World Economic Forum – Sustainability & Design at Davos

World Economic Forum – Feedback from Davos.

Prof M P Ranjan

Image 01: CEO’s of major global corporations at the Sustainability session at Davos using the NID designed posters.

We got a brief message from Davos on 31 January 2009 from Marcello Mastioni of the World Economic Forum on the successful completion of a collaborative journey between NID and the WEF that started last year with the Sustainability Design Charette in New Delhi on the 15 November 2008 about which I reported earlier on this blog. The event on sustainability took place at Davos on the 29 January 2009 using the visual materials that were designed for the purpose by students and faculty teams at NID through a two day workshop on the 26 and 27 December 2008 which was followed by an intensive effort to capture all the insights into an expressive set of five posters shown below.

I Quote this below:
“Dear NID Team,

The Sustainability meetings have been successfully completed, but the Davos Meeting is not over yet, and we are still busy closing it. You will forgive us for now for not reaching out with as many details as it would be appropriate.

The sessions went very well, with extraordinary participation and with the definition of a clear mandate for action in 2009, which was our primary objective. The visuals contributed greatly to creating a conducing environment that would inspire the CEOs towards innovation and collaboration.

The pictures the official photographer took are not yet available to me, but I wanted to attach a few pictures to show you how close we put our leaders to the visuals, and the type of environment we created for the event.

Many thanks again for your extraordinary support.

We look forward to talking to you in one week or so for a more thorough debrief.

All best,

Marcello”
UnQuote

Image 02: World business leaders meet world thinkers on sustainability at Davos 2009 and use the NID designed posters on Visualising Sustainability.

In an earlier message on 23January 2009 sent to us after we had submitted all the five posters Marcello informed us of the intentions of the WEF in using the posters at Davos this year.

I Quote from his mail below:
“Dear NID Team,

I wanted to take a moment to say a big thank you to all of you.

The posters are printed and on their way to Davos, where they will be featured in an event with 50 participants, including the CEOs of companies such as Nike Inc., The Coca-Cola Company, Unilever, Land O'Lakes Inc., Nestlé SA, Monsanto Company, Young & Rubicam Inc., METRO Group, Best Buy Co. Inc., Yara International ASA, IDEO Inc., The Olayan Group, nGenera, The Reitan Group, S. C. Johnson & Son Inc., Kraft Foods Inc., General Mills Inc. and Dow Jones & Company Inc., amongst others.

Everybody here expressed wonder and admiration on the work done. You have been very courageous to tackle such a complex systemic issue as Sustainability with an open universal approach, and then go through the immense task of distilling the discussions into meaningful conclusions and relevant visuals.

You had success at your mission, and you can proud of that. Please let us praise your achievement.

I won’t of course miss to keep you in the loop as things develop here.

All best,

Warmly,

Marcello

Marcello Mastioni
Associate Director, Head or Retail and Consumer Goods Industries
Global Leadership Fellow
World Economic Forum”

UnQuote

I will make a detailed post about the process of exploration, cooperation and design that we used to make these posters and the various players involved in this process at NID and at Geneva office of the WEF. I include below images of the five posters for immediate reference and pdf files will be made available soon along with the posts that follow as the story unfolds.

Image 03: Essence Making: Rethinking the Business Models.

Image 04: Innovating the Value Chain: Collaborate along the Value Chain.

Image 05: Co-Creation: Meaningfully Engage Consumers.

Image 06: Dematerialising the Economy: Innovate out of Stuff and into Value.

Image 07: Emergent Technology: Explore Emergent Technology.

Prof M P Ranjan

Rahul Gandhi visits NID: All informal and chatty

Rahul Gandhi's visit to NID today: An opportunity to reflect on the status of "Design" in India

Prof M P Ranjan

Image 01: Rahul Gandhi with NID students, faculty and staff at the Amphi-theatre behind the NID Charles Eames Plaza.

It is many years since we have had a national politician showing any interest in design and here we had a young and enthusiastic cutlet of a politician dropping in for lunch at the student canteen with the z-level security team running around in circles while he tried to integrate with the young design students and have a cozy conversation. The NID Director, Akhil Succenna and the Chairman Education, Pradyumna Vyas and their large entourage of followers had to literally run to keep up with the swift movements of the young national leader and Member of Parliament from the Youth Congress while he whisked his way through the NID lawns and to the back campus for lunch date with students in an impromptu visit that was as informal as it was stimulating. Rahul Gandhi came visiting an almost forgotten place three generations after his great grandfather Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru the then Prime Minister of India had approved the formation of the National Institute of Design at Ahmedabad and this is also exactly Fifty Years after the writing of the insightful Eames India Report of 1958. This gives me an opportunity to reflect on the state of design in India and its status in the country vis a vis Science, Technology and Management, all of which receive substantial support from the Government for a variety of activities and this has been the case over the past five decades while design has remained on the back-burner of Government Policy all through this era of development and change.

We now face climate change and financial meltdown of the global economy and perhaps it is time to look at design for some answers if only a reasonable investment can be made in this activity and some policy intiiatives can also be initiated to nurture the disciplines of design that are needed by as many as 230 sectors of our economy that is still breezing along in blissful ignorance of this crying need. After his four hour long tour of NID canteen, studios, workshops and lawns and finally in the shade of the large Neem tree over the NID amphi-theatre we got to meet him face to face in a very informal and human setting. I was particularly surprised and pleasantly so when he walked up to me and shook my hand asking what I did at NID!! Everything – teaching, research and living… I said.

Image 02: Rahul Gandhi in a group picture with NID community at the NID amphi-theatre.

In the discussions that followed he asked students what they felt about the state of politics in India and what they felt about the politicians in India. They responded with candid statements and some naïve ones that gave Rahul Gandhi an opportunity to show his maturity as a national politician and share his own journey into politics after the death of his father, Rajiv Gandhi who was also a former Prime Minister of India. His grand mother, Indira Gandhi, another great Indian Prime Minister, had visited NID in 1964 when Charles and Ray Eames were working at NID on the classic Nehru Exhibition that went on to tour the world across many countries. This exhibition gave me the opportunity to learn design in the Eames tradition when I worked on it for the 1972 version that was set up at New Delhi and then travel to Chile in January 1973 to help set it up in the museum at Santiago, a life changing experience for me, personally. This is where I met President Salvadore Allende briefly on the 26th of January 1973 when he came to open the exhibit in the presence of the Indian Ambasador and his delegation in Chile. A few years later we got the book “Platform for Change” by Stafford Beer and this informed us of the strategic role that design had played in the shaping of the Chile’s economy in the Allande era which caused his assassination because it threatened the big brother nearby and the rest is history. Design is a political tool and it is also a political activity if one looks at the definition by both Tomas Maldonado in his book “Design, Nature, Revolution” and the other by Harold Nelson and Eric Stolterman titled “The Design Way: Intentional Change in an Unpredictable World”. Both these books strip the myths about design as a mere associate of art used to bring aesthetic value to industrial produce and places the true role of design as a transformational process that can indeed bring intentional change of great value across society and in India this is what is needed in the 230 sectors of our economy today.

Image 03: Rahul Gandhi and NID Director, Akhil Succenna at the amphi-theatre meeting with NID students and faculty today.

I asked Rahul Gandhi what he would do for design when he went back to Delhi and back to the Parliament. He asked back, what do you want me to do? NID students and faculty and its wide spread alumni need to ponder this question and act quickly and empower the NID Director to write a coherent letter to the potential champion of design in New Delhi on the possible agenda for design in India in the days ahead. We do hope that the next 50 years is an entry into the era of Design for India and Design with India….. We can dream and act quickly. What do you think can be done? Do we need a Ministry of Design? India needs design across all its Ministries – Rural Development, Education, Communication, Industry – and many more. Will this happen soon? How do we make it happen? Can the National Design Policy be rolled out of its cocoon and made active in the field sooner than later? I look forward to some answers and some real action, soon. I am however happy that NID gifted him a copy of our new book "Handmade in India" and I do hope that he takes this forward as a starting point for design action across India.

Image 04: Five posters on “visualizing sustainability” that were discussed at Davos at a special session on Sustainability on 29 January 2009.

Perhaps this is what the World Economic Forum (WEF) had in mind when it asked NID and its faculty and student teams to explore the issues that faced the world on the subject of Sustainability and asked them to offer some insights into how these intractable problems – nay wicked problems – could be addressed by the business community in the days ahead. As an outcome of this invitation from the WEF, NID and its teams prepared five posters that attempted to visualize the approaches towards a more sustainable world and these have been discussed at Davos and we await news from the Forum of the outcome of the deliberations there. We hope that the impact is not just immediate but also long term, the world is in dire need of such a long term impact. I hope that we have succeeded in our mission here, only time will tell.

Photographs by Deepak John Mathew of NID

Prof M P Ranjan

British Council on Design Cities Debate

British Council on Design Cities Debate

Prof M P Ranjan

Image: The British Council Arts and Architecture page with the participants from the BRIC nations at the Design Cities Debate: Ruy Ohtake: Brazil, Denis Cherdantsev: Russia, Professor M P Ranjan: India and Ou Ning: China.

The voice files of the Design Cities Debate at the Design Museum in London are now available from the British Council Arts site at this link here below:
Audio version of the Design Cities Debate.
Or download the 44MB mp3 file directly from here.
and their page on the event and the participants is here below:
Advocate Biographies link
Other links to the event are here below from the earlier posts on Design for India.
Design Week on Bangalore: “Design City” of the Future
Prof M P Ranjan

Free Online CAD Symbols, Models and AutoCAD Blocks

There are many places available for downloading free CAD symbols and AutoCAD DWG DXF blocks from the Internet. Ready-made CAD symbols can be inserted into CAD drawings instead of creating them from scratch, therefore saving a designer time and making their job easier.

CBEN (http://www.cben.net/) home to one of the largest communities for continually updating large free AutoCAD DWG block libraries of anything from construction and architecture to vegetation, people, 3D models and more. All downloads are free. If you work a lot in AutoCAD and don't know about this site, you probably should.

Polantis has just launched a new but extensive visual website for 3D designs of mostly IKEA furniture - lots of IKEA furniture. This library already offers a good selection of their build-it-yourself virtual furnishings.


Archibase offers many free CAD models and patters, but this website seems to want users first to install a free "Archibase Toolbar" on their browser before downloading any blocks. We didn't care to, but I guess you can if you want...

Designers might also try http://cad.3dmodelfree.com. This site offers a visual library of drawings containing numerous blocks and templates for interior design, room and building drawings, furniture, shopping centers, elevation plans - even some Chinese symbols. The drawings come mostly RAR compressed, and some use passwords but the password is normally displayed on the web page for downloading that drawing as far as I can see...

Engineers looking for free 3D mechanical parts can try Dassault's http://www.3dcontentcentral.com. At first glance this site appears to go beyond offering simple CAD model downloads by trying to tie users and vendors (the model contributors) together with what appears to be an almost WEB 2.0 approach. I remember our first try with one of the listed suppliers (for a 3D stepper motor model I think) kept returning an error that the model wasn't found or couldn't be downloaded. But usually it works rather well I guess - offering all kinds of free 3D mechanical industrial vendor models in various formats like STEP IGES ACIS .SAT (for AutoCAD) and much more...

http://www.woodworkersworkshop.com/cadfiles/index.html offers a small list of free CAD libraries and links to more libraries for wood working.

Of course, there are also many downloadable CAD symbols libraries as well. progeCAD Professional design CAD includes a free library manager with about 11,000 AutoCAD blocks called ALE. CP-System takes 2D CAD blocks a step further, giving users the ability to add, insert and modify new CAD blocks parametrically.

If you have a good link to free online CAD block or model resources you would like to see added to the list, feel free to post it in the comment section below.

All 3 sizes of Biscuits are running now at Liquidlogic

Today we started running the largest Biscuit. So now we have all three sizes up and running. The largest was the last to come on line. Its cool to see all three sizes next to each other. Of course these photos don't really show everything and the lighting is terrible to show the hull so I hope to have better hull photos up soon.

The Three Side By Side

Up the Line

I just jumped in the Biscuit 65 with my shoes on.
That make me thing big comfortable loops.

Marlow Left His Boat Out in the Snow.

But He Still Paddles Pretty Well.

Thanks to Jeremy Laucks for this photo. The Original BIscuit From First Biscuit

Later Shane

New progeCAD Professional 2009 Video Tour

progeCAD Professional 2009 offers a powerful new CAD interface - similar icons, commands and interface. Raster image editing, raster-to-vector software included. DWF, SVG, O2C and Google Earth KML export, IntelliCAD AutoLISP, VBA & DIESEL, ACIS 3D Solids modelling, temporary point snap (oSnap), layers, blocks. Hatch and xref editing. 3D shading and rendering options. approx. 11000+ CAD symbols library. progeCAD Professional can be downloaded for a thirty day trial HERE or register your full license online HERE.

CADDIT Announces Building Design Without BIM (Building Information Modeling)

Sydney, Australia - CADDIT announced their release of a an exciting new line of CAD software products for building design without the overhead involved with Building Information Modeling (commonly known as BIM). CP-System is an affordable CAD software add-on for AutoCAD, AutoCAD LT (using LTX), progeCAD, BricsCAD and other IntelliCAD brands. CP-System represents a much easier, low-cost and practical approach to the needs of designers who need to work quickly but accurately.

CP-System is a simple suite of four separately priced toolboxes that turbocharge supported CAD systems into a complete building design studio. At the core of CP-System is a 2D parametric drawing editor which allows users to quickly draw electrical wiring, piping or duct elevation plans and then "insert" relevant symbols such as valves or switches from large libraries of associative drawing objects. Each library can be customized with objects from a user, or extended by downloading thousands more parts currently available from CP-System enabled industry suppliers (such as Fujitsu or Cablofil). A database is built as the drawing is created, which can be exported or printed as a Bill Of Material or specification in many common formats such as CSV, XLS, XML, RTF, HTML and PDF. CP-System objects can be edited or re-created later as required.

Each of the four separately-priced licenses activate one of the four different "design realms" offered by the CP-System framework:

1. HVAC - Actually this one license includes multiple libraries and functions for HVAC and PLUMBING, pumps and piping, gas and ducting systems, water distribution planning and design.
2. Electrical - Includes all the layout design tools for circuit wiring and cabling, medical and industrial, telecommunications, fire alarm and safety, cable trays, busbars and switch boxes.
3. Mechanical - This license is good for mechanical part design and includes all the nuts and bolts (literally) needed to put something together, also offers structural, hydarulic, pneumatic and additional fittings.
4. Architectural - The least expensive license but still very useful for overall architectural design or office and space planning etc. with doors, windows, furniture and more.

CADDIT now offers CP-System bundled with their progeCAD design platform as their new progePLAN product, which is available from CADDIT at a nice discount. Building designers considering progeCAD's AutoCAD compatibility would do well to consider the benefit of buying a CP-Sytem enabled progePLAN bundle for their work instead. All CP-System licenses currently include online software and symbol update services and remote access support. Currently CP-System only supports metric, however plans are to also support imperial units soon.

Regardless, however, building designers for heating, ventilation and air conditioning, plumbing, electrical, structural, architectural and other systems are encouraged to download CP-System for their own CAD system and give this low-cost alternative to BIM design methodology a serious go. It will save them time, energy and the cost of the mistakes that arise from designing such systems from total scratch. For serious commercial designers in the building field, CP-System is a must-have!

The Green and the Liquidlogic Shop from a French point of view.

I know I put too much stuff up about the Green, but hey its fun. If you saw the post just before the Green Race you will remember Eric "the slalom racer" Deguil. He came into town for the race and stayed for 10 days or so. The trip went something like this...Fly from Europe, then take a 9 hour bus ride from Atlanta to Asheville (aaaaaahhhhh!). When I picked him up and I could see it in his eyes that he already had some incredible cultural experiences on the road so I figured I would contribute to the delinquency of a Euro. We went straight to Krispy Kreme and then on to the Green where he proceeded to do a double (two trips in a day). He then did a double every day for the week leading up to the race except the day before. It was a rest day after all. Then he came in third in the race, and won the short boat class. There was a costume party, and of course the Green Race party, we went to barbecue, we taught him how to say ,"HELL YEAH", and other phrases I won't mention. All in all I think he got a completely skewed view of the U.S..

During his stay Eric was taking video and he promised me he would send me something later. I got an email a couple weeks after he left. It said, "I kill my computer with video". I was thinking oh well no video from Eric, but just today I got this in an email.

Enjoy the Green and the Liquidlogic office and shop from a French point of view.
Oh by the way I have no idea what he says in the video.
So I am sure the joke is on me. Sorry for any horrific slurs or language unfitting a kayaker.



Here is the original video that I did before the race just in case you really needed to waste time.
Remember there are a couple bad words on this one so turn down the volume if your parents are walking by or you are at work.

Later
Shane


Getting Ready for the 2008 Green Race from Shaneslogic on Vimeo.

New progeCAD 2009 Professional Offers Serious Performance

Como Italy, 12 January 2009 – progeSOFT announced the worldwide release of progeCAD 2009 Professional DWG CAD software. progeCAD 2009 now offers Google Earth export, "Quick Dimensioning" commands and an improved CAD drawing interface.

Architects, engineers, designers and drafters using AutoCAD, Auto CAD LT, or IntelliCAD will be impressed with progeCAD 2009's overall unique performance for price combination. Unlike most AutoCAD compatible CAD programs, progeCAD 2009 Professional goes far beyond mere DWG file compatibility with dozens of extra features like an updated spell checker, DIESEL expression support and the addition of over 1000 new CAD symbols organized by the included ALE block manager. Nevertheless, progeCAD’s most inviting feature continues to be its incredibly low price compared to AutoCAD or AutoCAD LT.

Google Earth has become very popular since its release, used by professional surveyors and architects to visualize their projects in a realistic setting. Many people spend hours in fascination discovering new far off places using the tool. progeCAD 2009 Professional now allows users to send their drawings directly to Google Earth via the KML format - minus the rusty auto parked in the neighbors front yard of course.

progeCAD 2009 sports powerful interface updates like right-mouse click context menus, improved speed and reliability. AutoCAD LT users should be especially interested in continued support for PDF import, true ACIS 3D modeling, AutoLISP, VBA, and SDS (C++) program extensions – features not supported by AutoCAD LT. progeCAD 2009’s new "Advanced Data Extraction" wizard guides users in easily sending entity and block information to applications like Microsoft Excel. Other interface enhancements include new "one-click" text editing, an interactive "purge" command dialog, and "one-click" entity grouping.

progeCAD's new layout "print area visualization" feature shows you exactly how drawings will appear on paper. An "AutoCAD like" interface for properties modification has been added making modifying entity properties similar to AutoCAD and AutoCAD LT.

Other features and bonus software include photo realistic rendering, eTransmit, PDF, ECW, O2C, JPG, SVG XML image file support and basic raster-to-vector conversion software. Polar tracking, eTrack, and a new eSnap-From mode help entity creation and placement.

progeCAD's "Express Tools", easy-to-use attribute editing, DWG redlining, in place external reference editing, and "Find and Replace" text and attribute search make progeCAD 2009 Professional a truly "professional" platform that is still unbelievably affordable – less than USD $400.00 suggested retail price. The release of progeCAD 2009 Professional comes at a time when just such an affordable yet robust AutoCAD-compatible drawing program is really needed.

Current progeCAD users are reminded that they can upgrade to the latest version at a significant discount to the already-low full version price. progeSOFT has improved the progeCAD software registration and activation interface making licensing progeCAD 2009 simple and reliable. Network NLM, USB mobile, and corporate licensing options for the 2009 version are available.

Users are encouraged to download or buy progeCAD in English from the closest of over 120 local authorized progeSOFT resellers world wide. Refer to progeSOFT North America (http://www.progesoft.us) for local resellers in United States, Canada or Mexico. CADDIT (http://www.caddit.net/) serves Australia, New Zealand and Asia Pacific. Others may refer to http://www.progesoft.com/?page=shop_listino .

Design Week on Bangalore: “Design City” of the Future

Design Week reports on the “Design City” debate in London

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

Image: Screen shot of the Design Week website reporting the success of the “Design City” Debate in London.

Adam Welch reporting from London has carried a report in the Design Week of 8 January 2009 about the Debate at the Design Museum in London that was held on the 15th December 2008. Adam Welch was amongst the audience that polled at the end of the four nation debate that involved Sao Paolo, Moscow, Beijing and Bangalore.

Read more about the event and the outcome of the debate on the Design Week website here.

Other links to the event are from previous posts on this blog at the links below:
1. The Design Cities Debate and pdf of presentation

2. Bangalore as Design City of the Future

3. BBC Radio features Bangalore and Beijing

4. Design & Politics: “Jaago Re” Initiative from the Jaanagraha in Bangalore

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

“Somewhat Different”: IFA Exhibition arrives from Germany

Contemporary Design and the Power of Convention: “Somewhat Different”

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

Image 1: Fence Bench designed by Andreas Bergmann which arrived as part of the “Somewhat Different” exhibit after unloading from trucks at the Design Gallery at NID. Volker Albus, designer and curator of the exhibition is seated in the middle with his colleagues with Dimple Soni, NID Faculty standing besides while the task of unloading and setting up is in progress.

“Somewhat Different”, an exhibition organized by IFA – Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations in Germany opens later this week in NID. The trucks arrived over the weekend and everyone was curious to see a long row of six trucks each with a huge container as its load standing at NID for a couple of days. Yesterday the Germans arrived and the containers wee opened and out came the boxes in very systematic German design and each box was carefully labeled and carefully unpacked and put away in the car park to be used again when the exhibit had to be repacked for further shipment. “Somewhat Different” is the theme of the exhibition and in all the curator, Volker Albus, has selected forty-seven individual designers and design studios from Germany and along with this he has included the work of twenty other designers based in several European cities. These designs have been selected for their being a slight twist away from the conventional and not for their being unnaturally different! A subtle twist brings all the difference, and this he claims is a new trend for good design from Europe today. The exhibit opens in a few days from now and I will make a more detailed post when the exhibit is formally announced and made open to the public. Those interested in knowing more can contact the Corporate Communications at NID by email at pro@nid.edu.

Image 2: Rows of trucks with container load filled with exhibit materials and the unloading and unpacking sequence at NID near the Design Gallery and the BMW (Cafe, Behind the Metal Workshop – BMW – as named by the NID students)

The systematic manner in which the unpacking and handling of the cases was a lesson in logistics for those students and faculty who wished to stay informed. Some were curious and came out with their cameras while others failed to turn up on the BMW side of the campus and may have missed the event altogether. There is always something interesting happening on campus and we have learned to stay curious and learn as we go along. The open electives in now on across the campus and several visiting faculty are also involved in conducting these workshops. I will come back with more about this particular exhibit and the “Swords into Ploughshares - Fences to Sit” by Andreas Bergmann is just one of the numerous designed objects that have arrived to stir up a debate about trends, relevance and sustainability, I hope. With Satyam having shown us yesterday how wrongly a sacred word can be used and abused as a slogan for a company that has now become an antithesis for the concept itself, perhaps cultural and commercial expressions in materials too have an element of honesty that needs to be appreciated and recognized. More, as we examine the exhibit in it’s setting at NID next week.

The “Somewhat Different” exhibition will be open at NID from 16 January 2009 to the 7 February 2009 after which it will travel to the Lalit Kala Akademy, New Delhi and be on display from 10 May 2009 to 30 May 2009. Both these exhibits are being coordinated by the Goethe-Institute in Mumbai and New Delhi respectively.

Prof M P Ranjan’s papers

The Molds for the Biscuits have arrived.

The Biscuit Model

So this is the Biscuit just before it was sent away to the mold maker. After a couple months of work by the mold makers the molds have come back to us ready to rock and roll. The whole Legacy team jumped in to get these things going fast. There is a lot to figure out to get a boat into production. We spend a couple days making sure all the parts fit well, the logos are placed right, the thicknesses are to our spec, and the shape of the boat itself is what I am looking for in performance. As cliche as it sounds its like a new baby arrives in the plant. Everyone comes around to see how it looks and congratulations go all the way around the factory. So check it out. The first pictures. I will do better soon when I have good light.

The Biscuit Mold Comes In


Shiney on the Inside


Very Shiney


I Hate it when they drill holes in the mold with a big drill bit.


It Makes Me Nervous


First Couple Boats Clean The Mold and then...


The First Biscuit Pops Out


Ooooohhhh


This is the 55. Its the middle size of three. 45, 55, 65


Aawwwww



Wwhooooa


Yeah Baby Bad Ass Outfitting


Obie Can't Wait To Get It On The Water.

Anyway I thought you all would enjoy seeing the first ones built out of the mold.
We will have much more posted about them in the future.
Later
Shane

Sneaking away to surf in Nicaragua

From Nicaragua Blog

The day after Christmas I jumped on a plane and headed south for the new years celebration and to surf until I couldn't lift my arms and stand up on a board anymore.  The standing up on a board part is pretty difficult for me anyway but you get the idea.  I have been on 4 surfing trips in the past one to Sayulita Mexico, 2 trips to Nosara Costa Rica, and now to Los Cardones Surf Camp in Nicaragua.  Each place is really different and have been awesome for learning to surf, but this spot in Nicaragua was fantastic.  We had the smallest surf they said they had seen all season and yet there was always something there and I surfed every day until I was beat.

From Nicaragua Blog

The really nice thing about this spot in Nicaragua was that we weren't just surrounded by tourists.  The Surf Camp is pretty much all alone on the beach and its flanked by fishing villages, and local homes on either side.  Everyday we saw the locals out in the surf putting out their bait fish nets, and out beyond the surf there were local fishing boats pulling in our dinners.

From Nicaragua Blog

The other very cool thing we did was go on a horse back trip through the sugar cane fields.  It was harvest time so we got to see the whole process of bringing the cane crop.  In the evenings they burn the fields to clear the way for machette chopping and throughout the daylight they take down the sugar cane drop it in rows and the men load it on big ox driven carts that are then taken to a truck and loaded for the road. It was a neat operation to watch.

From Nicaragua Blog

From Nicaragua Blog

From Nicaragua Blog

From Nicaragua Blog

We did a couple of other fun tours up a volcano, and into the colonial town of Grenada.  Both were awesome.  Grenada was colorful houses, an awesome market with nice late Christmas present shopping.  I liked wandering through the local market.

From Nicaragua Blog

From Nicaragua Blog

From Nicaragua Blog

But the best part of the trip was Los Cardones Surf Camp.  The bungalow we were in was 20 yards from the ocean.  I would get up in the morning look at the surf and wander out to get the wake up call of the first wave breaking over my head as I tried to paddle out.  The surf was perfect for me plus down the beach were several other breaks one of which was a barrelling reef break that I wanted no part of.  It would have been like sending a beginner off Gorilla for me to surf that spot.  Then after a hard morning of surfing it was breakfast, napping, cards, lunch, napping, surfing, beverages, cards food.  It was a tough schedule but we managed.  Our meals were served fresh off the grill in a shaded champa over the beach and breaks, and to top it all off the beer was FREE, and we had to do this every day for a week.

From Nicaragua Blog

From Nicaragua Blog

From Nicaragua Blog

From Nicaragua Blog

From Nicaragua Blog

Happy New Years Everyone
Shane

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