A Cyclist's Life in Tenerife (Canary Islands)

The second newsletter will be sent out on Monday the 18th of May at 9:00 Greenwich meantime. How’s that for precision? I promise you that the second newlsetter will be much more proffessional than the first attempt. You can subscribe to the NEW newsletter below! 

Unfortunately, the old subscription list was lost when the software I was previously using crashed so if you wish to unsubscribe you can do that here as well. There’ll also be an unsubcription link at the bottom of all future newsletters. Please also accept my apologies if I’ve annoyed you in any way.

SUBSCRIBE TO THE NEWSLETTER:

Sorry for the lousy cartoon - it was the only semi-decent one I could find about bicycle races. Anyway, I’ve just uploaded the Canary Islands cycle racing events calender for 2008; It is written in Spanish & you can download it HERE in pdf format.

Tags: News Reel, Ride the Volcano! by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Limited time only: 20% OFF all rental bikes throughout May & June!

Just three simple conditions:

1) This offer applies to deliveries around the El Puerto de la Cruz region only.

2) To be eligable, you must quote the keywords: «vertebrae ceramic«.

3) This offer is obviously subject to the availability of bikes in your sizes…

Tags: News Reel, Sales Pitch by Dr. Leslie Brown
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 Over the next hour or so, I’ll be performing some website maintenance & updating some files. I just thought you’d like to know. Expect glitches.

Tags: News Reel by Dr. Leslie Brown
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As of the 15th of April, we will be reducing prices for renting 4 or more bikes! To make it fairer for everyone, we also need to optimise our existing pricing structure for renting 2 or 3 road racing / mountain bikes. What this means in real terms is that for the most part, the prices for renting 2 or 3 bicycles will increase slightly (since they were overly discounted to begin with). To clarify, all the current bike rental prices for single bikes will either remain the same or reduce.

Furthermore, the current pricing structure will be honoured for all bookings made before this time. The new rental prices for groups hiring 4 or more bicycles will come into effect immediately. Please email me for a quote. So if you’re thinking about coming to Tenerife for that well earned cycling holiday vacation, this is one more incentive to reserve the best bikes at the best prices!

Tags: News Reel, Sales Pitch, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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I’d really appreciate it if a few of you cyclists could take the time to fill in this brief one-page survey. It will only take 3-5 minutes of your time, and will help us improve our bicycle hire & tours service. We don’t ask for any personal information & your answers are kept strictly confidential.

The aim of the survey is to:

1. Receive feedback about future potential hire bikes + rental equipment and the level of quality that customers expect or desire.
2. Evaluate the website’s effectiveness in displaying information
3. Find ways to improve the website.
4. Devise ways to significantly increase our web traffic and hence our exposure by effective marketing.
5. To acertain your future level of interest with regards to cycling and training events in Tenerife.

Here’s your chance to have your say!  🙂
Thanks,
The management.

Tags: News Reel, Ride the Volcano!, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Over the last few weeks I have been adding a few new features to the blog & I’ve also refined the style of theme I have been using. Here’s a list of what’s recently been added or changed:

• Google adwords have now been placed on this blog, to recoup some of the costs of running a high-profile website. When I started the blog, my plan was never to «sell-out». But these days, some people (cyclebetter.com) are using my RSS feed contributions on their site to generate revenue! Cheeky bastards! When I saw that, I suppose it was kind of the final straw. The remaining top-level www.Tenerife-Training.net domain pages will of course remain ad-free.
• You may have already noticed that a new feature called «snapshots»Â has also been added. These provide a quick preview of an externally-linked website. They also allow youtube text links to be played without leaving the page you’re currently viewing. If these bother you, they can be turned off or the preferences changed. Just adjust the settings in the top right corner of the snapshot preview window.
• Many new local cycling blogs & local cycling clubs in the Canary Islands have been added to the blog roll. I believe this is now the most comprehensive list cycling links in the Canary Islands.
• After some serious effort working on my current theme & the CSS styles it was using, the text now automatically wraps around the thumbnail images, leaving a nice margin around the picture. Previously when I tried to wrap text around a picture in the WYSIWYG editor, when the article was published online, the text jutted up against the picture leaving absolutely no space around it. That’s the reason I placed the thumbnails above and away from the paragraph text. However, it was one aspect that I never liked about the old design & knowing how to fix it has bugged me for some time. So I’m very pleased to announce that it’s now finally fixed!
• Borders around linked pictures are no longer blue, they’re gold-yellow.
• The borders around linked images now change to the colour red when you hover the mouse over them.
• The search box has been placed at the top of the sidebar. Unlike before where it was restricted to searching the blog, it now searches the entire www.Tenerife-Training.net internet database including the forum. It actually works quite well, so please feel free to use it!
• The RSS feed subscription icon has now been delegated to the bottom of the sidebar. Who uses RSS feeds anyway? Not me.
• The calender has also been shoved down the sidebar quite a bit. Of course the idea behind all this was to improve the exposure to the ads, because they’re no use to anyone at the very bottom of the page.
• Categories have been renamed thusly:
  • Inspiration.
  • Island Life
  • Lucky Dip
  • Mental Anguish 
  • News Reel
  • Ride the Volcano!
  • Sales Pitch
  • Science Simplified
  • Spoke Bed
  • That’s Business
  • Vida Enigmática

Tags: News Reel by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Les has just purchased 6 new aero framesets from Leader bikes for the new road rental bicycle fleet here in Tenerife. These bikes are available in a wide range of sizes from a tiny 46cm (50cm centre-top) all the way through to a whopping 61cm (50cm centre-top)! While they look like a time trial frame, they have traditional road racing bicycle geometry.

We’re very proud to partner with Leader bikes in 2008.

Tags: News Reel, Ride the Volcano!, Spoke Bed by Dr. Leslie Brown
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www.Tenerife-Training.net now caters for extra small riders! We’ve recently purchased some 16″ extra-small MTBs. These can be easily converted from a WSD hybrid style of bike (pictured below) to a conventional cross-country MTB.

Amornrat «Meow» Vatanatumrak of USA now takes the record for the shortest www.Tenerife-Training.net client, measuring 5’0″ (152cm). The previous record holder was Elena Lazkano of país vasco (Spain), who stood 5’1″ (155).

Link to the tallest client so far

Tags: Inspiration., News Reel, Ride the Volcano!, Sales Pitch, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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1. To provide the most reliable, professional-quality bicycle hire service which accommodates for all manner of cycling enthusiasts and their associated needs on the island of Tenerife.
2. To provide an accurate, well-organised source of information about all aspects of cycling in the Canary Islands.
3. To effectively & courteously communicate with all of our potential clients.
4. To take advantage of the unique combination of Tenerife’s fantastic climate & mountainous terrain for physical training purposes.
5. To minimise our impact on the environment by saving energy, reducing waste, reusing, repairing & ultimately recycling materials wherever possible
6. To support the local Canarian culture whenever we have the choice. We firmly believe that «small is beautiful»Â We endeavour to show these principles to all visitors.
7. To inspire people the world over; if you can cycle here, you can do almost anything.
8. To demostrate to other businesses that you don’t have to be big, you just have to think big.
9. The ultimate goal of www.Tenerife-Training.net is to be known by the entire worldwide cycling community.
10. To demonstrate the superior efficiency of the humble bicycle whilst encouraging cycling as a simultaneous form of transport and exercise to everyone else.

Tags: Inspiration., Island Life, News Reel, Ride the Volcano!, Sales Pitch, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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That’s right. This giant german man who stand 2.03m (6’8″) tall, rented one of our XL Mrazek BOH Road bikes just yesterday. The day before, he test-rode an XL 22″ sized Decathlon MTB, but found the seatpost was still ~5cm too short.

So when this road bike became available the following day (effectively 60cm center-center; 62cm center-top), I set the pro road seatpost to the maximum allowed height «safety height» mark, which resulted in a saddle to center-bottom-bracket measurement of a whopping 96cm. He attempted to straddle the bike and said «Ahh, you got me!» and we lowered the seatpost a few more cm to make it fit correctly…

Mathias Lohse of Germany (2.03m / 6’8″) now snatches the previous height record from Andrea Delcuratoro of Italy (1.93cm / 6’4″). Congratulations Mathias, and we hope to have some extra-long cranks available for our rental bikes in future.

 Link to the shortest client so far

Tags: Inspiration., News Reel, Ride the Volcano!, Sales Pitch, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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The structure of the www.Tenerife-Training.net website has recently been updated to include new files & sub-directories. But for some time now, the older files have continued to remain hosted on the server. We have now redirected the old html files to their new permanent locations. You probably won’t notice anything, but that’s what’s going on anyway. If you experience any broken links, please tell us about it!

Tags: News Reel by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Well in recent news, I’ve been banned from the TenerifeForum.com, again. And basically, I could see it coming. Hence the recent posts concerning social outcasts. I talk about the breakdown of modern society; have we lost that all important ability to interact and communicate with others? Either face to face or even on the telephone. The internet seems to have stolen that from us.

The first time, all it took was to say «I think I’ll head over to www.sun4free.com … adios!» in a private message to one of the moderators, and they took that as a form of self-exile. «Self ban» it’s called, athough I never specifically requested that. I put it down to lack of communication. I simply intended to login less & not post as much. But given the chance, that one person jumped at the opportunity to expunge me from their growing community. Now I can’t even login to find & quote some of my former posts -a pity- because I think some of them were quite profound, especially in the context of society & culture.

The second time, a week later, the excuse given was for petty minor signature violations and spamming via PM. I changed the signature, removed my commercial link (which wasn’t allowed as it contained a link to my Spanish cycling forum with less than 10 members) and left the link to this blog. What happened next? Once again without warning, they notified me that the required font size is two not three. Except they bannished me before I had any chance to change it. Well done!

 

Let’s cut to the chase – Why the discrimination of all of a sudden?

[Read more →]

Tags: Island Life, Mental Anguish, News Reel by Dr. Leslie Brown
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I just finished helping with today’s «cosecha» way too early…

For those that don’t know, a cosecha is the local name for a grape harvest. The owner of small vineyards in Tenerife usually ask their extended family members to volunteer to harvest (cosechar) all the grapes in a single day. This day normally falls Saturday at the end of September. They’re usually offered some form of small compensation, but on our farm we like to provide a traditional lunch for everyone that participates.

This year there were 21 grape pickers, who collected a total of 68 full crates, for a total harvest of ~1200kg of premium black grapes. For comparison: last year, our farm produced 5000kg of grapes (some 280 crates)!! What caused this year’s disaster crop? Two things happened almost simultaneously:

1. Some time in mid-June, our vineyard contracted an abnormal sickness, causing many of the grapes to explode before reaching maturity. This was probably the result of an abnormal amount of light rain over this period, over which time the fungal virus spread. The farms that did not bother to spray their crop must now abandon this years harvest.
2. A severe calima also occurred at the end of July, temperatures skyrocketed to 40°C for 3 consecutive days, and this virtually dessicated the remaining grapes that hadn’t already contracted the fungal virus. I noted that only those grape bunches that were protected by shade seemed to survive.

Insurance companies refuse to insure small farms like ours for such occurences. Neither does the tax office nor the government recognise this year’s unofficial vineyard catastrophy; they never provided any financial aid to small-time growers. Sadly, this isn’t the case for bigger vinyeards (at least five times the size of ours), who are in a position to receive both substantial tax-cuts and other insurance benefits. Even today, many families still depend on their vineyards as a source of income. Unfortunately, even though the majority of grapes in Tenerife are still grown and supplied to wine cellars by small family-run cultivators, they are simply not supported by institutions who provide help to larger vineyards.

Tags: Island Life, News Reel, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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To be in the running to WIN A FREE SET OF SPINERGY ROAD SKEWERS, all you have to do is e-mail the correct answer to cycling@tenerife-training.net along with your name and postal address. These came with a Stealth PBO wheelset and are valued at US$30.

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE!

Entrance by Email only! NOTE: This promotion has now been extended 1 more week! The competition winner will be the first sucessful entry drawn at random on the 12th September, 2007. Pictures to follow.

UPDATE: 20/09/07

…and the winner is… ISMAEL MELENDEZ OF BROOKLYYYN NEEEEEW YOOOOOOORK!!!!! Step forward and take your priiiiiize…

Congratulations Ismael, well done! Really great effort!! You’re new spinergy skewers are already on the way (no they’re not, they actually still sitting on my desk, but when I get round to it, they’ll be posted to you).

Thanks once again for all the particpants that entered this special promotion. (or rather, thanks to the SOLE person that entered… hehehe)

Tags: News Reel, Sales Pitch by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Introducing the new www.Tenerife-Training.net forum! I hope you can take a look, sign up & post something:

The English/Spanish cycling forum is HERE!

It’s primarily dedicated to local Canarian cyclists, but it does have an English forum section and everyone is welcome to sign up and post away. We’re currently a very small community of local bike riders. I’ve put lots of work into and hopefully before too long it’ll be a busy place where we can all chat about bicycles. 😀

Tags: News Reel, Ride the Volcano! by Dr. Leslie Brown
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It takes a lot of time communicating the bike hire & equipment needs of my clients. Normally it takes between 3 & 5 emails to finally confirm everything -for example- the size of the type & size of bicycle they want to rent, thier name, contact number, height, the name + location of their hotel or apartment, dates of stay, dates of bike hire, number of days of bike rental, and any other questions they may have.

On my sister’s advice, I decided to create an online bicycle hire reservation form for specifying everything online, but like every new task, it always takes longer than you think. It’s a typical revenge effect: Setting up any automated system in the hopes of saving time, initially requires even more time to be invested!! It also sometimes requires further human involvement, to keep it in check!

The main glitch was that I wasn’t getting sent any data at all!! But there were lots of other bugs to fix too. This has taken hours and hoursto sort out (I had to learn new html form tags & some php code), so I hope this will eventually save some time. It’s now finally up and running…

Online bicycle hire reservation form now available here!

Tags: News Reel, Ride the Volcano!, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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We really had fun making this. A special thanks to Iván – I couldn’t have done it without you man!

Tags: Island Life, News Reel, Ride the Volcano!, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Tags: News Reel, Ride the Volcano! by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Last Sunday, we weren’t permitted to film within Mt. Teide National Park; «special permission» is required from Santa Cruz - something which we weren’t aware of. A representative from «ministerio de medio ambiente» promptly arrived on the scene as soon as we set up the tripod, and then kindly waited for us to pack up all the video equipment and leave. I think they patrol that whole area with an almighty telescope…

Its not really fair, because the videos are still what we’d consider amateurish, and it is for the benefit of Tenerife. We don’t make a single cent from the videos we produce. To aquire the permit, they ask for a security deposit of €300-3000, which they refund if the park is undamaged after the unedited material is submitted… Since there’s never any guarantees with regards to such deposits, we’ve decided to abandon the shoot in that zone. For future reference, further information concerning video permits in Tenerife can be obtained here.

Tags: News Reel by Dr. Leslie Brown
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