Sunday morning, 11/13/05
A cup of coffee, and some thoughts about our sport of kiteboarding.
Its been around 5 years now that I have been involved in this unbelievable sport. Reading through Kiteforum this morning, I was reading a few posts where some of the newbies have such an awesome stoke about the sport. It sent me thinking about the feeling that I first experienced in the first year of participating in this sport.
The amazing thing is, we are still in the infancy of our sport in the public’s eye. There are still a huge number of people in the world who have not seen our sport before. You see them on the beach every time you take a session. They ask how it works, if we can come back to shore, all the questions that we laugh about and answer freely.
Surfing brought me in the direction of kiteboarding. Already spending years in the ocean laying on my stomach and paddling over the water, when I first saw kiteboarding on a VHS video in High Tide Surf Shop, I thought, holy shit, look at that. At that time in early 2001, the sport of kiteboarding was full of neon colored kites and huge control bars with leader lines that could keep cattle together. There were mostly 2-line kites, and 4 line was still being developed into what would become the mainstream, which 5th line is now evading. I looked at the video and it looked like the next wild step in my progression of board sports. It looked crazy, it looked wild. But it looked mostly, fun to me. To most of my surfer friends it looked like a retarded thing to try to do in the ocean. There was little training or lessons to teach you how to do it.
Today, I can sit and look at all the innovations that each kite company comes out with. Sometimes I think we forget how it used to be. The sport has come a long way in a short time. Just being able to put this stuff all together and make it work was an impressive thing back in 2001. The kites are all now very solid and work almost like a nice new car. Costing almost as much, but they all work great.
The sport still has a nice edge, it always there if you want it. Kiteboarding is a lot like driving. Some people drive fast through corners, and some people brake and take the turn with moderate speed. However you choose to kite, you do it how you enjoy. The way you choose to ride, just cruising or doing something unhooked to blind with speed, is up to you. The feeling you get can change from session to session. Some days I feel like cruising on a strapless surfboard... Other days I feel like trying something that was never attempted. As long as we don’t take the sport for granted we will have years of enjoyment for it in the future. It still blows my mind that all of this developed technology, and simplicity, can work for us like it does.
Kiteboarding, or Kitesurfing…whatever you call it, still gives me a good feeling.
What do you get from it? Whatever stage your at...
- JD
Location: Cape Hatteras, NC
Graphic Designer
http://www.realkiteboarding.com