Next Trips:
Winter 2011-2012 we'll head for Mexico when it looks like good winds.
The fourth week in January we'll fly to Boracay Island in the Philippines for about four weeks of tropical kiteboarding. It sure would be neat to see you there!
In the spring we will probably do our usual van-drive to
We got a phone call from our friend, Christian Canese, saying let's go to Mexico in two days. The lack of advanced notice does not show Chris' lack of planning, but the nature of the wind there.
- At 5:00 the morning of October 8th Christian left his Sunny Slope home in his SUV with our friend Steve and with and us following in a rental car (because our van was having transmission problems). We were on the water in the beautiful warm wind by mid afternoon.
7 seconds
Steve's spin-jibe shows how practice can make it so smooth. - Video by Christian Canese
8 seconds
Steve gets jerked around some when he lets the kite get straight downwind. He is so much better than us because he's got bigger balls. - Video by Christian Canese
13 seconds
Carving S-turns are fun and necessary when Steve pops up out of nowhere. - Video by Christian Canese
16 seconds
Alex' friendly dog decided to swim out to greet me on one of my best surf-board carves. The dog is OK. - Video by Christian Canese
11 seconds
Arizona Lou CRASHES Jumping Onto Surfboard To Start Up! - Video by Christian Canese
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Arizona Lou Jumps Onto-Surfboard To Start Up Finally Success! - Video by Christian Canese
- What a good trip! We met old friends there and made some new ones. Steve and Chris had to get back home, so they drove back on Tuesday while I stayed for one additional day of good wind, driving back solo on Wednesday.
Steve said the main reason he got into kiteboarding was because of us and our website. And now he is better than us. What a good feeling! You can get more information on the trip HERE in our blog.
Although we arrived (May 24th after a malfunctioning drawbridge) later than usual and later than we intended due to the eight sutures (see SPI trip below), we still had some good days of wind and riding. The non-windy days we did plenty of socializing and work on our website and other projects.
- We got on the Atlantic Ocean only a few times, but then with our Naish Custom Fish 52 x 17.5 surfboard WITH the footstraps. We were a little more comfortable and did reasonably well and even got into the surf a little.
- Pulleys seemed to be the weak link this trip. We replace over six of them on the Cabrinha 12m and Best 6m. After having to swim in three times, we added safety lines to ALL our pulleys, so a pulley could break without the kite falling out of the sky out of control.
- We bought an Epic Infinity as our new low-wind kite. Dimitri refuses to reveal the kite's size (maybe he doesn't really know), but the consensus is that it is a 15m. With only three struts, it seems to do well. I was able keep it in the air and ride on Pamlico Sound when others were giving their kites saltwater baths.
- In June we improved our skills with an advanced lesson from Brian of
KHK
Kitty Hawk Kites kiteboarding center in Rodanthe, NC.
.
At the end of the lesson we improved our jumps and kite loops little and were able to combine them for a jump jibe with a kite loop. Unfortunately we were not able to get any of these exciting maneuvers on camera. For the lesson we had engineered our own version of a radio helmet: FRS radios in pouches attached to each side of our hockey helmet. The system worked better than the commercially available radio helmets that we have used in the past. Don't tell anyone, but non-lubricated condoms worked perfectly for waterproofing.
- We took the June
PASA
Professional Air Sports Association
ICP
Instructor Certification Program
Class and became a certified kiteboard instructor. What a good group (pictured above), representing three states and three countries. We watched demonstrations, learned a lot, did a lot of teaching and some demonstrating of our own. A highlight for us was having John Harris as a practice student. We have been trying, for years, to get him into kiteboarding and we finally did it. As owner of Kitty Hawk Kites, we hope he will find time in his busy schedule to have some fun with the sport. More details in our blog for the class - We headed toward home the first of August, stopping several days in Hutchinson Kansas to visit
Stan
my older brother who is a machinist for Eaton, Corp.
and several days in Altus, Oklahoma to visit
Anne's
my daughter, her husband, Robby and their two daughters Katie Rose and Brooke
, arriving back home in Phoenix on August 13th. It is good to be home, but there is sure a lot of catching up to do!
One of our higher on-camera jumps; Laguna Madre; George Pope's camera!
Got in some good riding, mostly with my 12m Cabrinha Switchblade-4 or 8m kite on my 130 cm Lite Wave Stealth twin-tip board on Laguna Madre. I did a few runs on the Gulf of Mexico, for the first time with my Naish Custom Fish 52 x 17.5 surfboard after adding the footstraps.
- I bought a new 8m Best Nemesis to replace my 8m Cabrinha Switchblade-2 after its trailing edge fabric started coming apart just sitting in the wind on the beach at the North Flats. Because the Nemesis requires extra high pressure, I bought a two-stage electric kite pump, which starts with a "turbine" and finishes with pistons.
- I got off from Phoenix April 23rd, about a month later than expected due to taxes and other things that came up. May 10th I had planned to leave
SPI
and start driving toward
OBX
for the
PASA
Professional Air Sports Association
ICP
Instructor Certification Program
after a late afternoon session on Laguna Madre. The last tack of that last session, I impacted the edge of my board with my right shin and ended up getting eight sutures in the Brownsville Emergency Room. Considering all these things I decided to add three days to my driving by returning home to Phoenix for a week before heading to
OBX.
George (my younger brother), Cindy (his wife) and I went to the Renaissance Festival this afternoon (about 60 miles east of my house). There were thousands of people there. There were lots of theaters, shows, vendors and people wearing period clothing. Highlights for me were the Nunny-Nunny show (risque humor from the viewpoint of nuns) and my first try at trampoline bungee jumping. It took some guts, but I tried both forward and backward flips and now am ready (I hope) to try some while kiteboarding.
How can you turn down an invitation by Bobby Bluehouse to kiteboard in Hawaii for two weeks in December! Nature did not cooperate as all but the first day wind was almost nonexistent so we were forced into other activities like the Indo Board, stand-up paddling, surfing, getting on each others' nerves and working on our business and website respectively.
Second day of
SUP:
Stand-Up Paddleboarding
Arizona Lou, getting a little closer to the big stuff
THE SURFERS: Uncle Bryan, the honcho; Bobby, the inspiration; Chris, the instructor and Lou, the beginner
First day of
SUP
Stand-Up Paddleboarding
(other than one time on OBX with glassy smooth water)
33 seconds
First Surf Lesson In Hawaii: Arizona Lou catches a wave. Maria did the videography and narration.
25 seconds
Arizona Lou (in the black shirt) is the last one standing after a big wave spits out all the other surfers. Be patient and keep your eye on the third wave. At first you can see Bobby Bluehouse, in the red shirt, paddling out and Chris, our instructor, helping Lou get started. Videography by Maria.
Big Joe and Melissa outside the famous Hukilau neighborhood cafe. They quickly became our good friends. Truly beautiful people!
The first part of November was our third kiteboarding trip to Brazil and the second one under the auspices of Kite Adventures. Five of us from three different countries were on the November 7-16 Brazilian Downwinder with some of the best kiteboarding on our globe. Check out some of our videos from our previous Brazil trip. More details here in our Blog.
7:26 minutes
Promotional video from Kite Adventures
12 seconds
Good jumps are still few and far between. Here is a Brazilian try on the Cauipi Lagoon
6 seconds
Jump Jibe - Once in a while we get a decent one, as here on the famous Cauipi Lagoon, near Cumbuco
8 seconds
Beach jump in Cumbuco - make sure you know what you are doing and have soft sand
Disappointing due to low winds and some injuries, but still a good kiteboarding trip. The winds were lower than usual for the whole trip, so our stays at both destinations were shortened, resulting in 101 days (3.6 months) away from home including driving days and two visits to my daughter and her family in Norfolk.
On SPI we took a spin lesson so felt more comfortable trying spins. The winds never favored the Brownsville Ship Channel, though.
In the injury department, our hand got cut as it found an oister bed at Kite Point, our foot got a deep cut when we stepped on a KHK anchor and a finger was injured by someone's kite line. However it was not all bad news as at OBX our surfboard skills improved with our Naish Custom Fish 52 x 17.5 surfboard without foot straps due to the cut foot which precluded using footstraps, jumps, spins etc. for a month.
We did not get on the ocean much, but when we did it was with our surfboard and no footstraps!
New personal records included top speed records of 34.0 mph on our twintip with footstraps and 27.5 mph without footstraps on our surfboard, both records at the Planet of the Apes slick. We did our first downwinder to New Inlet (our GPS waypoint haNew).
We became famous (not really) by talking, twice, about kiteboarding
on the Beach 104 Radio Station. Of course, during the trip we met a lot of great people from all over the world, including old and new friends.
A last minute tropical kiteboarding trip (Feb 4-18, 2010): The Winds were NOT awesome as we expected in February, but it was beautiful place and the temperatures hovered near the 80's day and night! We only kited 13 sessions: eight (53%) out of the 15 days.
Beautiful St Lucia in the southeastern Caribbean
Without much wind, we spent two days touring, us being the designated driver, on the wrong side of the road.
Old water-driven press at the Balenbouche Sugar Plantation
Gos (big) Piton view from the famous Dasheen Restaurant
Accommodations were graciously and reasonably provided by Sammy and Esther
Brice at their Hewanorra Gardens with kitchens and available bicycles to ride a mile to either of the two main kiteboarding locations.
We rented a car two different days and saw some sights with our hotel neighbors from Ireland and Canada. We missed the zip line experience by about a half hour. More info on our blog for the respective dates.
The first half of August,2009 I spent kiteboarding at Belmont Beach in the LA area (my GPS waypoint LBELMO).
See my blog for August, 2009 for details.
October 4th, 2009 was my first time kiteboarding in Arizona - Lake Pleasant about an hour NW of my house in Phoenix. Did it again the 28th. As you might guess, kiteboarding in the Arizona lakes is not a lot of fun with the gusty winds and poor launches. See my October, 2009 blog if you want to torture yourself with more details.
1:48 (after a 15 second commercial) Weather Channel's Jim Cantore's Kiteboarding Taking Off Across the Country aired on NBC's WPTV, Channel 5 in West Palm Beach, FL and we were selected for the intro!
48 seconds
The Cauipe Lagoon, near Combuco was one of the busiest and best kiteboarding spots in Brazil - like participating in unscripted ballet
2:16 min
In Jericoacoara, locals and visitors, alike gravitate to the beach and sand dunes. Get a glimpse of this evening life!
2:41 min
We start by crossing on the Mandou Ferry. You won't believe how small it is or how it is powered. Also watch the fishermen roll their boats on logs
1:03 min
Jump Start? At least that's what we were trying...
>
1:23 min
Our skills have improved since October, 2006, but it is fun to look back on the old challenges in a kiteboarding wonderland that included the Guriu River
45 seconds
Landing On the Beach and Jumping Out of the Foot Straps - Well Sort-of
1:23 min
The Atlantic Ocean is still a challenge for us. Heres how we looked in the Brazilian surf in 2006
4:01 min
Introducing the crew on our trip, including Alberto, our Brazilian guide, setting out the lines, pumping up, launching and landing
