A Cyclist's Life in Tenerife (Canary Islands)

Hello blog readers,

You might have noticed that I haven’t written many new articles in the past fortnight. That’s because I’ve been working behind the scenes on a few new simultaneous projects. One of them is called «www.bikenode.com«, a new global cycling links directory. It took almost a full day to create the Bike Node logo… hehehe. Anyway-

The aim is to make it «the fastest growing cycling link directory for the global cycling community». The idea is to help generate exposure for us little guys. Whatever. But the good news is that I am now taking link submissions. So please feel free to add any appropriate cycling-related links to «www.bikenode.com«. It’s easy & it’s free!

There are still a few features I’d like to add, such as an email confirmation of link submissions, an info page, and an easy way for you to add reciprocal links with & without the Bike Node logo (to encourage activity within the directory, reciprocal links are not mandatory but are HIGHLY appreciated).

If you want a bit of extra exposure, a featured listing (highlighted & placed at the top of each category) costs a one-time fee of only 5$ and will result in more traffic to your site. I’ll also ensure that links are added to the directory in a timely manner if you choose a paid link.

If you feel that an appropriate category isn’t listed in the directory yet, you can also suggest new categories for the directory by commenting below.

Thanks,
Les

Tags: News Reel, Sales Pitch, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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With the petrol prices rising, the energy crisis looming, and the state of the environment deteriorating, I thought it was time to compile a list of zero emission vehicles (ZEVs). First I’d like to say that I’m pretty pissed of that the internal combustion engine is still with us today. I remember when the Australian government told us about 15 years ago that they’d be «phasing petrol cars out». Phasing them out my arse…!! Anyway, it is my hope that one day, the combustion engine will become just as unpopular as analogue electronic equipment now has, and that zero emmissions vehicles will be treated like the new wave of «digital» equipment. I hope that people will laugh at things like exhaust pipes in future. Fuck hybrid vehicles altogether I say… they’re like dual VCR/DVD drives.

Note that I haven’t included hybrids or alternative fuels in this list, as all of them still emit greenhouse gases. I also haven’t included any prototypes, impractical or uneconomical cars. The majority of these production cars you can buy TODAY, the remaining few that aren’t are slated for production within about a year, so you can at least reserve with a deposit. I encourage you to leave a comment if I’ve ommitted any ZEVs from the list: [Read more →]

Tags: Inspiration., That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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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:

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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You hear so many people talking about how business owners should treat their customers, that «the customer is always right». We’ll I’ve had one or two irritable customers so I’ve written this article with something different in mind: Tips on how to be a polite customer! 😛

[Read more →]

Tags: That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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It’s been two weeks since I last wrote an article for «That’s business», so I thought it was time to reflect upon this topic.

In mid 2007, I set myself the following simple goal: to quadruple the number of web visitors by the end of the year. The target was 200 daily web visits, which at the time seemed like an immense number. I’m pleased to report that visitor numbers are up again substantially in the last 2 months; there were 9271 visits in January 2008, and 10,550 visits in February! This result is actually almost double my anticipated aim, so I couldn’t be happier! There’s no secret or hard and fast rules to increasing web traffic, but it does require a serious, continuing effort to achieve these visitor numbers.

First and foremost, visitors don’t come from nowhere. They have to be attracted to something. Although I am not formally educated in this subject, I do have a few personal theories about how to improve exposure to my internet business. For one thing, social networking theory has helped me to understand complex interactions [Read more →]

Tags: That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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In the bicycle industry, there’s a common analogy often drawn between shimano and another well-known business monopoly, Microsoft. Both have (or had) a majority market share. Both employ ruthless business tactics. Both arguably produce products with «planned obsolescence» in mind. Both excel at introducing new products that are not backwards compatible. Of course none of it is ever compatible with anything else either… [Read more →]

Tags: That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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In Spain, if you want to get a driving license, official driving lessons are compulsory. There is no such thing as learning to drive with family members or friends. Not only that, but unlike the USA and Australia, learning to drive an automatic vehicle is also not an option. Furthermore, both the theoretical and practical driving standards that you need to reach before you are ready to attempt the final driving exam can only be described as «pedantic». What this means is attending paid driving lessons, and plenty of them…

Over the past few months I’ve been regularly attending driving lessons with a local driving school in La Orotava. This started out a fairly nerve-wracking experience. Today, I just completed the 19th compulsory driving lesson, at a cost of 48.00 to 50.00 Euros each one -yes they had the nerve to put the price up half way through! This soon adds up to quite a sum of money: 950 Euros!!! I’ve come to regard these as some some pretty darn expensive ‘advanced’ parking lessons, and if you think that’s bad, when my partner was learning to drive, she had to take 60-something lessons, and then still failed the actual driving exam twice!

Now you may think «what kind of a clutz needs that many lessons?». And I can tell you right there that I had already driven halfway across the state of NSW in Australia earlier in 2007, a distance of well over 500km. Not only that, but I hold a current full motorcycle driving license. So I already had plenty of experience driving on public roads in dense city traffic. Changing gears on my motorbike become second nature years ago. I’m saying that I was already fairly accustomed to driving on the road, albeit in Australia. In my opinion, I only needed some further instruction with the gears & clutch, which I was already getting the hang of by the end of the very first spanish driving lesson.

My point is: that great quantity of lessons is not really needed at all. It’s just an excuse to earn money. To prove my point, let’s look t the following numbers. There are now 45 million people in Spain. To quote some driving statistics, Spanish authorities  issued 698,128 new driving licences in 2003, bringing the total number of drivers in Spain to 20,301,418. Ususally, these figures increase with each passing year. Even so, if every one of those new drivers needed an average of 20 driving lessons at cost of 50 Euros each, the total cost per annum is 1 BILLION AMERICAN DOLLARS!

Tags: Island Life, Mental Anguish, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Above all else, we strive for a minimal environmental footprint.

1. While air is free, we don’t use disposable CO₂ cartridges.
2. We never pour oil or grease down the drain
3. We avoid the use of plastic bags
4. We don’t print anything unnecessarily
5. We turn off equipment after use (computers, lights, etc)
6. We use energy-saving light globes
7. We recycle kitchen waste into compost
8. Where possible, we buy locally grown food & other products made in Tenerife.
9. We think small is beautiful. Contrary to what most people think, we don’t have a big petrol-guzzling van, just a small one.
10. We reuse inner tubes by first repairing them. There’s a long lost skill in patching butyl innertubes. We continue patching them until the valve no longer functions or until they are deemed unsafe… then we either use 700c sized inner tubes like the two metre rubber hose they really are to tie stuff up with or we make rubber bands out of them!
11. We recycle tyres into belts. (truth be told, we copied the idea from www.velo-re.com and we’re stockpiling them until we can find someone who can locally make a similar item). Chains & sprockets, etc will eventually be used to create one-of-a-kind metal sculptures.
12. We ride bikes!

Tags: Inspiration., Sales Pitch, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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I think the most important thing to know when contemplating new business ideas, isn’t whether you are actually capable of providing the service or not (because we all know that yes you could do it!), but weather it is economically feasible or not. At the end of the day, you invest ALL your time & energy setting up any successful business. The whole idea is that it’s a new way of life that is supposed to eventually pay for itself.

[Read more →]

Tags: That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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Ecotonoha is a project to nurture a virtual tree collaboratively, and at the same time contribute to the actual environment to cope with global warming. As one makes Ecotonoha’s leaves, by leaving a message on the virtual tree, it keeps on growing. And as Ecotonoha grows, real trees will be planted by NEC.

We received 107,054 messages from around the world in the year 2006. As a result, 1,070 eucalyptus seedlings will be planted on Kangaroo Island ,Australia.

We accept your entries until Febrary 13, 2007,and next season will start soon.

	For every 100 signatures on Ecotonoha, we planted another tree in addition to those planted during the Kangaroo Island project. In 2005 we had 84,539 entries, that is, 845 trees will be planted. Year Messages Trees 2006 107,054 1,070 2005 84,539 845 2004 70,869 708 2003 60,997 609

Tags: Inspiration., That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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The growth of www.Tenerife-Training.net website has been astonsishing over the last 2 years:

• I’m very pleased to say that we recently surpassed 11,500 homepage visits!! I’ve lost track of the exact number-

• For the past four months, we’ve received an average of 5000+ monthly web-visits and this figure continues to climb steadily.

• For Jun – Dec 2007, ~82% of people visited www.Tenerife-Training.net more than once. The average number of pages per visitor was 9.2.

• We also received a record number of visits recently on the 9th of January – 437 in one day!

• The latest trends show that, on average, 75% of visitors add one page to their favourites folder. To date I can estimate that there have been 17,501 instances of people adding a page to their favourites folder.

Tags: Inspiration., Science Simplified, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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In 2006 I met a fellow cyclist and it was clear from the very beginning that this man was fundamentally not happy. As we talked and rode together, he confided in me that although he was a successful attorney/solicitor who made £200,000 / year, he suspected that he was ‘depressed’! Having been through my own dark phase the year before, I remember thinking«but how could this man claim to be unhappy?».

Perhaps in the game of life, the struggle to make it in the world -to be successful- to get what you want, maybe that part IS the happiness, not the desires themselves -not even the destination- but the journey. Not the reward at the end, but the actual road to achievement. The belief in yourself. «The survival of the fitest».

You meet older people like this all the time – jaded travellers are a classic example. It’s almost as if life is too easy for some. And I have a challenge to those people. Let’s call it «Doc Browns Challenge»:

1. First, buy a one-way ticket to any poorer country with a language other than your own.
2. Next, give all of your money to charity, every single last cent (no, not to me).
3. Finally, try and get what you want now! (try and get back home within a year, for example)

There is only one rule: you aren’t allowed any outside financial help or aid and you must obey all the local laws and customs of the foreign country. And the moral of the story is, if you can read this, don’t take anything for granted. Be positive, because happiness is far richer than money.

Tags: Mental Anguish, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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10% discount for Summer 2008 bike hire bookings made before the end of 2007 year.

To be eligible, you must quote the secret code word «vertebrae ceramic» and pay your 20% reservation deposit on or before the 31st of December, 2007. Offer only vaild for bike rentals in the Summer 2008 period from April 1st through to September 30th. Discount applies to published web-rates.

Simple enough?

Tags: Sales Pitch, That's Business 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
1 Comment »

Almost everyone has heard of Qantas, Pepsi and IBM. They’ve saturated the world with publicity. These are household names because everyone is familiar with the business & their products. That is to say, we all know they exist, we all knows what they sell, and most importantly we all know how to reach them.

At the extreme opposite end is a hermit living in Timbuktoo. He doesn’t have much connection with the outside world (if any), hence is local network may consist of him and his dog. So in other words, It’s a question of «popularity».

Social network theory views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties. Nodes are the entities within a network, and ties are the all-important relationships or connections between them. Entities may be organisations, businesses or individuals. They say that any two people on the planet are linked to each other by only six ties, on average.

[Read more →]

Tags: Mental Anguish, Science Simplified, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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In Spain, learning how to drive is like attending University lectures. In fact the theory lessons are so incredibly pedantic, it could be complete curriculum for a university subject entitled «Advanced Driving Theory». However, Spanish traffic control is not really concerned at all about safety, just semantics. They attempt to trick you with each and every question. The answers usually all technically correct, or there’s one blatantly wrong answer. It’s just a question of which one of the remaining questions is most correct. And it’s going to get worse say the instructors, because they’re going to introduce what they call «multi-multiplechoice»… that’s where you can choose answers a; b; c; a and b; b and c; and finally a and c. Anything to get you to fail. But that’s a whole other story…

To be eligable for the theory test, you must first pass a medical examination (except I’d hardly call it that). First they ask for your €35 in the reception. From there, a psychologist asks you to perform a quick physical dexterity test. Next, you’re trundled off to yet another room where they do a rapid eye test. Finally you get to see another Doctor in yet another room who supposedly signs the paper, granting you a clean bill of health. Hey presto, you’re done in under 3 minutes!

Except it didn’t go like that for me. In my case, this relatively straightforward procedure was has just been yet another delay. [Read more →]

Tags: Island Life, Mental Anguish, That's Business by Dr. Leslie Brown
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