The top three things I need on Holiday

We all know the obvious things we have to take with us on Holiday. As we slowly start preparing for our summer holiday trip, I was thinking about the things that we hold most precious during our surf trips through Europe. In this post I’ll walk you through the top three.

The Car

We have driven this 2001 Mitsubishi Carisma to countless of places around Europe and has been roadtrip buddy ever since our first trip in 2010. It has so far never let us down. Besides the fact the car is still driving silky smooth, we can also fit near to infinity stuff inside the car. For example if we would take a huge African drum with us, you would barely notice it’s in the car. Occasionally we have to sleep in the car and this is all possible, awesome engineering at Mitsubishi I would say.

The Kitchen

Now I don’t really know what the correct English is for this one, any advice is welcome, but we use a grill wok to cook the food. It’s a device that uses gas like a grill, but has a huge wok pan over it. This makes it super easy for us to make some good food after a day of sporting. A lot of time people walked up to us and said something like “wo, I need to get a thing like that too.” During this trip we will definitely take it with us too!

The boards

Now I always believe that we are quite unusual people when it comes to the board per person ration. Let’s do a small calculation over here.

We do three kind of sports:

1. 1.       Surfing
2. 2.       Skimboarding
3. 3.       Longboarding/Skateboarding

Per person we roughly take one board for each sport and of course one spare board for the trip. So if we go on holiday we have 3+3+3+3 = 12 boards in total making that 4 boards per person. I strongly believe that if you are not into the beachlife this is a lot, but I just assume that every surfer knows this drill.

So these are the three things I will be definitely taking with me to Cornwall on our next roadtrip.

Surf's up!

Oeh, that excitement of going to a session! Today is a code yellow in Zeeland the Netherlands, not that we care. I want to dedicate this post to the excitement of going to the water. Whether it’s a surf or skim session the excitement is the same.

This morning my alarm went off at 8 o’clock on my well-deserved free Saturday. I have to admit that the sound of an alarm; ‘wake up bitch surfs on’ is way better than ‘wake up, work to do.’ So at the pleasant sound of my alarm I rushed to my longboard and cruised down the road to check the waves at the beach.
As I saw the waves standing on the boulevard, I knew that it was going to be heavy. Called up the friends and put on the wetsuits. Now this is the point where the excitement and stoke really kicks in. Waiting for the last one to get dressed is terrible, especially if you are the one. Then we have to walk from the car to the beach. Normally I prefer walking slower than snails, but at this very moment we always walk like if we are in a race walking competition. To get a better picture about how we walk, I looked up a useful ‘How To’: https://youtu.be/b6wzejsmuvQ.
Then the next part is arriving at the beach. This is where we have to get to the best spot to enter the water, this usually goes running. Then the warming up, wait, we never do this because we are already in the water until our arms are sore.

Well, this gives you a better view on how my day looks like when we go surfing. The rush for a surf session after work is even greater.
At this moment we are waiting until the tide comes in again, so we can go for the next session in the evening, wish me luck!

Connecting to Nature

The beachlife the past weekend was epic. Friday night for a surfsession, Sunday epic skimboard session and yesterday a more laidback skimboard session. Plus 3 on the count of beachdays. Maybe today's topic I can start off with a picture straight from the Instagram of my fellow skimboarder Lourens:

This is the usual landscape we cross when we go for a every day's session. Now this all brings it back to the simple things that I enjoy the most. There is no greater feeling in life than standing on the beach alongside your friends and charging waves. Connecting to nature is the feeling we get from it and the feeling we're pursuing on the winter days. Now to keep this post fairly short here are two impressions of the epic day on the beach on Sunday:

• Skimboardspot : Vrouwenpolder - The Netherlands
• Skimboard: Folha Prorider advanced, doublo carbon (link here)
• Boardshort: Mormaii boardshorts (cuz life's better in boardshorts)
• Wetsuit top: Quicksilver

Beachlife

Yes, I finally got to the point that I have decided what I want to blog about. Now its not really a decision, because it is my own lifestyle, but now I know how to call it!

"BEACHLIFE"

Why beachlife? And what is beachlife? These are the two questions that ran through my head thinking of the term beachlife. 

Why is not really difficult for me, because I live 500 meters away from the sea and I rather have my feet bearfooting the sand than actually anything else in life.

What is beachlife? To me, beachlife is far more than going to the beach to relax or surf. It covers the lifestyle that comes with it.
Withing this lifestyle we talk a lot about :

• Going to the beach when we are not there.
• Waves we caught previous week or previous life.
• Going on roadtrip and ofcourse roadtripping itself.
• Surfspots, we always explore new spots and places.
• Riding longboards or cruizers to the beach.
• When we buy a new car the point of interest is if we can fit our board, preferably 4.

And within this blog I will be covering these subject. 

So to start off with at this moment, here is picture of me catching a small wave in Malaysia,2 years ago!  

Longboarding

Hey there, Let me introduce you to my first sport/hobby. It's longboarding! There is no better feeling than sliding down the hill. I have been longboarding for 3 years now and I still enjoy doing it so much. I can advise everybody to start doing it because it can replace your bicycle for something cool. Here a few impressions about me longboarding.

My Longboard setup:

• Custom Nineties skateboards Deck (dual nose), facebook.com/ninetiesboards
• Caliber II 50degree, Golden trucks
• Abec11 Classic Freerides Centerset 72mm wheels - Durometer : 84A

Have you ever longboarded before?

Horizon fix Photoshop (CC)

Making photos is a nice thing, putting the horizon straight is a finishing touch. I see so many photos that don't have a straight horizon.

The thing I learned is that when it comes to the horizon on pictures: "put it straight or completely off,  but nowhere in the middle"

For this reason I have made an easy tutorial that you can find on my tutorial section for photoshop. please follow this link:click here

I hope you guys like it, its my first tutorial and post here!