Badly Beaten

I'm not dead. But I hurt everywhere. Three and a half hours of wiping out and sucking in sea water. And a few glorious moments of using the wind to pull myself across the water... Woooooooooooo!

We started off body dragging. So no board, just a big ass kite and twenty mile per hour wind, and if you do it right, everything from your knees up are out of the water. This was the fun part, I kinda just want to make a sport out of body dragging.

Then the board. So now you have to get up. The mechanics are identical on this part to wake boarding only easier because the "boat" is over your head. And now you're up so you have to move, well you don't have to, but it helps you look cool.

Wind is not a good boat.

So you have to help it. You have generate power but not too much power. You have to keep the lines taught. And your have to keep your weight back.

And you have to let it pull you though the harness, not the bar. In skiing, in wakeboarding, the power comes through your arms. It's the same on the two line trainer kite. But on the four line big kite the power is partly in the bar, but it really needs to go through your pants (wink). I have a hard time just steering with my hands and letting the kite pull through the harness.

Then there's fencing. I can profile like a champ to the left. But when you want me to go the other way, like I'm fencing with my right hand, "switch" they call it, I feel like a fish out of water.

I'm not a natural, but I'm a lightweight, which is great for wind. So I'm in. Just let me recoup first.