How’s my antsiness doing?
For starters a brief follow-up to the main theme of my last post. I’ve talked to a couple of people here about my feeling of urgency and antsiness. A neighbor I played backgammon with a couple of times told me that he’s seen a lot of the same with people who are new to living in a van. He thinks it’s part of the transition from being a tourist/traveler to becoming a “vanlifer”. I guess he knows what he’s talking about since he’s been living in his van for twelve years now.
That idea does make a lot of sense really. When you’re traveling for only a short/set period of time, you want to see and experience as much as possible. I have the traveling part of my trip behind me and now I’m trying to adjust my mindset to the living mode. Of course I won’t stop moving around completely and I will travel to Spain at some point. But I really want to stick to what I have here at the moment. This place is really special. Maybe I’ll tell you a little more about this hippie heaven I’m living in in my next post.
Testing the connectivity and setting up a workplace
I made a test call with Teams to a colleague with my company laptop. I was a bit concerned whether the roaming network I’m using here works well enough, but everything went just fine. In case some problems do show up later, I can always get a pre-paid card here as well, but I’m hoping that won’t be necessary.
Since there’s a two hour time difference to Finland I’m hoping I can get started here at 6.30. That would mean I can call it a day at 2.30 already. Normally I’ve been getting up around seven anyway, so it’s not that big of a rhythm change really.
I also tested how the display mount arm fits my outside table and that also looks promising. I was afraid the table surface may be too thin, but looks like it’s going to be fine. My plan is to start working inside the car and when/if it gets too warm, I’ll move outside and continue working from the table under the awning.
I also found out a big bonus today. My outside table fits just barely through the side door. Since the legs are individually adjustable, I can set the table as a standing workstation. The height is just a bit too low, but if needed I can find something to use as an extra elevation.
A morning walk to the Baleal Island
Part of my morning routine here has been going to the beach and checking out the waves. (Also, there’s a clean public bathroom on the beach #bumlifehacks.) Today I extended the walk to the Baleal Island that stretches out as a peninsula between the two main surf beaches here. I have gone to the island for dinner a few times, but I never had a closer look. I walked around it and took some pictures for you to see.
Oh yes, I’ve been surfing too
My new board has now been in the water for little over five hours. Yesterday the conditions weren’t much fun, but I went in anyway. Buying a surfboard and not using it for five days is tough and I just had to go.
Today was much better already. I started at the bigger beach and got a few good ones. Nothing really amazing, but I had a lot of fun. The board is working fine and it feels like the right size for me. I took a little break in the shade and then I moved over to the smaller beach. According to the forecast it should have gotten bigger there too by then. But there’s no trusting the forecast especially this exactly. I still had fun there, but it was more of a struggle to get the waves.