So yesterday my friend convinced me that we should go land boarding and compare the Soul 12m to the Chrono 11m. The weather was sketchy but I was keen for a challenge.
It was the 2nd time my soul has been out of the bag... We'd been landboarding for 15mins and then a feont came through and it started hailing. We landed our kites asap and ironically, the amazing air retention ability of the Soul was an absolute PIA when doing an emergency packdown. My friend had wrapped his bar lines up and his kite and ran 100m over to me and I was still trying to roll the freaken thing.
The hail persisted for 5 mins as I cried and helplessly did a combination of rolling and attempting to lay across the kite and sacrifice my body against the barrage of icy bullets.
Finally the kite was small enough to put in the bag and now at which time of course, the hail stoppped and was replaced by torrential rain.
A mess of kite lines, bridals, grass, mud and squashed canopy was carried back to the car like a fallen soldier, we leave no man behind.
Once home there was no hero's welcome, just a, "ha ha, what do youthink would happen if you went out in this weather" from my loving wife.
Later that evening, I returned to the garage and faced my demons. Puddles of water, like blood in the dimly lit chamber.
I began the tedious process of laying out my baby, one fold at a time and removing the noose of strings, strangling her like a trapped turtle in a fishing net.
I apologised for what I had done and gave her some loving strokes.
Thanks to Flysurfer, the Soul is hailproof, not a scratch but lesson learned!