board severely dented and quite a fright.