Yesterday evening, still with that surfed-out glow after a 3h wave session near Santa Cruz, CA on my 7m (wind averaging 32 during session - WINDY), I attended a lecture by surfer-extraordinaire Gerry Lopez at UCSC about his new book "SURF IS WHERE YOU FIND IT".
Historically well-informed surfers and kiters coming from a surf background will recognize Gerry Lopez as among the most influential surfers of the 20th century (or see Wikipedia page). Gerry Lopez was one of the first guys to charge at Pipeline, Mr Pipeline back in the 70's and 80's (perhaps), important contributor to modern surfboard design and an early pioneer of surfing in Indonesia etc etc. He now has partly traded his surfboard for snowboards (although he still surfs and still rips).
After various introductory remarks, Gerry's readings from his new book and slide show of pictures from the book (with comments), Gerry took questions from the audience. When asked by an audience member "you have been heavily involved with surfing and snowboarding, what is next for you". He replied (and I paraphrase), 'maybe I'd like to try kiting'. This was in a room with 300 surfers and no kiters that I recognized (so he was not indulging the desires of the audience).
I know for me wave kiting has been part of an evolution of surf-like board sports including 35y of real surfing and 15y of snowboarding and now 5y of wave kiting. I guess what impressed me about his comment is that Gerry --one of my heros from my surfing roots beginning in the early 70's-- indicated that he apparently recognizes that kiting is one of the surfing sports (surf is where you find it) that is ranks in his mind as being worthy of trying, along with with real surfing and snowboarding.