Zell Am See - Schmitten - Austria

Zell am See: Schmitten

What mountain bike.... which one and what size

I've been trying to find a decent brand mountain bike and make sure that Diamond back is as good as they once were, which of Specialized, Giant and Raleigh are good to go for. Then I found Haro mountain bikes and this clip. I know it's the rider, but just see what this guy does at 1'50"

WTF with Watts - More Mountain Bike Videos

Diving in the UK

Last night was a last minute decision to go for a dive. Where, it now seems to me that the UK has a diving spot within a 1hour drive from whereever you are.

I hope I never hear anyone tell me that a mirky silty dive is just like a night dive. The only similarity would be if you were diving a murky silty location at night.

We had an mevening dive at Wraysbury dive centre , entering the water at 20:10. Even though I am a Divemaster and have over 350 dives all around the world and 6 previous dives at Wraysbury, my lack of freshwater buoyancy control in the first 2 minutes and the water which was so cloudy and murky had me extremely nauseas within the first 10 minutes of my dive, something I thought I would never feel.

It was 20:30, 20 minutes later, when I told my dive buddy, Marco, that I just couldn't carry on diving. At one point I was hovering at 6metres just off of the yacht and when I started to descend again I had to go through some other diver's silt clouds which just made me feel like throwing up, I also experienced what I am sure was vertigo.

It was almost 20minutes after the dive when I started to feel better again.

I did actually enjoy the dive, three boats, a couple of other odds and sods, a little duck weed diving along the bank as we entered.

I do have to research this but there are endless inland quarries and divecentres. When I was searching for one close to me I even found that people were posting some of their dive locations. Locations like, Under the bridge two miles out of X town, 200 yards towards the big oak tree, about 4 to 8 metre dive, good visibility with the occasional aquatic life and very little pollution.

The Boere Computer Dictionary From South Africa

This came from an email and I just had to put it up for many to "stumble upon" to

Monitor - Keeping an eye on the braai
Download - Get the firewood off the bakkie
Hard drive - Trip back home without any cold beer
Keyboard - Where you hang the bakkie and bike keys
Window - What you shut when it's cold
Screen - What you shut in the mosquito season
Byte - What mosquitoes do
Bit - What mosquitoes did
Mega Byte - What mosquitoes at the lake do
Chip - A bar snack
Micro Chip - What's left in the bag after you have eaten the chips
Modem - What you did to the lawns
Dot Matrix - Oom Jan Matrix's wife
Laptop - Where the cat sleeps
Software - Plastic knives and forks you get at KFC
Hardware - Real stainless steel knives and forks from Checkers
Mouse - What eats the grain in the shed
Mainframe - What holds the shed up
Web - What spiders make
Web Site - The shed (or under the verandah)
Cursor - The old bloke what swears a lot
Search Engine - What you do when the bakkie won't go
Yahoo - What you say when the bakkie does go
Upgrade - A steep hill
Server - The person at the pub what brings out the lunch
Mail Server - The bloke at the pub what brings out the lunch
User - The neighbour what keeps borrowing things
Network - When you have to repair your fishing net
Internet - Complicated fish net repair method
Netscape - When fish maneuvers out of reach of net
Online - When you get the laundry hung out
Off Line - When the pegs don't hold the washing up

Rarotonga - Cook Islands - English Polynesia

It may not be Tahiti, but when there are just three of you in the water with a great right every 20seconds, you laugh when one of the locals you are sufing with complains that another two people are paddling out and it is going to be too crowded to enjoy the surf. With a view like this while waiting that beast of a set wave, how can you ever feel like you are having a crowded surf.

This wave is twice as fast, twice as hard and three times hollower than Kalk Bay, Cape Town at Spring Low.


Image copied from http://www.pbase.com/aqohana/image/15065534

Heading for a dive...

I enjoyed riding my bike so much, on occasion I will "ignore" all I was taught while training to ride in the UK. I would pack my full dive kit, bar my dive cylinder, into my "Karrimor Back pack", climb on the bike outside my brother's flat in Plumbstead and ride to Glencairne. Along the way the a few other bikers would ask where I am heading off to or where I had come from. They would laugh their heads off with my reply... 

Tribal styled sculpture in Cape Town

This is a piece of artwork in the "centre" of Cape Town, as you drive down Hertzog beulavard towards the Civic Centre and Nic Malan buildings from the N2. From when I was around 21 I had always wanted to see these close up but never took the time. When I left the UK on the 09/09/2001 to return to South Africa on the 10/09/2001 the first thing I did in Cape Town was, go to the pedestrian bridge on which this sculpture is located and walked around, attempting to appreciate Cape Town as a tourist