Originally built in 1901, this walkway now serves as an aproach to makinodromo, the famous climbing sector of El Chorro.

This really doesn’t do it justice, just check this out:

I think I could probably have followed along up to the point where he WAS WALKING ON RUSTY PIPES THOUSANDS OF FEET ABOVE SOME ROCKS.

Balls of steel.

late edit: I just realized that this is exactly like a level out of Half Life

This is my first review:

First impressions upon getting the box are that the BBQ ticks all the tight boxes (barbeque, tick. 100% steel, tick. quality in cooking, tick. cost less than a bottle of wine, tick.) so without wasting any more time I tear open the box, thinking: OK this’ll take about two minutes let’s open her u– What. The. Fuck. Is. This.

To assemble a 6 euro BBQ it appears that you require four different types of screw (over a dozen screws in total), five different types of inscrutable metal thingy and quite a few wooden bits. No problem I think to myself, I’ll just have a look at the instructi- What. The. Fuck. Is. This.

These are not even instructions, This is just a drawing of the second photo in this review, with a list of names for the weird metal bits written next to it. Also note that I am trying to build a BBQ, not the bloody terminator. Then this happened, but in real life

It got a smile out of me pretty much every time I drove past it. Have you seen any better roadsigns?

I can’t even begin to imagine how long it took to make this using only a digital camera

“There are codes of ethics in archaeology, and I don’t think he would be a member. Not in good standing, anyway,”

“I spent a lot of time walking in cornfields and soy bean fields in the Midwest, and nothing very dramatic ever happened while I was out looking for artifacts,” said Rose of the Archaeological Institute

“I wish he’d take more notes and things. What’s his publication record?” Zimansky said. “But I don’t think anybody ever bought the ethos of Indiana Jones as a real career track.”

The cynical side of me thinks that perhaps these guys are just trying to keep down the number of people that become adventure-archaeologists. Seriously, there are only a certain number of minotaur filled labyrinths, holy grail death temples and zombie filled pyramids. They want to keep the goodies for themselves.

I’d also like to see a series of articles like this on different jobs, for example astronauts could explain that a shuttle flight isn’t really like Star Wars, a zookeeper could explain that chimps are not actually as big as King Kong and a computer programmer could tell us that you don’t program computers like in the Matrix (he can see through the code, man).

Finally, probably my favourite thing about the article is that it lets us know that the only people who do any real archaeology in the films are the nazis, and Indiana Jones kills loads of them and steals artifacts

“The one thing we do worry quite a bit about is the looting aspect, because archaeological looting is really a serious issue,” Murowchick said. “This kind of glorifying of breaking into a tomb and snagging a crystal this or golden that feeds into the notion that these are valuable objects, and we should all get it while we can.”

# = hekje = little gate
* = sterretje = little star
() = haakjes = little hooks
^ = dakje = little roof
@ = apestaart = monkey tail
: = dubblepunt = double full stop
; = puntcomma =full stop comma
& = en-teken = and symbol

I like this a lot, it’s a lot easier to remember than the unintuitive English equivalents (colon, ampersand, asterisk). I want to start using the English versions of these in everyday conversation:

“Ok so my email address is cmb, then the monkeytail button…”
“To unlock your phone press the little gate button, then 07 then the little star button”
“Yeah it’s the text between the little hook things that you’re looking for…”

Crash #1: I’m like the sail on a boat

About two months ago a good friend of mine was leaving Holland for England. She didn’t have enough packing boxes, and I just happened to have a whole pile of the things sat mouldering away in my shed, naturally I volunteered to donate a couple of them to her. To give you some sense of how big these things are, they are full size tea chests, made of very thick cardboard. When they’re flattened down they’re easily over a meter square.

I decided that I would ride my bike with one box under each arm, as walking to her house would take rather a long time. The first section of the journey went just fine, I was riding slowly but surely, whilst cursing the strong wind blowing directly into my face. At one point I clearly recall thinking: “I’m glad this wind isn’t blowing sideways, it would probably knock me off the bike”. Somehow that thought had already left my head when I turned a 90 degree corner, was caught by a strong gust of wind, and was pushed hard into a hedge.

Damage done: Luckily thick cardboard boxes provide a comfy landing mat and I was unhurt.
Lesson learnt: If you have the profile of a ship’s sail do not ride perpendicular to the wind

Crash #2: I can ride through sand!

Riding along the shorefront at Katwijk shortly after a big windstorm I noticed a big pile of sand covering the bike lane, it was around a foot deep, it covered the bike lane left to right and went about 10-12 feet back.

“It’s only sand! Surely my bike will glide over that, for am going very fast” I thought without really thinking. It turns out that in reality roadbikes do not glide over sand drifts. Bikes actually plow into sand drifts, the wheels sink quickly and get choked with sand, the bike begins to skid, if the rider tries to brake his weight is shifted forwards giving the back wheel free reign to go whichever way it chooses, it probably does not go in a straight line, in fact from experience it jackknifes out sideways, and the rider is unceremoniously deposited on the ground.

Damage done: Bruised ego, found out that I did not actually have magic levitating bike powers.
Lesson learnt: You can, in fact, not ride through sand on a road bike.

Crash #3: Shopping Trip (today)

Returning from the Hoogvliet (supermarket) with a heavy load of shopping in a plastic bag gripped by the handle in my left arm. I glance down at my shiny new speedometer, you know, because it’s nice to see how fast I’m going. As I glance down I notice that the handle is slowly tearing from the shopping bag and my shopping will shortly be dashed over the floor. Rather than stop the bike and take care of it I decide that if I lift up the bag, rest it on the cross bar of the bike I’ll be able to readjust my grip lower down on the bag.

Turns out that trying this apparently simple maneuver was not such a good idea. As I lifted the bag up a car pulled out in front of me and I had to brake. The shopping bag swung forwards knocking my left handlebar forwards and causing me to swerve right. At the same time my left knee was raised by my pedalling motion, jamming the bag hard into the underside of the handlebar. I noticed that I was swerving towards a brick wall and leaned hard to the left, simultaneously trying to pull the only brake I could reach (my other hand still stuck in the shopping bag) at the same time I was backpedalling, trying to get the shopping bag free from underside of the handlebar. It almost worked, but by then it was too late and I was out of control, one handed, braking with only the back brake, and drifting closer to a brick wall.

At this point I have a very vivid recollection of what I thought, it was: “Oh, this is not good”

Then I hit the wall. Then I hit the floor.

Damage done: Left elbow is bleeding a lot, my left ankle is looking pretty manky, and my kneecap momentarily popped out of its socket, now I can’t support my own weight on my left leg and it hurts like buggery
Lesson learnt: If things begin to break you probably do need to stop, rather than fix them whilst travelling at 25.3 km/h