Bec and I have just decided that this years holiday will be a trip back to Sweden so Bec (hopefully) can experience some great Swedish summer with nice warm days and long light evenings. The plan is a three week trip at the last week of July and first two weeks of August, so hopefully around 2 1/2 weeks in Sweden depending on what flights we can find with this fairly short time frame…

The last month or so I’ve spent some time creating a website for work, and it’s finally finished enough to be “live” on the internet. It turned out alright and as time goes it will gradually get upgraded with more pictures and info. Have a look at it if you want at www.nordicelevators.com.au

The last few days here in Melbourne have been pretty crazy. There has, for the the first time since weather information was first recorded in 1855, been three consecutive days of temperatures over 43′C. On top of that there has been numerous power outages around town as the power grid gets overloaded, the power was out in our place for 24h so there was a very hot night without much sleep and I had to buy a couple of bags of ice and fill up the fridge and freezer to make sure that the food didn’t go bad (most of the food made it). It doesn’t really matter how much water you drink you still end up feeling pretty crap, and on the night the power went out I had to escape to the movies for some relief…

Well it’s been a very long time since anything happened here…

Just had a really nice week off work over Christmas. Christofer and Beatrice, two of my really good friends from Sweden were here for 5 days. We had a nice day at Healesville Sanctuary checking out all the native animals, and a day in the city. We then spent 2 days on “the great ocean rd” including some wild koala encounters, surfing lessons, a stay on a farm out in the Aussie bush lands and of course quite a few scenic photo stops. Bea and Christofer then spent Christmas eave with us out on Bec’s parents farm before they headed of to Sydney, and we went to Ballarat to hang out with Bec’s dad’s side of the family for Christmas and boxing day.

I’ve just put some photos up from our trip to Byron Bay and I noticed that Flickr (the online photo application I use) now also supports videos, so I have uploaded some videos from Bec’s and my honeymoon in Africa as well…

We had a great week in Byron Bay, we stayed in a cabin at Belongil Beachouse mostly just relaxing and enjoying a week away. I went surfing every day with the last two being the best, and it was great to swap the 13′C water in Victoria to the 21′C waves in Byron. Our friends Tess and Nye came down from Brisbane and stayed Saturday night, and on Sunday we went up to Brisbane and watched Nye and the others in “Timbah” play an afternoon gig

Last week I handed in my last (hopefully) paperwork to Immigration to get my permanent visa here in Australia, so now I just have to wait until they get back to me. Hopefully we don’t get called in for an interview because I’ve had enough off all the work involved in all this visa business. It might take a while before I hear anything though as it stated on the paperwork I received that they aim to complete 75% off the applications within 6 months…

On Saturday I went down past Torquay with Tony (a mate from TAFE) for some surfing, it was a great day with heaps of waves around. We had our first surf at Point Addis with some nice 4ft+ waves and after some fish n chips we met up with Matt and tim who went down the night before, Tony and Matt had a good surf with me behind the camera catching them getting a few nice ones and getting pounded by a solid 6 wave set…

Tomorrow morning Bec and I are heading off to Byron bay for a weeks holiday, I’ve just finished packing (11 o’clock the night before) and the alarm goes of at 5 tomorrow morning. It will be great to go away for a week and just take it easy, we haven’t really planned anything but hopefully I’ll get some good surf…

Today I finally had a chance to test out my new kite. On Thursday i went down and pumped up the 14m on the beach but there wasn’t much wind. I managed to launch it with some help and by running upwind at the same time, and once in the air it actually had some power but we’ll see another day what it actually can do. Today the wind was around 18-21knots (according to the reports from fawkner beacon out in port Phillip bay) and I pumped up my 10m to see how it would perform. Unfortunately today was also the coldest day of the year so far with around 7′C, and the fact that it was raining didn’t really help.

After some small problems self launching the kite I got it up and was quite surprised by the amount of power in it, once on the water I could go upwind pretty much as well as the only other guy out there who was riding a 12m crossbow which is exactly the kite I’ve been using up until now. I could also get some descent air so the performance seems to be almost up there with my 2m larger crossbow. I think I didn’t have enough pressure in the leading edge though, so I had the kite turn crash and turn into an eight on the water but I got it up in the air again after a little while. The leading edge is quite a bit thinner than the crossbow so it’s probably pretty important to get enough pressure in it.

I’m not too excited about the valves on the struts though, they work very well when you pump it up by completely stop any air from leaking out during pumping but to let the air out a pin needs to be inserted into them, and as the pin should not be left in there it’s hard to get all the air out and pack the kite down to as small as it could be but I might come up with a trick to solve this.

Over all I’m pretty happy, but VERY cold after not even an hour on the water.

Today I got the delivery of my two new kites from wind-x. I ordered a 14m and a 10m, the 14 is going to be my light wind kite and the 10 is planned to replace my old 12m crossbow. They are the new Ultra-flat design developed by the Legaignoux brothers’ that has come up with most ideas behind the kites that are used today in kite-surfing. Because of the flatter design a smaller kite are able to have more power as more of the kite actually catches the wind, so hopefully the 10m will have as much power as the 12m bow-kite I’m using now. The quality looks good so now I’m hoping for some wind so I can test them out, unfortunately the forecast for the next few days doesn’t look very good at all…

I’ve become an agent for wind-x here in Melbourne/Victoria so if they perform as well as the reports I’ve read on the internet there should hopefully be some interest for them as the price will be pretty competitive compared to many other brands out there.

I’ve uploaded some photos from our week in WA, you can check them out at Flickr until I get my photo album up and running again

- Update -
The photo album is now working again and can be reached through the “Photos” link on the left hand side. I’ve also put some more photos up.