Like any sport, surfing requires you to put in time and effort to master it. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Once you get the basics right, you’ll find that surfing can truly be an amazing adventure.

In the following article we go look into a few tips to help you surf better…

1. Know How to Swim: First things first, surfing isn’t for non-swimmers because of the obvious dangers. You need to be a decent swimmer to ensure safety and maximum fun. Real surfers aim for the biggest waves to ride, which means they’re ready to face powerful currents. So if you don’t know swimming, learn it first.

2. Find a School or a Teacher: In order to learn surfing well, you need to be aware of the basics – right from standing on the board to approaching a wave. This is why you should find a good surfing school or an experienced instructor to start off. It’s always good to compare surfing schools and do your homework before you jump in. Remember, learning how to surf properly is good for your own safety.

3. Dress for it: Make sure you get a wetsuit before you go out there and hit the waves. It not only helps you keep warm in those chilly waters but also works as a rash guard for your skin when it gets rubbed against the board. You can rent one at a surfing school or if you’re not comfortable with it, you can always buy one – especially if you plan to surf regularly.

4. Choose a Good Board: Your surfboard needs to be durable and easy to handle, which means you should get one that is of the right size and construction. Out of these two factors, you should focus on size first. Big surfers require long boards and small surfers require short ones. As far as the construction of board is concerned, softboards are the best. If you’re planning to buy the board online, check out IsleSurfBoards.com for an affordable deal.

5. Work Out Your Arms: Surfing is a physically demanding sport. You’ll have to constantly “push up” to go through the various steps such as getting on the board, paddling and standing up. It requires a lot of arm work, which is why it makes sense to do some regular arm strengthening exercises.

Here a few safety tips to keep in mind when surfing:

• Don’t surf during heavy rains.
• Come out of the water if you get injured or sick.
• Avoid surfing near swimmers.
• Never surf alone; do it with a friend.
• Talk to lifeguards before hitting the waters.

In order to surf better, you need to keep on improving yourself. So the more you practice it while being safe, the easier it will get.

Lifecruiser Love Water Sports
 

Storage can happen in a couple of different ways. If you live close to the desert, you can store your ATVs, dirt bikes and other equipment at home in your own garage. However, it will take up quite a bit of space, which you could use for other things. If you travel to the desert every time you want to enjoy your toys, you can use one of the Phoenix, AZ self storage units to keep your vehicles. This provides a convenient place to store your toys, so that you don’t have to haul them from home.

Preparing Your ATV for Desert Season

When desert season rolls around, you need to make sure your ATVs are ready to go. Taking them directly from storage to the desert isn’t a good idea. You want to check a few things before you ride. This will ensure your ATV is ready and won’t cause you any issues.

1. Check your Tires

Sometimes if you let your toys sit for a few months, the tires need a little air. You want to make sure they are good and a quick check will give you the safety you need. Make sure to adjust the tire pressure for the conditions and check the weather, so you will know what the proper tire pressure will be for the day you plan to ride.

2. Check your Fuel System

If you didn’t drain you fuel tank before storing your ATV, you need to check the fuel system. Sometimes water will end up in the fuel tank and this can cause your engine to run poorly or not at all. It’s a good idea to drain your fuel tank and replace old fuel with new fuel before heading out to the desert.

3. Clean or Replace your Air Filter

Another very important part of your ATV is the air filter. Riding in the sand causes it to get dirty very fast and you want to check and make sure it’s clean. If it’s not clean, you need to either replace it or clean it. This will help your motor run better and will prevent other issues.

It’s always a good idea to perform basic maintenance on any vehicles you decide to take into the desert. Whether you enjoy dirt bikes, dune buggies, ATVS or another type of fun toy, you need to make sure to maintain these toys or you could end up with other issues while out riding.

Lifecruiser Love Dune Rides
 

Main rule: Always, always keep several backup copies of your photos on different places. Never ever only have them in one place!

Places or ways to store backup copies:

• On several memory cards for your camera
• Flickr account/similar internet photo storage option
• Extern harddrive (Even small ones store much)
• Different harddrives on your laptop/computer
• Different fresh USB Memory Sticks
• Burn backup CD’s or DVD’s copies

The advantage of a Flickr account is that you often can upload your mobile photos directly from within your mobile camera apps during your trip. I’ve done that a lot during our trips and it’s very appreciated by our followers since they felt like they were with us on the trip.

Warning! Only upload pictures if you’re on Wifi or the hotels internet, do NOT upload if using data roaming since it could cost you BIG!

It’s easy to download your photos from Flickr and other online storage solutions, whenever you need them again. I don’t even keep them on my working computer any more – I get them from Flickr or the extern harddrive when or if I need them.

I even consider NOT burning any backup DVD’s any longer, at least not of all our photos. Maybe just the exceptional good ones.

….and if worst comes to worst and you discover that your traveling laptop has crashed, your holiday photos are still not completely gone until you have tried to rescue them with a Data Recovery Service.
(I’ve only needed to do that once time earlier at work, a recovery for exchange server data).

There are so many different reasons for why your photos (or other files) can be destroyed, not only a hard drive failure, but also because of program failures, virus, theft, Champagne spraying (yes, happened once!) – or simply by you being clumsy and deleting them by mistake…

So our final advice is: always be prepared for the worst – with proper life jacket’s on and the lifeboat located – and within reach!

©Lifecruiser Love Photo Recovery
 

Photo by GuySie’s

One of the major knock-on effects of being seriously injured while on holiday is not being able to return to work. If the injury is expected to last over the course of a few months, there’s a chance that you might have to leave your role, which will result in a significant loss of income.

Fortunately, by visiting a website like personalinjurylawyers.com to look for help, you could claw back some of that lost income. Other websites such as first4lawyers.com are also useful, as they’ll show you how, by making a compensation claim, you’re able to fund any healthcare needed.

While the most important thing about going on holiday is to enjoy yourself, it’s also useful to know what to do in the event of an accident. Thankfully, if you know that it’s possible to get some form of reimbursement for your troubles, you have nothing to worry about, whether you’re going hiking in a national park, surfing, or doing something more sedate like going on a weekend break in a big city.

Lifecruiser Love Travel
 

Emergency Stop on the Kepler Trek in NZ by RobB7

This one above is another one, which we have seen some similar ones at different places and always up in the mountains. This one though is "secured" with wires if you look closer, that is supposed to keep it from falling over the edge…

Just think about the feeling when sitting in there and suddenly falling backwards with your pants down… The ultimate nightmare! Ha ha!

©Lifecruiser Love Toilets Travel Photos

Travel Toilet-related posts by Lifecruiser:

World Wide Weird Travel Toilets
Travel Photo: Mexican Toilet Sign in Spain
Travel Photo: Ingmar Bergmans Septic Tank
 

Both of us are already extremely pleased with our Yeti (built from Volkswagen and Audi parts, most of the car). Despite it’s size, there is lots of packing space and all the three backseats chairs are possible to take out with ease.

For us with spine problems, it’s heavenly easy to get in and out of too, since it’s higher than normal cars. A crossover they call it, trying to copy the popular SUV’s, but still not so big and better for the environment.

We also have a Skoda insurance including road assistance, so we will without doubt manage well during this long roadtrip in Europe!

©Lifecruiser Love Europe Roadtrips

Earlier post about Lifecruiser Europe Trip 2012:

Europe Trip 2012 Summery
Europe Trip Accommodations
Mapped Europe Roadtrip Route 2012 by Lifecruiser
Routes and stays booked for our Europe trip 2012
Planning our Europe trip 2012
 

I think this one is a N. n. gotlandica, but it’s hard to tell, they can look rather different from each other, up to 40 percent are black without the characteristic yellow spots on the neck – and there sometimes are black European Viper (huggorm in Swedish), Vipera berus, too.

See that it’s blurry, the photo? That’s because I was not totally convinced it really was dead and not was the more dangerous Viper. I do have a fear for snakes, so I was trying to take a good photo for a long time, but I was shaking too much… ha ha…

It was not I who killed this snake – in fact: all snakes in Sweden are protected species. I think it might have been increasing a little the last couple of years, because we even saw the farm cats playing with a snake at the farm yard once.

This also reminded me that one should always do research about a countries dangerous species before going there as a tourist. It’s always best to be prepared.

©Lifecruiser Love Swedish Nature
 

1. Foreign Travel Medical Insurance
You may be fit and full of life when you board that plane for overseas, however anything can happen that could land you in the hospital. Seasoned travelers know the importance of buying foreign travel medical insurance to cover everything from a quick emergency room visit to serious bodily injury. Travel health insurance is cheap and provides a big bang for your travel buck.

2. Basic Travel Insurance
Your basic travel insurance plan costs pennies on the dollar and is put in place to cover lost luggage, expenses during airport delays, and so much more. Check with your travel provider to add a basic policy to your travel package to ensure peace of mind around the clock when you leave.

3. Take Your Medications with You
Although foreign countries have local pharmacies, your prescribed and over the counter medications may not be available in your foreign host city. Be sure to pack what you need and keep your meds on your person at all times during the flight. Medications should not be packed into your checked bags as theft and lost luggage could render you helpless abroad.

4. Back-Up Credit Cards
To ensure you have sufficient funds for an emergency, it is wise to take along an extra credit card. If your second credit card is new from the bank, be sure to activate that card in your home country before you depart. To activate a bank card, you will need to swipe the card at an ATM or have your teller put the card in motion. Many ATM machines abroad have an anti-theft mechanism that does not recognize a credit card that has not been used in its home country.

5. Pack Light
The biggest mistake infrequent tourists make is to over stuff their luggage. You need a bare minimal with just a few changes of clothes to have everything you need while overseas. Over-packing the suitcases is not only costly at the airlines, it will drain your energy carting them around and leave you little case space to pick up souvenirs.

Lifecruiser Love Travel Tips
 

The jeep we hired were a smaller one with just an open canvas top, not much to protect you from anything if needed, but at the time we hired the car we only thought about of how cool it was and how nice it would be with the wind blowing in my hair.

And it was cool. In the beginning. Soon we should become aware of that it is not only cool advantages with an open jeep…

One of the occasions when we got to experience the disadvantages with an open jeep was when we were driving high up in the (very!) narrow mountain roads at Crete island in the very dark night alone with the stars – and occasionally some kri-kri goats passing your way or laying in the middle of the road.

To not run them over – or to not run over the edge of the mountain roads – we had to drive verrrry slowly… I actually had nightmares every night about falling from the often very loose edges of the Cretan roads…

This also meant that it was taking forever and ever to reach our end destination. We thought we never would reach our end destination – our honeymoon hotel. It really felt like we never would see any civilization again or any houses or humans at all.

It was then the disturbing thoughts came: what if the old open jeep we had hired would break down…? We were definitely not dressed for chilly nights in the mountain.

Which is the reason why it is great with a car hire company that offer you road assistance too with an emergency number to call just in case those kind of things should happen!

If the jeep should break down and stop, we would not have had any lights either. Total darkness high up with sharp road edges so close is not what I want. Ever.

When finally seeing some lights and coming closer to more inhabited areas there were suddenly a big roar right into our ears very close to us – like wild tigers, but it was extremely angry and guarding dogs, jumping to attack us – and they were almost up in the jeep with us!

Phew! What a fright! Normally we really love dogs, but those ones were vicious ones I tell you!

We had another frightening moment once when we came around a mountain at the height of 1600 m (5250 ft) and the wind grabbed the roof (made of of canvas) of the jeep and almost swept us away down the mountain side!

A fast, firm step on the accelerator did avoid it, but we was a little bit too close of being blown away for me to like it! I had no intention to start a new trend of Jeep surfing…

Not to mention all the numerous occasions when you came close to a curve at a narrow mountain road and you could hear an eager honking from the cliff you were on the way to round – and there comes a Cretan driver in a very high speed around the corner!

They used to do that: just honk and drive, totally fearless of the heights they were up at and how bad the roads were – with no fences and very damaged edges.

Next time we will not choose an open car to hire if driving in the mountains or even the countryside, I want to be able to close the car doors around me – and I will definitely take some extra clothes with me, just in case of any road incidents.

Probably we will even take a flashlight with us – even though it is very romantic to be alone in the darkness with only the star brighten up your way…

Lifecruiser ♥ Crete

Some other car hire experiences by Lifecruiser:

Car rentals experience and tips
Cool routes for a driving holiday in Florida
Start Fart of France Trip

This travel photo could also symbolize something completely different, what do you say? Do you interpret something else in this picture? I do…

Lifecruiser ♥ Old Gotlandic Lifebuoy’s