A Cyclist's Life in Tenerife (Canary Islands)

The question that people most often ask me about Spanish culture concerns the siesta. The most significant aspect to be aware of is that the typical Spanish day is split into¨»mañana» (morning) and then later «tarde» (afternoon) or «noche» (night). The distinction between afternoon and nighttime is hazy.

«…researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health … reported that people who took regular 30-minute naps were 37 percent less likely to die of heart disease over a six-year period than those who never napped.»

A SPANISH DAY:

The workday begins at 8:00 or 9:00am depending on the business. Work normally stops around 12:00 or 1:0opm and resumes around 4:00 or as late as 5:00pm. Retail shops remain open until 9:00pm each evening. The exception to this rule is Sunday, when almost all the shops are closed (except the hotels, which obviously remain open). Once again, Sunday is not only a time of rest, but more importantly, a family day to be enjoyed together.

[Read more →]

Tags: Island Life by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Once used to be my favourite cycling team. They always had such a big presence at the front of the peleton during the tour de France in days gone by; especially during the team time trial stages, they were always the best-dressed of the bunch. Depending on where you’re from, you may or may not know that Team Once was actually sponsered by the Spanish Once Lottery.

While the lottery is popular in other contries, nowhere is it an INSTITUTION like it is here in Spain. There are tiny telephone-box stalls all over the place. You’ll even see people selling tickets on street corners. Apparantly they can be trusted, because drivers will stop & park their car just to buy a ticket, then continue their journey. Even grandmothers practicing holey catholocism will place a bet each week. The most important time for lotteries in Spain is during the christmas period, when its not unusual for people to spend several hundred euros on a whole run of sequential tickets.

This week, today in fact, is the major summer draw. The person lucky enough to produce the ticket with the winnning numbers pockets a cool €20 million (completely tax free!). Fingers crossed!

*UPDATE* Nope, no such luck. Six Euros down the drain… 😐

Tags: Island Life by Dr. Leslie Brown
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First let me say that I’m not a beginner, I’ve been riding for 8 years (no not all in one go!). Yet this book taught me so so much. Thankyou to both Ed Burke & Ed Pavelka!! I thought I knew a lot, until now that is. I’ve bought other cycling books, before but nothing compares to this one. There is no «filler» in this book.

This book is not just concerned with ultralong distance races, it uses words like «the event» and «personal goals». You can read it and not feel too ashamed that you’re not a pro, if you know what I mean. It caters for everyone. It also has a humurous style, which will make it enjoyable reading. It is very easy to pick up and start reading anywhere.

It has chapters on nutrition, stretching, off-season training, lots on training and technique…and that HYDRATION is the key. Ed & Ed (the authors) give you lots of tips (e.g: about how to maximise your time on the bike when you have other important things in your life; get everything ready for a ride the night before; how to cycle efficiently, etc)

[Read more →]

Tags: Spoke Bed by Dr. Leslie Brown
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I’m writing this review  because I want people to know how well-designed this product is. I think this is the best bicycle product I have ever bought – simple as that. I didn’t realise how much difference a comfortable bar would make. It definitely deserves the following detailed review.

[Read more →]

Tags: Spoke Bed by Dr. Leslie Brown
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This is one of my very own personal beasts I use for daily errands around Tenerife. Here’s my review:

By far the best thing about this bike is the power transfer. This baby has 37.4cm chainstays which are quite possibly the shortest in the industry (for a 57cm frame anyway). Delivery of power through the bike’s rear triangle feels instantaneous. The only down side to this is the extremely limited chainstay clearance; with such short chainstays, you must remember to keep your feet in line with the bike, otherwise the heels of your shoes hit the frame on every pedal revolution. This is an old frame (~10 years old?), which I recently bought new on ebay. It was made when Klein was 100% committed to aluminium, so there is no carbon fibre anywhere on this frame. Compared with a modern-day monocoque carbon frame, comfort is practically non existant, but then I only use this bike for a maximum of 10km (1000m ascent) of climbing.

[Read more →]

Tags: Spoke Bed by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Only a small percentage of my time is actually maintaining, cleaning & delivering bikes. The most common chores are inflating tyres, swapping pedals, adjusting rear derailleurs, cleaning chains, truing spokes, and preparing people’s toolkits before a ride.

You wouldn’t think this, but the overwhelming majority of my time is spent networking. Devising & publicising online marketing campaign strategies (especially during this low season). I also do all of the administration & financial work at the computer. Answering emails and keeping the books up to date. Its a full time job to maintain such a web presence. I’m wondering when I’ll be able to go for a bike ride… 😐

Tags: That's Business, Vida Enigmática by Dr. Leslie Brown
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The mental health crisis in the 21st century linked to excercise? 

I personally think the majority of Personality Disorders and Mental Illnesses are what Alvin Toffler was refferring to in his legendary book «Future Shock», written in 1970. In a nutshell:  when you have a period of rapid social change (in our highly technological post industrial society), with an insufficent adaptation time, this creates overstimulation. Think of it as a type of  «information overload». For example going shopping, have you ever just been startled by the number of cereals to choose from, or been completely overwhelmed by the current global internet communication network? This in turn leads to increased stress levels (despite our best coping mechanisms such as avoidance, disassociation, idealisation, rationalisation, regression, repression, supression, denial, fantasy, etc).

This is speculation on my part, but when your anxiety level is increased beyond normal levels, the resulting stress can lead to a whole host of terrible consequences -violence, illness, depression and other mental diseases. In fact there is a already strong link between anxiety and depression. Violence & depression are perhaps the two worst «coping mechanisms» of all. Suprise suprise, stress is also a major factor in heart disease and strokes. I don’t have to remind you that homicides, suicides and heart attacks are the top 3 killers in most developed nations… and possibly all three are due to too much tension in our lives. Stress is now seen as a risk factor in both cancer and diabetes as well!

I think reducing anxiety is the key to better physical and mental health. In today’s world, we don’t rely on exercise as much as we should. The study at the bottom of this page proves that excerise can reduce the effects of some mental illnesses. But could the reverse also be true; could decreasing our level of excerise in an increasingly stressful world actually be causing our mental health crisis? Instead of teaching our children outmoded concepts, perhaps we should be teaching them how to relax. Heres a short Stress Management Article.

[Read more →]

Tags: Mental Anguish, Vida Enigmática by Dr. Leslie Brown
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For me, moving here definitely made this horrible latent condition [depression] rise to the surface. I just want to say I really struggled in the first 6 months. I fell into a terrible state: a huge, long-lasting rut of terrible guilt & self pity, seemingly with no escape. Living in Australia, I was the typical ignorant person who could never hope to truly «understand» depression itself, always relying on 100% positive thinking no matter what the circumstances. And boy have I changed now. Depression is not something you can just spontaneously pull yourself out of. It takes time to become sick in the first place, but it also takes time to recover.

Within 3 months of moving to Tenerife this is what happened to me:

I’d cry all the time, and not know why. I mean I’d cry silently every few days. And normally I hadn’t cried in maybe 5 YEARS. I felt completely useless. I didn’t even feel like making any telephone calls. I was totally reliant on other people. I felt guilty about that too… I basically felt that I was worthless to society.

I’d eat oranges (vitamin C) and take vitamin B, and eventually it felt like I was peeling oranges just to try to stave off this terrible & almost permanent low feeling. It’s like I had this CONSTANT internal struggle, always fighting for my happiness, but not exactly realising what was happening to me. I just now I wasn’t happy, the outlook was bleak, and I wanted to feel «normal» again. [Read more →]

Tags: Island Life, Mental Anguish by Dr. Leslie Brown
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You may or may not have noticed – with the help of some other foreign cyclists I’ve been translating the Tenerife-Training site into Spanish & German. The first pages to appear are for bike hire… other pages will surely follow, but may take some time. Thanks for your patience.

I’m slowly getting on top of all my work; I haven’t had time to fix the guestbook yet, but I have added a cool visitor map at the bottom of this page. I’m currently figuring out the best way to add some voting polls (either to the site or this weblog).

Also, please be advised that the online bike hire reservation form does not function correctly yet… please send me an e-mail or call for bike reservations in the mean time.

One last thing: Please remember to update your bookmarks!

Thanks, Leslie

Tags: News Reel by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Vida Enigmática translates as «Strange Life». A choose your own adventure story outlining social behaviour, the fight for survival. It is an attempt to understand the behaviour of our lives & society based on concepts like social intertia, overchoice, future shock, the revenge effect, chaos, the butterfly effect, synchronicity, etc.

These mini-essays have not been written in the traditional «linear» book format, merely because that’s not the way the ideas were originally conceived and connected. Since it is very difficult to provide a sequential story of a series of interlinked ideas and concepts, here I’ve made it easy for you to jump from one theme to another. Alternatively, you can read the whole category from beginning to end.

Most importantly, the aim of «Vida Enigmática» is to inform people and generate thought-provoking conversation. Based on these controversial debates, I hope I inspire others to change, and more importantly to not be afraid of change. The only certain thing is that we live in a time of change.

I have continued the vida enigmática blog here.

[poll=8]

Tags: Vida Enigmática by Dr. Leslie Brown
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1. You only ever seem to wear out two gears in your rear sprocket: the 25T and the 12T.
2. You realise that you need to replace your brake pads again, but you only changed them less than 6 months ago.
3. The only other bike frames you see are one of the following brands: Orbea, Decathlon, Giant, Scott, Specialised, diTec or Goka.
4. You’re riding within a 10km radius of the Parador Hotel at Altitude and you see professional cycling teams training for the Tour de France.
5. You’re climbing somewhere and people start cheering you and yelling «VENGA!» on the side of the roads.
6. You’ve climbed 1000m already, you can see the Atlantic ocean, and there’s still 1300m to go.
7. You suddenly have to manouvre around a goat-herd.
8. You’ve only cycled 100km at the end of the day, but you feel like you’ve cycled twice that amount.
9. You’re cycling through La Orotava, and some crazy guy in thongs starts chasing you to hand out a www.Tenerife-Training.net business card.
10. You see hard-core downhill bikes in every bike shop which actually get used for more than street-curb-jumping.

Tags: Ride the Volcano! by Dr. Leslie Brown
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• You see people are only just getting ready to go out at 10:00pm.
• Every week there seems to be another weird festival or holiday.
• Everyone at the table rips into the bread with their bare hands and then starts peeling potato skins.
• After the meal, the olive oil dressing gets transported directly to the refridgerator, but the actual food is left on the kitchen benchtop all day long.
• Someone says «pass the Gofio»… but in spanish, and with a thick Canarian accent.
• You can speak speak perfect castillian, but still can’t understand what the spanish locals are saying.
• You’re walking on a pedestrian crossing, and all the drivers switch on their left indicators at the sight of you. 
• You need to attend 30+ hours of lectures just to pass the intitial driving theory test.
• You forget what a messy desk looks like, and everyone starts cleaning spontaneously.
• The only piece of carpet in the entire house is the bathmat.

Tags: Island Life by Dr. Leslie Brown
3 Comments »

People are often suprised at the respect drivers have for cyclists while riding in Tenerife. They’ll move completely over to the other side of the road when overtaking; if there isn’t at least 1.5m of extra space, they patiently wait until its safe to do so. You never get beeped just because you are a cyclist -even on single lane roads without a cycle lane! Why is this so?

We all know that in Australia, the UK and USA, things are very different indeed. Its as if motorists resent the very presence of cyclists. I have cycled here in Tenerife for 2 years and I’m yet to see an angry motorist. After observing the local Spanish driving culture in general, I believe I can speculate about why this is so:

Firstly, there’s a notoriously difficult theory test, even for native spanish speakers. The average student sits in class for some 10-20 hours before they are able to pass!! All aspects of road theory are drummed into students from the beginning. They are told that anything with more than two wheels is considered a VEHICLE. There are many many references to situations involving cyclists. In total, our instructor must have lectured about the safety of overtaking bikes for probably an hour or so. I’m actually currently enduring many Spanish driving lessons, and since then, the pieces are all falling into place. [Read more →]

Tags: Island Life, Ride the Volcano! by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Know any online cycling resources that are not already linked directly to our website?

For example: cycling holiday websites or directories, official cycling organisations, online cycling news information sources, online magazines, private cycling clubs, online bike shops, cycling forums, or personal cycling weblogs.

You can either suggest to the webmaster they add a link to our site (preferable if its a foreign language site), or simply send us their website url or contact details and we’ll chase them up.

Based on their usefulness to us, and to make things interesting, we’ll tally your score with the following points system:

• Each in-link originating from Czech or Slovak Republic = 5 points!!!
• Each in-link originating from the UK/Ireland/Scotland, Holland, Benelux, Germany = 3 points
• Each in-link originating from Spain, Sweden, Finland, rest of Europe = 2 points
• Each in-link originating from USA, Canada, Australia, NZ + rest of the world = 1 point

The person with the most points accrued wins a free set of new vertebrae ceramic gear cables (in black colour). These are valued at US$140 RRP, and are custom-made to the exact length of cable housing that you specify.

Competition closes midnight (GMT) 12th september, so go get gathering & send those entries in to win!

**THIS PROMOTION IS NOW CLOSED**

Tags: Sales Pitch by Dr. Leslie Brown
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My day normally starts anywhere between 6:00and 9:00am. I never set the alarm clock; for years its never been able to actually get me out of bed. When I’m motivated, I wake up earlier.

I usually go straight to the computer for 5-10 minutes to get the brain ticking over & see what needs to be done today and for the next few days. Then I go downstairs and make a decent coffee using the ubiquitous spanish cafetera method. There’s no such thing as a good Australian coffee, so I’m always grateful for that (prior to coming here I was a black tea drinker).

There’s usually sooooo many things to do, I need to manage my time so I begin by prioritising what needs to be done. I can’t trust my memory, so a great level of organisation becomes the key. I make a lists of everything; I make a list of other tasks grouped separately: Administration (answering e-mails and bookings), Bike Maintenance & Delivery, Updating Website Content & Maintenance, The rest of my time is devoted to marketing, publicity & financial side of running a business.

So what normally happens is,  I go back to work on one or all of these things until my stomach rumbles. Then I go and make myself some late breakfast and look at the view of the Atlantic ocean for usually less than a minute. Then I go back inside and work until I need to make another coffee. Repeat with lunch and dinner, and now you start to get the idea.

I’ve been so busy busy busy with the new website features & other things, I haven’t had time for any bike rides lately. I usually call it a day somewhere between 9:00 and 11:00pm. I must be putting in 80-90 hours plus of work each week, 7 days a week. It takes a lot of work to run a successful business. Quite honestly, there are not enough hours in the day, and its time to go to bed before I know it. Hopefully business will pick up again over the winter, and I won’t have to try so hard to convince cyclists all over the world «Hey, come to Tenerife, hire a road bike and ride up a mountain!»

Of course I do LOVE the job I have created for myself, but believe me its not easy. Canarians have a saying, which I only learned last week: «No es un moco de pavo». Believe it or not, but the direct translation is «Its not a turkey’s snot». What it actually means is that its a lot more difficult than it appears, and so it is with Tenerife-Training.

Tags: Island Life, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Dutch cyclists in particular are always impressed with the mountainous terrain found in Tenerife. But all too often they under-estimate the difficulty of the climbs involved. Obviously the Netherlands is a super flat region in comparison with the Tenerife’s geography; they are simply not accustomed to hill-training, let alone on roads above 2000m.

They often look at the rental bikes we have available for hire, and laugh when they see a triple crankset installed on a road bike. But I’m often told later on when its time to return the bikes that they were thankful for the unusually low gearing, and that they’d used the lowest possible gear climbing up some particularly difficult climbs. All the best wishes to cyclists from Holland, but be warned: Tenerife its not the ideal place for very new cyclists or beginners to learn how to climb!

Tags: Ride the Volcano! by Dr. Leslie Brown
1 Comment »

I have been out a few times in the last week around La Orotava & Puerto de la Cruz with Ivan and his cousin Chiqui… Ivan is a real great modest guy and I can’t wait to see him play the guitar! Its always a fantastic opportunity to practise spanish with someone by maintaining a conversation… Ivan is the guy on the right:

Anyway, this is a relatively unknown band; they’re trying to get out there in the music world! To Meridian Zero, I say Good Luck, but especially to you Ivan! You can check out their official website here: Meridian Zero. They have several albums already, and there AWESOME new proffessional-quality video-clip has just been released:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UUtjww4OI78

Tags: Island Life by Dr. Leslie Brown
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