Alef Arendsen

I’m sitting at home at the moment, being chilly and all. I hoped to get off to an early start today to do some kiting in the late afternoon. Well, I did get up at 6′ish, but didn’t quite hold out the entire day. I think the sessions last weekend were kind of a bit too much, to say the least. Will have to take it easy for a couple of days. Fortunately no courses this week, only internal work to do.

Anyway, Lars, Marc and I got some good kiting done yesterday. We went to the beach at around 2′ish. It wasn’t such a long session (we stayed until 5.30 or so), but it was good. I also bumped into Jeroen, one of the guys working Telstar, the kite shop where I usually buy my gear. He was out on the water for the second time after having revalidated from braking his back in 6(!) places. While holding his 12sqm 2009 Gaastra Jekyll to the ground he said the winds were not blowing hard enough yet. Can you imagine I was out with my 8sqm? Well, in his defense, he had shortened his lines, which gives you a bit less power in your kite.

Anyway, Jeroen and friends were doing some great tricks of which I took a few pictures. There are also some pictures of me making a couple of airs. It’s not that brutal yet, but I’m getting there… Also, this was the 8sqm and the current really kept me from picking up serious speed and thus higher airs (but well, those are just excuses ).

After wrapping up Lars and I had pancakes in a very traditional Dutch restaurant in Heemstede. We both finished almost two and a salad. I don’t I’ve ever eaten that much pancake in one day…

More pictures by the way in the corresponding Picasa web gallery. The guy in the white Mystic lycra; that’s me…

Last week I was in Helsinki for a Core Spring course. The course was fun and so were the evenings. Normally I plan to have one relaxed evening in the hotel, but that didn’t happen this time.

On Thursday we went to Tavastia. A greek guy I met a few weeks ago (in Amsterdam) suggested I go to Tavastia to see some rock bands. So I checked out the agenda and yesterday night, Mustach was on, a Swedish metal band. Some of the training attendees went along and we had a fun night out. Funny was that as of late, the Finnish clubs have their gigs quite early in the evening, to accommodate for people that need to get up early the next day. So the gig started at 9.30pm already, which was quite convenient.

Motoriser was first and then Mustach and both were quite good. Tavastia is the self-proclaimed no. 1 rock venue in Finland and has hosted several famous names such as Guns N’ Roses, AC/DC and Black Sabbath.

At work things were pretty hectic too, so in addition to the occasional beers, I also had to work quite a bit in the evenings… Oh well, the weekend promises to be good, there’s wind and all, so that should be fun.

Yesterday Lars and I had a great session at Wijk aan Zee. Unfortunately the wind was a little too light to go upwind with my 8sqm, so I had to take the 12sqm. The power in this kite is big and the bar pressure is a bit on the heavy side. So when I got out my 8sqm later in the afternoon, it was a breeze going in and out against the waves.

It was blowing about 18 to 20 knots in the afternoon from west-south-westerly direction. The swell came from the same direction and that’s always when things start to get a bit messy… But all and all it was a good, intense and long session. Started at 1.30pm and quit at about 6pm.

This afternoon it is supposed to blow a little more, so that’ll definitely be enough for the 8sqm! I’m heading out in half an hour. I think I’ll use my new bar. I have two Gaastra kites that use the same bar. The bar that I used up until now starts to get a bit quirky, so I’ll switch to the new bar.

Tomorrow also should be great. I think I’ll get up to an early start tomorrow to be able to do some serious kiting in the afternoon, with winds approaching 30 knots…

That’s me, in Denmark, about 25 years ago (I think). My brothers (2), my parents and me always went on vacation every summer to various places in Europe. I still remember this particular place quite well. That’s not because it was so nice or anything (I guess it was), but because later on I heard that while I was playing in the sand thingy during the day, my brothers used to go out peeing in the night. And I guess I don’t have to tell you where they peed … Oh well, maybe that’s why I look so digusted…

Some music I listened to the last few weeks:

• Lefties Soul Connection – a Dutch band playing raw funk & soul. I saw them live at the Timboektoe closing party last weekend
• Anders Ilar – electronic stuff I came across while listening to Last.FM
• Eyen by Plaid – the only song I like from their Double Figure album

Last Saturday we went to the beach. Normally in October you have to dress up pretty warm when going to the beach but this time, the weather was unusually warm. We spent the entire day on the beach (arrived at 11am). In the evening, Timboektoe hosted their annual closing party. The Lefties Soul Connection were performing live and there were a few good DJs.

The snails were put on the beach just for this event and later in the night, some people put them on fire, so nothing was left the following morning. You can also see Giorgio the little Italian carry his board (the longest board you could get… the waves weren’t very good) back to the rental place. All and all, a nice day.

We finally got home at about 4.30am. I’m already looking forward to Timboektoe opening again next Spring. Every year in Autumn, the place closes up near the end of September or the beginning of October. The winter storms go all up the way up the dunes, so there’s no way a place like Timboektoe could ever survive if they left the place on the beach. That’s why they’re breaking it up on Monday. So that means no more hot chocolade with rum after a good kite session at Timboektoe for a little while… I’ll have to bring my own

I’ve been to Helsinki three or four times. Only once I had kind of nice weather. That was in the middle of winter and it was freezing like crazy back then. I’m heading out there tomorrow afternoon again and it seems it’s going to be one grey week…

When it comes to weather, three sites are important to me. weather.com for checking out the weather for the (foreign) places I need to go for business. Then there is actuelewaterdata.nl which give you a perfect overview of the current (intra-day) wind conditions for various spots on the North Sea coast (only in Holland). Last but not least there’s windfinder.com for checking out the wind forecast for the coming days.

Well, the weather in Helsinki is going to be crap. But that doesn’t really matter because the weather is Holland is going to be just as crap (only the temperature will differ a bit). That’s a lot different than last weekend. We had two days of (almost) 20 degrees and blue skies this weekend. Great, because yesterday we had the closing party @ Timboektoe (the beach pavilion I usually go to near Wijk aan Zee).

Windfinder by the way says there’s going to be some awesome conditions next weekend. But well, that’s still a pretty long way from now, so we’ll see what happens when I get back on Friday.

I just got back from my parents’ place and saw the pictures from the bathroom. My parents (and uncle and aunt) were so nice as to drop by in Italy last week to fix the tiling in the bathroom in the house.

The bathroom is pretty much *not* like your ordinary bathroom in the sense that it has all kinds of weird angles and little cracks. Lars and I went to Italy a few weeks ago to prepare the floor. There were some cracks that needed to be fixed and other than that it was level at all. A bathroom floor shouldn’t be level (the water needs to flow to the drain) but it was almost like we had we the Alps right in our bathroom…

Anyway, my parents, uncle and aunt were there for a week and other than visiting Turin and a few other places (the Matterhorn, or Mt. Cervina as it’s called in Italian) they spent three days working on the tiling. As you can see in the pictures, it’s quite done now. It’s not the biggest bathroom ever, but well, there’s hot water now and we can take shower inside instead of outside (that was romantic though ).

I might still be heading to Italy for a weekend or so this year, but if that doesn’t work out, I’ll be there in February again, to check out the ski pistes. Supposedly there are some quite nice areas there to check out.

Ah, my parents also had one of the local farmers drop by. He has his cows graze our land and he wanted to pay us for it. I think getting twenty euros for that is silly, so instead he came with a nice fontina cheese… Great stuff!

If you click on the pictures, you end up at the Picasa Web Gallery. There’s even a movie of the bathroom (with my mom giving comments ).