A Cyclist's Life in Tenerife (Canary Islands)

I thought some of your readers might like to know that the local rock band Merdian Zero just released their first CD entitled «Doors of Creation». Here’s their proffessional-quality video-clip.

To celebrate the release, they’re holding a concert in La Orotava this friday, and attendance is FREE!!!!!;

They’re quite a talented new band, and the lead guitarrist is none other than my good friend Iván «Scalpel» Ruiz. In fact it was me who came up with the nick-name:

If only he could teach me to play like that! Thanks for the inspiration, Scalpel!!

(for more info about Meridian Zero, check their official website: www.Meridian-Zero.com or myspace site)

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PRO ROAD BIKE HIRE:

The definitive source for road bike rentals in Tenerife.
Our hire bikes are meticulously maintained.
All Sizes available.
DELIVERY to South Tenerife at additional cost (30 Euros).
Accessories also available (clipless shoes, pedals, helmets, etc).

RATES:

€30 / day
€85 / 3 days
€125  / 5 days
€150 / week
€175 / 9 days

E-Mail: cycling@tenerife-training.net

We provide this free cycling information website as part of our Pro Bicycle Hire Service in Tenerife. This is currently the only way that we generate revenue to keep the website going. You can help by distributing these bike hire information pamphlets for us in your neck of the woods.

This pdf file currently contains English, Spanish, German and French translations, but we would also like to target our pamplets in Dutch, Belgian, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Czech & Slovak cycling shops & bicycle clubs. So if you’re able to accurately translate this pamphlet into any other languages such as Dutch, Italian, Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian, Czech or Slovak please e-mail me. Please include your postal address and we’ll send you a FREE T-SHIRT!

**UPDATE** Only 1 T-Shirt is available – size XL, short sleeves!

Tags: Sales Pitch // 1 Comment »

  

This famous fish, who lives in the Marine Reserve known as Mar de Las Calmas, has become an icon of El Hierro and is now well-known all throughout the archipelago. The fish with big lips is apparantly a gentle giant, making friends easily with new local scubadivers. The grouper, affectionately named «Pancho», is over 40 years old and weighs 40kg!

Unfortunately, spear fishermen recently killed his long-time partner, Natalia. So to ensure that Pancho doesn’t suffer the same fate, local restaurants have incited a verbal agreement not to serve grouper on the menu in a move of respect for Pancho. Likewise, the municipal government of El Hierro has advised all to respect the coastal pools where groupers lay their eggs. Paco remains a proud symbol of the fight to preserve this rich marine ecosystem.

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Everyone already knows that babies take 1-2 years to learn basic language communication skills. What people tend to forget is that adults actually have several advantages over infants when it comes to learning new languages…

«But babies learn by immersion; they soak up everything like a sponge!»

… I can just hear the echo now. Its the same thing I tell you!!! In less than 2 years I went from knowing almost nothing (10 or 20 words) to being able to go to communicate effectively with people, go to the cinema, watch it in Spanish and understand the plot. But although it appears I can speak fluently, there’s still a lot that I don’t fully understand. There are huge gaps in my knowledge, gaps which only a formal education would fix.

During a recent adult coversation we had in the car concerning traffic rules, I recently asked a my 4 year old Spanish sister-in-law (who was sitting in the back seat with me) if she understood what was being said. She shook her head – the answer was most (más…)

Tags: Island Life, Mental Anguish // 1 Comment »

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 // 1 Comment »

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.

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There have been many funky pedal designs in the last decade, and the original «eggbeaters» by Crank Bros often draw some strange looks. What could be better than 4 sided entry and terrific mud clearance? Nothing, except whenever I ride with standard eggbeater pedals, I feel like I am riding on the tiny little spindles, nothing more. They just don’t feel right because they don’t provide any solid pedalling platform at all.

Enter the Candy:

Although they look like they word work better than the original eggbeater, the platflorm can interfere with the souls of some shoes. I was forced to use a plastic spacer to raise the cleat height. On several occasions I felt the cleat twisting dramatically on the soul of the shoe, and I was unable to release my feet from the pedals. Despite over-tightening the two cleat bolts, the problem persisted. Since this is a potentially dangerous situation, I now refrain from using these pedals. Perhaps they work with other shoes, but not with mine (Decathlon rockrider 8). Other people I lent them to complained about the very same problem with different shoes. With the addition of the platform they are also no longer quadruple sided, but double sided.

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Swapping pedals on our rental bikes is the most common chore here at www.Tenerife-Training.net. In my business, I have tried and tested many types of pedals on the market.

I’ve tried a number of road & MTB pedals over the years, and I was pretty impressed with these, considering the price was only ‚¬40 per pair. Although they are heavy, they have the most positive retention of any pedal I have tried. You hear a single, well-defined «snap» upon each entry and exit. The feeling of security they provide is second to none, and I noticed it from the outset. The only down side is that this model doesn’t come with an adjustable float, so your knees are locked into place the entire time.

The zone where the cleat engages with the pedal is larger than with SPD pedals, so you never have to fumble about trying to find the entry point. Although I haven’t tested these in muddy conditions, they release whenever the need arises. All in all, I’d reccomend these to anyone who wants a fixed-float MTB pedal.

Tags: Spoke Bed // 1 Comment »

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 // 1 Comment »

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Every time you select a piece of fruit, based on the condition of its skin, you’re judging the contents. No one likes to eat a soggy banana or a rotten apple. We’ve come to learn that if  a banana is bruised & blackened on the outside, inside is most likely a soggy fruit mush. 

(más…)

Tags: Mental Anguish, Vida Enigmática // 1 Comment »

The principals of acupuncture are based on the stimulation of certain points throughout the body. These points are interconnected and are known as meridians. The organs and limbs along these meridians beneficially respond to stimulation, with a subsequent relief of pain and an improvement in the general sense of well-being. (más…)

Tags: Inspiration., Mental Anguish, Science Simplified // 1 Comment »

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!

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I often use the analogy that learning a language (including your first one) is like fittting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together to form a picture. Each puzzle piece could represent a word, clusters of pieces representing a phrase or an expression. The effectiveness of communication of a concept or idea is the ability of the puzzle to represent an image you are trying to portray. The number of puzzle pieces correlates directly with the number of words that the language contains, while the complexity of the puzzle reflects the difficulty of learning the language in question.

The Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use. Many other archaic words exist but are now considered obsolete. The average English speaker possesses a vocabulary of 10,000 to 20,000 words, using only a fraction of that in everyday conversation, the rest being recognition or recall vocabulary. Hence, no one can finish the entire puzzle, even given a lifetime of trying. The puzzle is only ever at most partially completed.

As you begin to learn a new language, the puzzle at first appears not to make sense. If you don’t recognise more than 2 or 3 key words in a 10-15 word sentence, it becomes almost impossible to comprehend. Hence, a vocabulary of 1000-2000 words is not enough to understand what is going on.The puzzle pieces don’t connect, and you can’t see the overall picture. 

In my opinion, there are a minimum number of words (I estimate ~5000) before you can actually begin to communicate. My estimate was based on highlighting the new words I had learned in a Spanish mini dictionary, and approximating the average number of highlighted words per page with the total number of pages. When I approached and surpassed that vocabulary level, my ability to communicate improved drastically. I could understand past, present & future tenses, and I also knew how to augment my knowledge of the language by asking appropriate questions in that language. In other words, I could use the new language to learn more about the world, including the language itself.

Tags: Island Life // 1 Comment »

Вячеслав Иванович Полунин (Vyacheslav Ivanovich Polunin ) has been called «The World’s Greatest Clown». I went and saw him in Sydney in the year 2000. It was an enlightening, inspirational and wondrous experience.

Slava’s Snowshow: 

As to whether he would describe himself, as others have, as an “existential clown”, his reply is typically Zen. “I would agree with that as well. Every object can have a different meaning. A maple leaf is a symbol of Canada — yet for a street cleaner it is garbage, for a child it’s a toy, for a train conductor it could be a hazard. But it’s just a maple leaf. In my show I try to present the maple leaf in such a way that each person can see each thing in it.”

“The more you want to be an anarchist, the more you have to know. There must be balance,” Slava explains, teetering on an imaginary tightrope to illustrate his point. “The more you reach out with one hand, the more the other must reach, or you fall over. So the more I want to be free, the more I have to learn.”

Slava’s biography

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From my own personal experience, the state of chronic depression is a relatively slow & insidious process which begins by the inability to make major choices within a severely conflicting environment. Highly important decisions (those which affect not just yourself, but other people as well) take time to solve. But you dwell on the impact of all future negative consequences and their importance, and these types of situations cannot be solved simply or quickly. You then enter a repetitive negative thought state, constantly dwelling on the major conflicting problems so much so that you can’t even begin to make what would otherwise be very minor choices.

This leads to a complete lack of motivation to actually do anything to help yourself get out of the hole you’ve spiralled down into.  It’s a classic example of what physicists term a «feedback loop». Although you may or may not be aware of it, there appears to be no means of escape -eventually- you become so entrapped by your own pessimistic thoughts that you firmly believe that any choice you make will lead to unhappiness. It’s a terrible state of self pity & guilt. So you begin to contemplate the easiest ways of easing your own suffering, which is of course where the real danger lies. It is a complete breakdown of the mind. Its impossible to snap out of, even for normally hyper-optmistic thinkers.

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Benedict Allen, author, explorer, public speaker and presenter, is one of Britain’s best known explorers. He has published nine books, two of them bestsellers, and his pioneering films of his expeditions – occasionally with a film crew but more typically without – have paved the way for the current generation of TV adventurers. Uniquely in television, his philosophy is to immerse himself in extreme or alien environments, relying not on satellite phones and other “backup” but to go alone and learn from indigenous people.

His approach to exploration is exemplified by his decision to undergo the harrowing “crocodile” initiation ceremony in New Guinea – he was given extensive crocodile scars and beaten for six weeks. It was an attempt not just to report back about things never before witnessed at the frontiers of our knowledge but to understand a different perspective on the world.

«To me exploration isn’t about conquering natural obstacles, planting flags… It’s not about going where no one’s gone before in order to leave your mark, but about the opposite of that – about making yourself vulnerable, opening yourself up to whatever’s there and letting the place leave its mark on you.» – Benedict Allen.

His belief in leaving the back-up systems often employed by adventurers – satellite phones, GPS navigation etc – at home make his solo expeditions particularly precarious; likewise, his technique of not bringing along camera-crews continues to ensure he is the only “adventurer” on TV often in very real and constant jeopardy; arguably, he has the most dangerous job seen on television. (más…)

Tags: Inspiration. // 2 Comments »

1. «Panza de burro» translates as «the donkey’s belley» but what it really refers to is the band of stratus cloud that permanently hangs over the la Orotava valley in the North of Tenerife.
2. «El quinto pino»… similar to the place Timbukto, in Mali, Africa, a very distant land. Signifies that the place is far from anywhere.
3. «llorar al barranco» … similar to cry over spilt milk. Like today I lost my keys and my aunt then said: «pues que vas a hacer, ¿vete y llorar al barranco?».
4. «No es un moco de pavo». It’s easier said than done.
5. «Echo polvo». I’m burned out. I’m so tired, I’m emitting dust.
6. «Me importa un caraco» = I don’t give a shit.
7. «Tetas al aire.» Even 4 year olds know this one means «to go topless».
8. «Â¡Chiquita fiesta!» I’m still yet to figure the exact meaning of this…
9. «Â¡Ã‘o!», but pronounced more like «Ã±oj». Similar to «wow», an expression of surprise. Although after hiperdino started using this word in their cheap TVs ad campaigns, you don’t tend to hear it in conversation as much.
10. «Â¡Agüita!» Another expression of surprise.

Tags: Island Life // Add Comment »

Are we all making «nano-niches» for ourselves, in an attempt to fit into this new highly-customised, choice-oriented advanced consumer society? We now join online local communities such as forums, blog directories, myspace, dating sites, chat rooms. We subscribe to newsletters, RSS feeds. We can search for whatever we like with google, almost without limits. As individuals, we’re always searching to redefine ourselves, to find our life purpose.

But what happens if and when you can’t seem to find your own unique, specific niche? I’m talking about major areas of your life, like employment. Your ideal partner? Your own distinct style? Your identity? Can these two states of overchoice and underchoice lead to mental health problems? What happens to your mood when there are an infinite number of things you could possibly do with your life? Do you begin to block everything out, deny existence of something? (más…)

Tags: Inspiration., Mental Anguish, Vida Enigmática // 2 Comments »

I found this particular website last month. Internet masters with more than 10 years experience know to be picky when adding newfound sites to your ever-expanding list of favourites, otherwise they can get out of control. But this is one example of a site that, once encountered, will surely remain in your favourites folder forever. If you’re lacking motivation, inspirationm have pessimistic thoughts, are depressed, etc, you won’t ever want to lose it.

«Happiness through Self Awareness; Change core beliefs, control emotional reactions, and create love and happiness in your relationships»

Anyway, normally I don’t link to other blogs directly, but everything this man writes is pure gold! I wanted to show his advice to others, especially the ones with mental health problems -I think that’s nearly everyone these days- because I really think this man has incredible wisdom, which he is so willing to share with the world in order to make it a better place.

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