Friday 21 May 2010

Sun and Surf

The sun is out, the sky is blue .... sweet as! Just about as good as it gets - nice 3ft clean wave kissing our shores. We've had a few good days of it now - long may it continue. And the water's warming up - we're looking at summer suits now, which is a blessing. The water temp gets down to 8 degrees in the winter if it's really bad - this past winter it got down to 6.5!! Yes, your read it right, six and a half degrees which is unheard of. So it's taken a while to get back up to where it should be, you'll be pleased to hear that the corner has been well and truly turned.

What's to report? We had a few team riders over in Portugal for the Europeans. I've heard that Max and Gabi did really well. A big up to them.

We held our Combat Attack last weekend for the Boardriders - they have to get across the estuary from Rock over to Tregirls Beach (top tip on a busy summers day) without being seen. And then wait for the signal to attack the camp. Simple enough only this year we set up two camps! Confusion ensued when the attack flag was raised. Big thanks to all the BR mums and Dads for their help and especially Kit and Alan who helped bring the day together.

I fell through the ceiling in the lounge; Billy's team won the footie league and Bill came second in the St. Minver fun run - he came first in the school but was beaten by a 20 yr old from the Royal Engineers! A really impressive run. Fin came 16th overall and 2nd in his sprint - a pretty amazing achievement considering he'd spent the night before on his death bed and played a footie match just prior to the run. A 3 miler is not insignificant at the age of 7! I think he was shattered by the end of it all.

What else do we have to report. Oh yes, a luck out. I've been concerned that over the past few years our e-mail newsletters had been getting less and less effective. And then, only a couple of days ago I discovered that what should be an automatic e-mail capturing system had been failing. It meant that all our 'special offers' hadn't been getting through to our most recent clients. So we've tracked back 3 years and have now created a new bang up to date database - absolutely crucial in this day and age.

Which reminds me of our Facebook Surf's Up! page - we created one a couple of years ago but what we didn't realise at the time was that a young lad had created one for us and was using it as a Surf's Up! fan site. As delighted as we were, he'd used our name in complete innocence! No big deal but it's taken us ages to get it switched over. It will be back on line asap but for the moment it's a private site while we get it to where we want it.

The on-line shop selling all the latest Billabong, Quiksilver, Animal stuff is going really well - I'm hoping now that we've got the database updated we'll generate a lot of traffic. It is the way forward - and I'm sure others will follow. Makes sense for small operations to do business in this way - no risk, no costs, no P&P, no returns to deal with - genius. I guess shops will eventually just be seen as changing rooms where you go and try stuff on and then order on-line where you'll get the best prices, particularly in the current climate.

Okay, I'm off to go and get some plaster board to repair this hole!

ps gutted - trained all winter for this bike ride last Sunday only to wake up on the day with what can only be described as a humungous headache. Now if you factor in that I haven't taken a day off work through sickness since we started back in 1995, and this was something that I really wanted to do - then you'll understand that it was a big bad one. Getting on board a bike was not an option! As a say, gutted. Oh well I said to Janey, at least I've got the event coming up in Wales on the 6th June, the Dragon Ride (very hard to get into) - at least that's all booked and my accommodation sorted. What date was that? she asked. The 6th? That's the day of the boys football party! Ho hum.