A Cyclist's Life in Tenerife (Canary Islands)

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. (más…)

Tags: Island Life, Ride the Volcano! // 1 Comment »

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 // Add Comment »

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 // Add Comment »

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! // 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 // Add Comment »

As you may be aware here at Tenerife-Training, we provide this free cycling information website as part of our Road Bike Rental Service in Tenerife. If you would like to do us a HUGE favour, please feel free to download, print & distribute the following pdf bike hire information pamphlets.

Suggested distribution places include: your local Bike Training Clubs, Official Cycling Organisations, Local Bike Shops. (for residents of Tenerife: Tourist Information Offices in the South of Tenerife, Apartments in Tenerife, Rural Casas & Fincas in Tenerife)

These are best printed on a laser printer, with coloured paper. Because I’m very fussy, I prefer to use complimentary colours which have a similar tone (for example bright red for one language and bright green for another, or else blue/orange). This is because most people are sick at the mere sight of plain white and pale-coloured paper.

NOTE: Please don’t print the image out directly though, because the print quality will be completely crap; print the pdf files linked above instead.

I also have a more detailed foldable A4 brochure available which provides more information about training & cyclo-touring in Tenerife… I’ll upload that when I have time.

Tags: Sales Pitch // 1 Comment »

Roads leading into Las Cañadas National Park have been cut due to the inherent fire risk. You can only ride up TF-21 until kilometre 15, after which, I’m told access is restricted to emergency vehicles… So far 4200 homes have been evacuated and more than 7000 hectares of forrest land have burned. The fires were intentionally lit. 🙁

Tags: News Reel // Add Comment »

 

Be in the running to win a matching FREE Thomson X2 Stem & Seatpost!!

All you need to look at the «filmstrip»Â image shown below, then visit www.Tenerife-Training.net, find out which of the THREE ROADS pictured are NOT pictured anywhere on that website…

Then simply e-mail your answers to cycling@tenerife-training.net, along with your name & postal adress.

Entries will be drawn at Random on the 15th of September 2007. The first correct entrant wins!

(yes, worldwide postage is included free of charge!)

Stem is 120mm x 1 1/8″

Seatpost is 31.6mm x 410mm long.

Tags: Sales Pitch // 2 Comments »

Hello keen cyclists,

It’s taken me the best part of last week to update the existing Tenerife Training website. Its mean new feature is the Navigation menu bar, making it easier to access the cycling info & other Tenerife tourism information. As you can see, I’ve also added this new Tenerife Blog Page which will be updated regularly. I’ve added a New Cycling Tenerife Forum (which will no doubt take ages to get established) and there’s now the option of booking the rental bikes online.

 I still have several things to sort out later this week (update the site map and install a guestbook). NOTE: The guestbook is there now, the comments are recorded, they’re just not visible yet. In the meantime, if you notice any bugs in the new site, such as broken links / discontinuous format, etc, please do me a favour and let me know!

I’m also busy preparing an online survey and the first Tenerife-Training newsletter will also be ready soon.

One last thing: once you enter the new directory structure of the site, and the «update bookmarks reminder» disappears, please don’t forget to update your bookmarks!!

Tags: News Reel // Add Comment »

The 31st of July is my 30th birthday. If all goes well, that will coincide with the launch of the new website format. To celebrate, we’re going to a Hindu restaurant in El Puerto de la Cruz with some good Canarian friends of ours.  That should be interesting because most local people living in the Canary Islands are not accustomed to such hot food! hehehe. My girlfriend is already hooked on Thai food. The first time she had tried a curry was at 27 years of age I believe; it was a pretty mild version, but you could actually see her lips glowing red hot. 🙂

UPDATE: 05/08/07. A total of six of us went out (5 were local friends from Tenerife) & we had a great fun night. We ordered and sampled lots of familiar dishes that appeared on the menu: pappadams, chicken tikka & samosa entrées, chicken korma, butter chicken, a delicous do-piaza lamb curry and of course naan bread and perfectly cooked basmati rice. The waiter also suggested a prawn dish (jalfrezi?), but that only served to ruin the other meat flavours.

Chiqui (now 29) was the only one besides myself who had previously tried Hindu food! The rest of them were 30+ years old and it was their first Indian Curry food experience! I’m pretty sure two of them has never even tasted any sort of curry in their entire lives. Is that strange, or what? I warned them (más…)

Tags: Island Life // Add Comment »

I’m busy behind the scenes updating & recoding the website, adding new pages such as this weblog page. I’ve got people working on translating the site into Spanish & German, and there’s a lot of information to get through. There’ll also be a new forum dedicated to the local cyclists coming soon (in spanish though).

I’m also preparing an online survey, where you can be in the running to win stuff (I’m just deciding what!) as well as researching other marketing and publicity avenues. All this reorganisation & newfound motivation means I’m now working between 12-16 hours a day. Those videos will have to wait a few more weeks!

Tags: News Reel // Add Comment »