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Les Calanques - April 2009 Climbing in the south of France between April 5 and April 11.
Great climbing area with tons of well bolted routes (of every possible grade) scattered across a large area around the town of Cassis (just next to Marseilles). We had to compromise a bit on the routes due to the varying technical climbing levels of our group. We did mostly alpine style multi-pitch routes, between 100 and 200 meters, with grades from 4 to 5c max. I would have loved to practice on technical climbing skills in shorter, one pitch routes. But since I was the only one interested in this type of climbing there was no opportunity for me to practice anything above 5c. But the scenery was great (especially starting a climb from directly above the sea), the weather a bit cool. Actually perfect for climbing, except for the last day which was very windy and wet. Bummer... Henk, Bart, Michael and Mischa, thanks for a great week! |
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Only 3 weeks before my buddy Bart, me and a few others leave for a rock climbing trip in the Calanques, South of France. Right above the .Mediterranean! April weather can be really nice, we might end up swimming!
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As usual on the Saturday I did my tour de van Harten, to see if there was any progress with my bike. And guess what, I can pick her up next Saturday!
Click title for more pics.
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 I took this image of myself in the bathroom and to my surprise it came out extremely spooky. I must have moved the phone while taking the shot under poor light conditions. Hence the grainy look. Note that I have not altered this pic, just resized it to 600x800! |
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 Big Scottish Highlander bull breaking of branches of willows |
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 For those of you interested in motorcycles, I have recently opened a new website dedicated to my latest toy. The HP2 Enduro. I wrote about that before but now I don't just have the bike, I also have the accompanying website http://hp2enduro.com
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 As admin I have the ability, or is it the right, to do certain things. |
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Well, actually I have him. The HP2E. Was delivered at my dealer today, crated and with a full load of complimentary dust. Appears the bike had been in London, Hellas (Greece) and was almost shipped to Singapore. So I guess the dust is from dusty Greece? Doesn't matter, below the dust it shines! Some pics here: My HP2 adventure
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Actually this is something I have been doing since this 'thing' came out. Back in 2005 I was totally impressed with BMW's plans to bring out the extreme HP2 series of bikes. The Enduro, the Megamoto and Sport. When they arrived in the shop I kept on flirting but never did the deed. At the time my dealer told me 'the Enduro is nothing for you, better take the GS'. And when the '08 R1200GS came out I traded in my R1200S Special and never regretted a single day. But now, as I like the GS concept so much I started to think back to '05 when BMW introduced the awsome the HP2's. Too bad the Enduro is no longer made. In fact, BMW only produced 800 of them (although 1600 and 2000 has also been said) and only 20 officially came to the Netherlands (but there's actually a few more now overhere). Lucky me I managed to locate the last HP2e on the planet.
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This is not the first time and probably no news to you but I want to say it nevertheless. Van Harten Amersfoort is again Holland's top BMW motorcycle seller of 2008. They have managed to secure their #1 position as top seller. At any rate, this a a great achievement given the difficult circumstances at the market this year. I also want to take the opportunity to disclose that Van Harten is working on a
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Thailand is no longer a tourist-friendly country. On November 26, the people of the PAD movement in Thailand decided to hold over 300.000 foreigners hostage by refusing them to leave the country through main-port Bangkok. I consider this a terrorist act and believe that Thailand is fully entitled to stay on the Dangerous Countries list until democracy has been fully restored and aggressive movements like PAD end all their activities. Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, South Africa, Jamaica, Sudan Why such a strong statement? Do not visit Thailand!
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Lost Summit congratulates MotoGP World Champion Valentino Rossi with winning an interesting and difficult season. |
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Obama
80% (4 votes)
McCain
20% (1 vote)
Total votes: 5
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I talked about Ubuntu before. About a year ago I bought a brand new Asus F8P laptop with Vista Home Premium edition (or something like that). I gave me WiFi problems, it gave me Video problems, it gave me sleepless nights. So I wiped the disk and installed Ubuntu 8.04 (the 2008 April release). After some fooling around, tweaking it, installing the latest drivers and what have you, I can't say anything else than that I'm totally happy with the setup. It's so much more stable than XP that I still run on my server. And so much cleaner than Vista. The only wish I have is better (laptop) battery management... In short, I'm counting down for the next release of Ubuntu:
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 Hans, Joop, Ronald, Bart and me went on a great 6 day high Alpine tour in the West Austria Alps (Ötztaler Alps). We hiked from hut to hut and did a few summits in the process. We started the tour from the Taschachhaus hut and from there onwards walked on glaciers pretty much all the time from one to the next hut. We climbed the Fluchtkogel (3500m), Finailspitse (3516m) and Wildspitze (3774m) Check out the rest of my gallery here: Check out Ronald's pictures here: And Hans also made a few here: |
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What we feared has happened. The weather in the Alps is still very unstable and there's too much snow fall above 3000m. We have therefore decided to cancel the tour this year. Maybe 2009 brings better weather. Although with global warming becoming more and more evident I sort of doubt it...
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