A Cyclist’s Life in Tenerife (Canary Islands)

A lot of people don’t patch bicycle inner tubes anymore, which I think is a little bit sad. Generally speaking, it’s better for the environment to repair rather than replace, so that’s reason enough for me to continue patching tubes. I am sure that the sale of a small patch kit along with extra patches more than offsets the environmental cost of yet another replacement innertube.

I have a strong hunch that most people who buy new tubes don’t know the correct procedure to use when patching an innertube. Maybe what happens is that they tried to repair a tube when they were a kid & failed miserably. I’ll admit that despite 10 years of biking experience, I never really bothered with patching tubes until fairly recently either. It’s not that I lack time - it’s that they’ve never worked for me in the past, because no one taught me the proper technique. I have had limited success with glueless patches (park ones are the best by the way). But if you follow this detailed guide, you can repair your punctured bicycle tubes the old fashioned way (using glue and patches) so they behave just like new.

Before I get started, why did I suddenly become a converter? Well, what happened was, I got one of my hire bikes back, and to my surprise, one of my clients had patched one of my butyl inner tubes that had punctured. It was the most amazing patch-job I’d ever seen! The edges of the patch were *completely* flat. This one paticular cyclist had reached what I’d call “punture repair perfection”. It was even better than those glueless patches I tell you. So ever since then, I repair tubes using the traditional glue & patch method - I’m convinced that nothing beats it. [Read more →]

Tags: Learning Curve by Synchronicity
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This 9 inch beast is the biggest and baddest disc brake rotor out there at the moment. Yes of course it’s “grabbier” than smaller 7″ and 8″ rotors, but it does provide stronger braking no matter what brakes you’re using. It’s a simple upgrade although technically not compatible with many of today’s suspension forks. It only offers a marginal brake power improvement over standard 8″ front discs used for downhill mountainbiking.

The main benefit of the Hayes V9 rotor is the increased cooling capacity. [Read more →]

Tags: Spoke Bed by Synchronicity
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Interested in cycling for free here in Tenerife? Got your own cycling-related website or blog? Great. All you’ve got to do is supply a new permanent link to www.tenerife-training.net, and you can then hire a bike FREE here in Tenerife for a 24 hour period after it’s approved by Les. Not got your own website? Then simply find another relevant site and suggest to the websmaster that they add www.tenerife-training.net to their links page. If you manage to get 5 in-links originating from different websites, get two free days!!

There’s no such thing as a free lunch, so what’s the catch? Please read the following terms & conditions:

[Read more →]

Tags: Sales Pitch by Synchronicity
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I have just been reading the website ActionCOACH, run by successful Australian businessman Brad Sugars. Anyone who has lived in an Australian city (like Sydney) knows that they are the most cut-throat business environments to be found anywhere. The trouble is that most business owners around the world are not formally trained in running or managing their own business and have to learn the hard way. Of course the easy way is to hire a business coach:

“The role of the Business Coach is to coach business owners to improve their business through guidance, support and encouragement. They help the owners of small and medium sized businesses with their sales, marketing, management, team building and so much more. Just like a sporting coach, your Business Coach will make you focus on the game.”

The ActionCOACH website contains many free helpful tips and obviously they can provide you with a business coach. What I found particularly useful about this website were the free introductory videos. They showed me the steps to becoming wealthy; first you need to start with cashflow so that you become income rich, then asset rich, and then finally paper rich. [Read more →]

Tags: That's Business by Synchronicity
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Many readers who do not host their own websites will not realise this, but yes, whenever you visit a website, the server records how you got there. What does this mean? Well, whatever you enter into google is usually stored by the host-server, and it is in fact all-too-easy for someone like me to peruse that list. Just for the record, it’s also possible to know in which order you viewed the web pages on my site, and how long you remained on each page.

Anyway, browsing through all the many search terms that people use to find this site has quickly become a regular little past time. Knowing what people search for and what is successful certainly helps with Search Engine Optimisiation (SEO). Most of the search terms generally have keywords such as “cycling”, “bike hire” or “Tenerife”. But here is a list of the 100 all-time most unique search terms I have encountered so far, really standing out above the remaining 13,000+ internet searches used to find www.Tenerife-Training.net. All these people entered my site by typing these exact terms into a search engine:

JUST PLAIN STRANGE SEARCH TERMS:

1. “fish with big lips”
2. “sea snake santa”
3. “benedict alan climbed into a camel”
4. “submarine for hire”
5. “eggbeater review candy”
6. “chocolate coated banana business”
7. “in life some hoops you have to jump through will be on fire”
8. “purple kettle” (21 people actually searched for this term in the last year alone)
9. “crocodile initiation philosophy” 
10. “crocodile scars”
11. 2-oxo-l-threo-hexono-1 4- lactone-2 3-enediol
12. “tired after eating turkey”
13. “perspective of air resistance”
14. “what do tongan people look like”
15. “is soy good for nerves”
16. ujmwutzckmkdwean

STUPID SEARCH TERMS:

1. “i don t like turning left when the road marking makes me turn the car to the left”
2. “what should u use for a 3 year old when driving a car” 
3. “how much time do i spend in each place when traveling”
4. “could it be a big world after all”
5. “can you translate words and how”
6. “safe to eat a rotten banana”
7. “can you take shower gel in your suitcase now when travelling?”
8. “how many chupa chups have they sold in the world”
9. “the best inventions chup & chups”
10. “are there cheap paintings by pablo picasso?”
11. “earn twenty bucks now”
12. “how much space does 11 million metric tons take up?”
13. “how do computers remember the time”
14. “how big is 6 000 000 000″
15. “science learns you essential things for life?” [Read more →]

    Tags: Island Life, Mental Anguish by Synchronicity
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Finding a good position on a bicycle is not an exact science because there is no one standard sized frame, body shape or “ideal position”. Different frames having the same seat tube length will have different top tube lengths. Look around and you will see that some manufacturers are reknowned for this. I still haven’t figured it out. It doesn’t help that some frames are measured differently. Have a look at the recent article I wrote concerning measuring bicycle frame sizes.

I’ve ridden quite a few bikes now, in many sizes. I’ve also been lucky enough to supply rental bikes here in Tenerife for hundreds of experienced cyclists ranging in height from 152cm to 203cm (5′1″ - 6″8″). I’ve listened to their feedback regarding how they felt about the way their bike fit. For me, you can only determine your unique “100% fit” by gaining your own experience about bikes that have fitted well in the past - this is a skill which can only be learned with time.

The best way is simply to ride as many different bikes, saddles, stems, handlebars and pedals as you can. Start with a bike you think will fit best and then alter the saddle and stem positions until you find what works best for you. Also try different bikes in a range of incremental sizes if you can. I have the view that obtaining your ideal bike is basically a process of trial and error. My first bike fit relatively well. I learned a lot of things about my subsequent bikes. Now I know that my “ideal frame size” is 56cm. I can ride a 55 or 57cm bike but they feel slightly too small or too big for me. This “ideal frame measurement” as I like to call it has taken years to determine, and will probably change a little as I got older (and shorter!).

I’m probably in the minority here, but in my humble opinion, fitting services (including stationary fitting machines) aren’t ideal either as they don’t give you a feel of how it feels to actually ride that particular sized bike that they are suggesting for 5 or more hours. For instance, a 140mm stem might be what you require on paper & it might even feel great on a stationary bike. Ride it, and you’ll soon discover the extreme difference it makes to the handling compared with a 120mm stem.

I’m a big believer in finding proportional length cranks, stems, wheels, etc. Unfortunately, people are STRONGLY biased in favour of 700c wheels. For small riders, 650c is a better choice, if only because of the toe-overlapping-the-front-wheel issue. If someone doesn’t agree, they’re most likely taller than 5′6″ (I am 5′11″). [Read more →]

Tags: Learning Curve by Synchronicity
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I recently wrote an article about the steepest street in the world, Calle Monroy. So after diligently studying the countour maps provided by Google Maps, I decided to take a look for myself, IN PERSON (no one ever does that these days!) I wanted to observe the entire street to judge it for myself, compare it with the other steep streets in the region, and of course take some photos.

I’d previously explored this region in 2006 and came across a sign which warned of a 30% grade! Despite the maze-like network of tiny roads and streets, I managed to find the same sign again; it appears at the top of the adjacent steet, “La Calzada”. The top section of this street is so incredibly steep that concrete is used to seal this road instead of bitumen or tarmac. Note that there are grooves moulded into the concrete in a chevron pattern to aid in the traction of vehicles going up or down this terrible slope.

I’ll confess that I did not even attempt to climb this street. I know it is well beyond my current capability. Not only that, but it can be dangerous: if you fail an attempt, you will inevitably fall of and slide backwards down the incredibly steep slope… it’s hard enough to stop with good brakes as it is. On the opposite side of the road, a small shrine stands as a rememberance to someone who died here. So I decided wisely to approach it from the top and decend the whole length of Monroy St instead. Even so, I have thoughtfully provided some free advice for tackling hills with 20%, 30% and even 40% gradients (see below). [Read more →]

Tags: Island Life, Ride the Volcano!, Learning Curve by Synchronicity
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The guiness book of records states that Baldwin Street in Dunedin, New Zealand is the steepest street in the world. According to the figures, the Baldwin St is 359m in length (horizontal measurement) with a total elevation gain of ~80m.  The plaque states that “over the 161.2 metre length of the top section, it climbs a vertical height of 47.22 metres, which is an average gradient of 1 in 3.4.1. On its steepest section, the gradient is 1 in 2.86. However, there is some dispute over this as only 6m out of the total street length at the steepest gradient.

I’ve seen Baldwin Street in the flesh and was somehwat disappointed - in fact the first part is almost flat! It then ramps up considerably towards the top section. Hence, the average gradient of the entire street is more like 1 in 4.375. That’s the trouble with New Zealand - they tend to exaggerate a lot. So I would like to challenge that record today by making yet another claim for the worlds steepest street:

After scouring over online topographic contour maps, I have chosen Calle Monroy in the district of Santa Ursula, Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. I do not possess a global positioning system (GPS) to accurately gauge its gradient. Nevertheless, we can estimate that the length of this street from the data provided by Google maps. Monroy Street descends from 638 to 430 metres in a length of only 740 metres. Therefore, the average gradient over the entire street is 28.1% (a slope of 1 in 3.56) compared to Baldwin Street with an average gradient of only ~22.3%.

Besides, the photo to the left shows that the steepest part of the road has a slope with a ~40% gradient (caculated by the pixel method)! Now until some bright spark can come up with another street with a steeper average gradient, which can be confirmed, I’m going out on a limb and labelling Monroy Street the “steepest street in the world”, albeit unoffcially! Or if you prefer: “the street with the highest average gradient”. But I think the first one is more correct.

Oh and as far as I am concerned, taking slope readings only on the very steepest parts of the same street is cheating. If that were the case, I’d claim the inside portion of this street. Measured over a few centimetres, the gradient is technically about 80% over the length of one particular piece of aggregate!! Hell, you could probably even find a patch of tarmac with a slope greater than 100% on if you used a micrometer. Obviously, that’s not at all fair. For this reason alone, I challenge people to take the average slope over the whole length of the street. Take the reading from the very beginning to the very end of the same street, don’t leave any sections out, and neither can you add two or more street sections together. Also, I think it should be compulsory that the street has to have a name recognised by the local council…

If you take the entire length of the street and then determine the average gradient the way I propose, Monroy Street (Calle Monroy) appears to come out as the winner. This street does not have any flat parts; it is the steepest continuous grade sealed street with public access that I am aware of, also plainly visible in Google Maps.

OTHER CANDIDATES:

One other very steep street that I spotted also resides in the district of Santa Ursula. This particular street, which includes Calle Los Tosqueras for most of its length, descends from 1012 to 348 metres in a length of 2.5km, although the top section is not paved. Furthermore, Calle Los Tosqueras diverts horizontally while the steeper adjoining street has a different and as yet unknown name.

However, the neighbouring zones of La Corujera and Toscas de Ana María also provide many other possible candidates for the world’s steepest street. Camino el Monte, Calle La Calzada, Calle Las Turcas, Calle Los Castaños, Camino Los Pajales and Camino La Banderola are all noteworthy, boasting average gradients close to or exceeding 25% slope. Other extremely steep streets in the North of Tenerife worth a mention are Calle Argentina in Icod de Los Vinos and last but not least: Camino de Chasna in La Orotava.

Tags: Island Life, Ride the Volcano! by Synchronicity
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