Pile up slowly, enjoy a lifetime

Light falls into a garage. It flows over hundreds of stickers collected over so many years, sticking on cupboards full of tools, old neoprene suits, little souvenirs from a traveler’s life. It reaches the light brown paint job, scratch less, perfect, of an old-timer Porsche. Kankel enters his third place.

Kankel’s Garage – A Treasure Chest

“I’m either cruising along with my Porsche, my VW T3, I take a baño in the sea to catch waves – or I’m here.” he grins and knows what impression he just makes on his visitors. Everything is super neat, brought into lovely order - and ‘everything’ that is everything a typical surfer could be enthusiastic about. His garage is a museum of automobiles, surf art, surf boards, little motorbikes – everything curated, repaired and renovated by Mr. Angel “Kankel” Losada.

“The essence of surfing is that you have to cope with what is coming along. You have to put effort into something in order to get the energy back. It’s paddling out – sometimes harder, sometimes easier - and surfing in again, weightless, smooth, underlined by a great feeling.” he explains, standing next to his Porsche which he renovated over the course of two years. “Yes, I drive it regularly – it’s a car, it’s meant to be driven” he answers our question what’s up with that car, whose value comes from a mixture of value per se and the work he put into.

The wind rose says GO SURFING!

A handy man’s dream – a workshop from another planet

The wondering about how much time a single man can put into things he loves – just next to leading a successful life and having a sane family life - continues when we entered his house. Everything was planned by him, built by him, every detail is in order and curated. “My father used to say:

If you want to buy yourself a drink and you can’t afford it, well, then you won’t have a drink. It’s that simple. I feel nowadays that’s not the common rule – which may be responsible for the thing happening around most of us don’t like.”

Kankel loves the details

He means materialism, easy enjoyment, commercialization of sports like surfing but as well nature. Shortsighted planning in all forms.”For instance: Look at this dune in Somo. Behind it there is a quite big hotel. The hotel’s guests once had to walk down to the beach on very narrow trail. Just to make it more comfortable for the guests the trail was widened and a lot of trees were cut down. Now there is no plants or trees to retain the soil when hard rains and strong winds hit the path. Erosion is the consequence. At the same dune a company was given the right to dig out the sand to use it for construction. They dug too deep and they dug too much. Within some years more then 100 metres of pristine dune are gone exposing the land behind to erosion now. The dune is disappearing step by step.

Surfing in Somo, one of Kankel’s homebreaks

The lesson learned from Kankel is humbleness. And: When you’re a regular surfer and an avid lover of your life, you gonna look young and splendid when the next astounded visitors arrive.