Impressive weather....

The weather remains kind of exciting. Five minutes of sun and 10 minutes of heavy rain, balls of ice, thunder and lightning and strong gusts. And then, back to sunshine for five minutes. But today one thing was a bit different from the last few days. Although windguru had prognosed quite some wind throughout the last 10 days, the reality was completely different. The wind was not worth mentioning. But today was the first day I kind of regretted I didn't bring my windsurfing gear. The wind was very gusty and completely onshore going up and down from 15 to 35 knots, the sky was throwing loads of rain, balls of ice and lightning bolts at us, but I felt an itch.... I wanted to go out windsurfing. I know it wouldn't have been great, but I am quite sure I would have had fun...... Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year!

Snowballhouse with candle inside

A small peacefire in the garden. Also nice to warm up the hands and get rid of some old wood.
To bring a total peace on Earth I should probably burn a gigantic forrest. Sure it's worth it, but I simple don't own a forrest...
But maybe many small fire's will help a little. Let's hope so.

Happy new year to you all!! (yup, we became a nice layer of powder again)

A Dutch alternative for the common reindeersled with lights..


Old years day without "Oliebollen" isn't a real one!!

Palmtrees covered in snow doesn't happen that often...
(found this tree at the local Thai restaurant, so probably it's used to the harsh dutch conditions)

The flower next to my computer came out!! At least a little bit of a tropical feel!

Big, but messy....

We are having a few days with big waves, tow-surfing at the big jetty would have been possible I guess. But with a light to moderate onshore breeze it gets kinda messy near the beach. The nice sunshine of the other day has turned into lots of rain and thunder. But with some sun in between, I am still enjoying myself ;-)


The doom sky sometimes makes way for a bit of sun....


And especially for Ronja, I found some huge rabbit holes right next to the jetty ;-)

Paige at Jaws!!!

The next pics will speak for itselves...



Paige.......

you got balls ;-)

Just some random X-mas week pics

Got this BBQ from my father. He bought it 30 years ago in Portugal. A nice heavy solid steel one.
For sure I will use it a lot!

Normally I got white candle's in the house. This week it was time for the red ones

During the cold snowy days, a warm Wiener was a musthave.
A classic swedish: korv med brod



Leg of a lamb with apricots and loads of garlic.


Happy with our first own X-mas tree. We got it from a farmer close by. After use it goes in the garden, and hopefully it will be our tree for the comming years.

The snow is melting down, this means that yould could make the finest snow/iceballs..
A solid iceball throws o so nicely... ;-)

This afternoon We grilled some lamb chops. Fredrik needed a full stomach, cause in some hours he's flying to Tokio again. From there he will take a plane to Hokkaido (The north of Japan)
This lucky boy is going for one month non stop snowboarding
Hokkaido is known for its ultimate powder snow. The average yearly snowfall is 12 meter..
Succes boy, draw some nice lines!!

Great days....

This trip to Portugal is all about the Holidays: Christmas and New Year. This means (and especially in Portugal) lots of food. Meat, fish, shrimps and off course sweets. Lots of calories ;-)

So it's important to exercise. Most people over here go for a walk after lunch. It's their exercise. I thought I would combine my exercise with some fun, loads of fun!!! Testing my new longboard and my GoPro HD, but the important thing is to 'exercise' ;-)

I have a short clip from my first day with the longboard, but with the slow internet I have here, it's gonna take me days to upload it. So I selected some stills from the clip.


Yesterday was the bonus. The sweetest desert imaginable. Perfect waves, with perfect weather. I chose to go out just before lunch time. Because lunch is sacred for the Portuguese (especially during Christmas holidays), I was out there, practically on my own. Lunch takes about 3 hours over here, so plenty of time to 'exercise' all by myself. At around 3pm it got crowded (around 10 surfers). I was tired and getting hungry, so we went for a big late lunch outside in the sun. A perfect ending of a perfect session. After lunch we sat down on the pier and I made some pictures. Let's see what the second week brings....


Oh yeah, I almost forgot. The board works great!!!

Merry Xmas

No wind for the last couple of weeks. Working a lot and bussy with another movie clip project. I will update soon about the movie clip project.

Freddy Krueger

Walking through town I noticed that Freddy (Nightmare on Elmstreet) got his own statue...
The Liberty statue got some nice icile fingers.

snowrabbit ;-)

Snowboard....

My new longboard. Ready to take to the south of Europe to be baptized in Portugal. It's the bigger brother of the one we finished in Brittany. Dimensions: 10'0" x 24" x 3 1/4". Big enough to do some SUP-sailing in moderate surf (wich explains the presence of a mast track). Can't wait to test it...

Snow

Last night we got a nice cover of snow. There is more to come.
Mounted my wintertires on the car so that we can slide/drift nicely in control... ;-)

Too cold to surf

-10 degrees in the night. During the day also below zero. So I unpacked my car.

Santa Claus ...

Yesterday Linda's brother Fredrik came over for a short visit(1 day). He came with a hard to believe story.
When he almost missed his flight from Tokio to Amsterdam, a scandinavian guy helped him out to offer him his taxi, so that he could make it in time...
It was a big bold friendly man with a big beard . Fredrik was in a hurry so he didn't notice anything "strange".. The guy gave him his card and both went their own way.

In the plane Fredrik checked his card...
It was the official Santa Claus!!! He was on his way to Tokio. He didn't wear all his "costume+hair+ extra long beard" so it was hard to spot him. Probably he was on his tour to earn some hard $$...
Tokio, NewYork,London, Paris etc...

above some pics of the card