These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things… On Kiteboarding.

This post was originally posted on 07 April, 2023, and moved here, to my new blog.

Kiteboarding!

It is the long, smooth, cruisey downwinder, effortlessly looping the kite and carving alternating edges along the swell caused by the very same wind that powers your progress. It is dropping into a wave on the perfect sideshore conditions and feeling the transition of power shift from the kite to the gravitational acceleration of the board as it begins planing down the face of a wave. It is nailing the perfect rotation under a looping kite when your external world is synchronized to your internal perception of that world so perfectly that, for just a moment, the two are inseparable. Or, sometimes, it is when the mushrooms are working their magic, and the day is sparkling it’s best intensity of existence at you as you cruise the infinity of the ocean, surrounded by whales and turtles, and all is bright, and correct.

This gift of peace and presence is why I kite.

It is one of my favorite things.

It is also the people. It is the camaraderie you find with the like minded explorer, the fellow adventurer, and the lover that you would trade everyone else on the water for in an instant: The one you can’t believe that you are lucky enough to be here with in the first place.

These people, this person, is why I kite.

They are one of my favorite things.

It is the twenty-three times you have failed spectacularly to land a new impossible trick, followed by that glimmer of hope on the twenty-fourth wipeout. And, it is eventually the successful landing of the same trick on the twenty-fifth try.

This willingness to continue failing on faith alone is why I kite.

It is one of my favorite things.

It is the lack of an internal combustion engine coughing noisy black poison into the only air we will ever get, where you can hear the hiss of the edge of your board slicing through perfect flat water, and see the clarity of the air as it can only be seen from the sea. It is the singular, constant sound of the wind in your ears, silenced only for the longest seconds of time when you jump high enough to drift with that same sound.

This careful and playful interaction with a perfect environment is why I kite.

It, too, is one of my favorite things.

It is the days when the wind doesn’t cooperate or the body is too thrashed, and the adventure that follows when you cannot be in the water. It is the places it takes you, and it is the adventure that it takes to get to these places that are off the map of your home. 

This adventure is why I don’t kite some days.

They are still some of my favorite things. 

Life is good.

This is one of my favorite things.