Hello there and welcome to the makeITcrete.com website. I'm Mike Goodyear, originally from near Manchester in the UK, but I've used over a hundred planes in making it Crete over the past three years. I spend about half of the year on the island, at home in Elounda, but I'm mad about independent travel and the internet and work on developing various online projects. My work is primarily based in and for UK partners with a European interest. This suits me fine :-)) I enjoy travelling. Everyone needs somewhere to touch base though and Crete, I have to say, sure does beat Lancashire, my home county. So that's why I like to think of going as returning home. Where else in Europe can you get all that the island has to offer? Sun, sea, mountains, towns, villages, modern, ancient, early, late...it has everything, so that's why I began using Crete as a base in early 2002.
I first visited Crete in 1983 on a school visit at the impressionable age of ten. We went round Knossos, Phaestos, Matala and quite a few of the museums during the day and played soccer in front of the church in Heraklion at night. It was my first time abroad and its memory lasted. When I hit 18 I got into independent travel - first on a lads' five week trip to California and then, a couple of years later, the solo 'pack up and go' approach. according to the hallowed words of Lonely Planet and The Thomas Cook Train Timetable. One rucksack, one ferry to continental Europe and nineteen weeks on campsites around some of Europe's finest cities. The rail journey had to come to an end though for the start of University and a Transalpino ticket took me from Rome to London in 40 hours of crowded border checking chaos and the Calais - Dover crossing twice!
Another extended period of travel had to wait until after finishing reading English Literature at Durham Uni. Four days after graduation I set off for northern India and Nepal, where I got to hang out in Kathmandu and go rhino spotting in Sauraha. Sailing in the shadow of Annapurna IV is still one of my all time favourite travel experiences. The trip totalled four months, but was a lifelong eduaction.
Travel was what I loved and throughout 2001 the desire to get travelling again was driving me crazy. Over the years I'd got to places like Mexico, Switzerland, Norway, Italy and more but there were so many other places besides. As I'd worked in Telecoms and SME Networks, since leaving research at MMU, I wanted to find out how I could make that technology work for me in creating an ethical business from forward looking online ventures. I wanted to a)find another personal base in Crete because I love the place and it is out on the southern periphery of the EU b)shift my attentions to web based technologies and c)have some fun. I currently spend approximately half of the days of each year on the island and am at home there for part of most calendar months.
In the three years from December 2001 I flew between the UK and Greece using Air France, Alitalia, EasyJet, KLM, Olympic, Air Malta, Aegean, MyTravel, Monarch Charter, Excel, Air2000, Transavia and many more and spent a tediously long amount of time hanging around at Heraklion and Athens Airports. Thirteen hours was my longest delay. Unfortunately the same company was responsible for another of nearly seven hours :-( Anyway, Here are some guesstimate statistics I totted up:thirty visits to Crete, eighty weeks on the island, twenty days in Athens, ten days in the air, ten days waiting at airports, ten different airports, 130,000 miles, 60 in-flight meals, and more silly stats besides. Greece and Crete in particular are infectious. If you want to get there, then in the age of the internet you can do it all online, and NOT through some monolith of a company. Deal with real people and receive personal treatment. Flights are easily and instantly booked at 'real-time' availability websites. Many Hotels and Apartment owners will happily take bookings directly using telephone which should be confirmed by post.
My webspace for things Crete related was called makeitcrete.com because it was non-specific but unique and reasonably catchy. It was registered in Feb 2002 two days before a five week visit, tested with Greek laptop / mobile uplink from Crete, Kos and Rhodes in Sept 2002 on 9.6k GSM modem. I had a Greek 56k ISP landline dialup connection from May 2003 and upgraded to broadband in early 2007. For mobile I now use PDA over Mobile Modem, WAP and GPRS. Virtually all work on the sites is still done on faster connections in the UK although some updated pics, links, video and message board posts are put online directly from the island.
Where on Crete did I end up then? Well, I'd decided on Lassithi in the winter and by April 2002 I was the owner of a small tumbledowned house in Kritsa and renting a small apartment, overlooking the sea in Elounda, from my wonderful landlady Maria. And guess what folks; in June 2007 that was exactly the same state of play. Now you see why I love 'sega sega'. Out of the experience of elounda77.net, which developed as a hybrid of links, space and freepages I felt that with Make It Greece as a whole it would be useful to start working towards something where travel and tourism related links and information were combined with free community facilities and hosting areas funded by commercial advertising placements. Contacting Mr A with Mr O, modest profits, free facilities and cutting through the hype would have to be key determining factors.
I hope that the makeITcrete site can be useful in providing visitors with access to holiday links, information or friendly message boards plus support for new sitebuilders so they can avoid the pitfalls, cut through the hype and get themselves a window on the world. For those ready to promote their page our free links and paid banners can variously help to drive some Crete related traffic to your site and business. Best wishes in 2007
Mike
