Muscle

Night time transportation

Even more Cuba cars

And a horse...

More Cuba Cars, less color

Cuba Cars

I like old cars. Cuba was a treat.

 

Cuba

Is great!
First of all, Cubans are unbelievable friendly people. It is somewhat sad that this should be the biggest culture shock when visiting a country, but it was. I realized how absurd it was, when I spoke to several other 'western' tourists who realized they had to get used to people trying to be genuinely friendly to them.
For some reason we seem to expect that when strangers are being friendly, they are trying to get money from you or are trying to distract you so that their partners can rob you.
Off-course there where a lot of people trying to make some money in Cuba as well, but it was in a decent way.
For example: we were checking out an old building in Havana. A couple stopped to tell us about the history of the building and why it was in such a bad state now. After the explanation they asked us to buy some milk for their baby. They wouldn't accept any money, they really wanted us to come to the shop and buy them milk. Sure, this is also a form of hassling (especially with the prices of baby milk nowadays, but it's the most sympathetic form of hassling I personally ever experienced.

Now if anybody feels the need to inform me that Cubans are known to mix crystal meth with baby milk for consumption, please do so I can restore my pessimistic world view.

VW

Sure could use one of these for upcoming trip to France.

Capri

Came across this the other day. I love American muscle-cars, but they are a bit big for European parking spaces. A Capri isn't too big but still has a tad of that muscle-car taste to it. All it needs are some boards strapped to the roof, and me gunning it to the south of France...

Baby you can drive my car

Kinda milking the last slide roll from the Nikonos, but haven't had the chance to shoot any new surfing since. Every time I was near the sea, it was dead-flat. Really hope to score some waves (and new pics) soon.

The shot is of my girls ride. It brings us to the surf, so I thought some props were due. And offcourse it's always nice to show off with a flashy surfrig :-)

Camera quiver additions

The Blower

This car has been through so much. It's a beast

'Rustig fietsen' is Dutch for: cycle slowly

No new surfing shots lately. I've been busy with all sorts of stuff (though mainly work). A session is planned for the weekend, but for now a update about a new addition to my camera quiver. 

The above shots were taken with my new Canon A-1. 

Last weekend we ridded the bmx track of heaps of autumn leaves in preparation for the new bmx season. It was a nice opportunity to take the A-1 out for a spin. 

I had been looking at a good 35mm SLR system for a while, and decided to go for the A-1. It's a nice mechanical SLR with some weight to it, which I really like about it. It just feels like a real camera when holding it, and the shutter has a really nice 'clunk' to it. It has an incredibly bright viewfinder combined with a good eye-cover this makes for easy focussing. Back in the '70s this was top of the semi-pro line of Canon, today it's all I could wish for in a 35mm SLR.

For the gearheads: I got the A-1 body, a Canon 50mm 1:1.4 lens!!, Canon 70-210 1:4 zoom lens and a Canon 199A speedlite all in a weird oldskool AKO case. Now I only need some wide angles lens and a 400mm or 500mm  for the surfshots from land. 

Nice mechanical camera, nice fast lens, nice!

Big eye-cover on a very bright viewfinder! 

Amazon rod! yes another Volvo...

This is an incredibly cool (and ratty) Volvo Amazon. The person who painted the striping on the car is a genius! I'm pretty sure (and somewhat ashamed) that I'm gonna copy this idea someday. This car just freakin rocks.

Another Volvo post

Some more images of Volvos I've kept. Maybe the pics aren't as beautiful as the ones earlier, but all these cars are pretty rad nonetheless.

A Volvo post

I love Volvo's.

I keep a folder on my computer where I store any images of Volvos that I find worthwhile. I was just browsing that folder and realised there where some real gems in there. Not just nice cars, but captured beatifully as well. Enjoy.

A car I like

It looks ragged

Hou Koers, easier said than done..

I named this blog Hou Koers, and that means something in the lines of "to stay on track". Today, I experienced first hand that it isn't always as easy to do just that.

The above image was the view from our car this morning.

We were on our way to the coastal town of Bergen aan Zee. We really wanted to go to Bergen aan Zee because there was a surfart exposition by monsterboards' Eef, and also because the forecast said there would be waves. Big waves!*

(*Big waves as compared to the slob we usually get in the Netherlands)

I already knew that the temperature would be somewhere between 0 and minus 10 degrees celcius, so I knew it would be cold, but I was still really eager to get to the beach and score some nice waves. A good surfsession combined with a nice surfart expo actually sounded like the ideal way to spend the Sunday, but sadly the weather-gods had other plans.

It snowed, and we never made it to Bergen aan Zee cause of the snow. It snowed really, really bad. A Nissan Micra is not the right car for driving in snow.

Problems began right around the corner form our house where there is a little slope in the road. We barely made it to the top because off the wheels spinning everywhere, and I had a lot of problems keeping the car on the road. After sliding through town we finally made it to the highway which looked a little less snowy, but sadly the car didn't handle much better out there. There was just no grip. And because of the heavy snow not much visibility either.

We decided to get of of the highway at the next exit after we received a call that out buddy Tim couldn't make it because almost all the trains in the entire country were cancelled. We already had heard some warnings that everybody should stay at home and not get in the car because of the dangerous conditions. All those factors combined I realised that there was no way we were going to reach the coast without accidents. My girlfriend thought it took me an eternity to reach that conclusion, but hey I was really looking forward to the day :-)

 

Look at the amount of snow on the trash-can and seats in our garden. We aren't really used to this amount of snow here.

My girlfriends Micra

My new dream car

I bet with this bad-ass Volvo Polar we would have breezed to the coast and no surfsessions would have to be missed!

RIP Saab?

Will Swedish car brand Saab stop to exist today? Im a Volvo enthusiast mainly, but I still thought it was sad news when I heard that General Motors is pulling the plug on Saab.

The company produced some pretty nice cars over the years.

This Toppola trailer option rocks! Stylish and comfortable surfrig.

Update: This morning I heard that Dutch sportscar manufacturer Spyker renewed their offer on Saab. So there might still be hope for Saab after the attempt to rescue them earlier this week failed? Time will tell.