So this weekend had all sorts of successes and failures.
Friday night I got in the car and drove to Cape Cod. I spent the night at infinity’s and her roommate Ryan’s place and then after some fun yard sales met up with RyanSchenk to go buy a wetsuit.
We drove to Buzzard’s Bay and, just by chance, met Shannon Best (a kiteboarding professional and kite designer) who happened to be on tour with the BestKiteboarding van. Ryan talked kites as I tried on wetsuits. After the wetsuit was purchased we returned to Falmouth, bought some lunch, and hit the beach.
Kiteboarding was fantastic.
The wind was strong and after Ryan took a few runs, with a couple near 10 foot jumps, I got my gear on and went into the water.
I made huge strides with my riding. Ryan has a new kite with excellent power control and after a few tries with the kite and board I was able to get up and stay up for both the power dive and the upstroke.
The way Kiteboarding works is as you sit in the water you control the kite so that it hovers directly above your head. Then you steer it sharply downward and the kite dives into the power zone and gets a boost of air. That will pull you out of the water. Then you loop the kite back upward and repeat so that the kite moves in the air in a sinusoidal path. The toughest parts for me are the upstroke, keeping pressure on the kite, and properly digging the edge of my board into the water.
My best run probably only lasted about 10-15 seconds. But what a rush!
Shortly thereafter I gave the reigns back to Ryan and he then started practicing some backflips.
Video 1: This video shows the kite moving in that sinusoidal path that I mentioned above. Also, check out ryan’s sweet circular turn around.
The only downside of the weekend was that the road to the kiteboarding beach was a bit… crazy. In addition to completely soiling my car, I bottomed out at one point. The process of bottoming out resulted in my transmission oil pan getting mauled. So upon arriving back in CT I found that I was leaking transmission oil.
Tonight I’ll be heading over to the junk yard to see if I can salvage the part from another Altima.