Finished!

I just finished my IKO (International Kiteboarding Organization) instructor class! After two weeks, eighty hours of theory and practical, and about twenty hours of homework and study, I can teach kiteboarding. I took a course here in Sri Lanka with this fun, funny, incredibly experienced guy named Matty from England. He made the course a pleasure while filling our heads with twenty-one years of experience kiteboarding. He runs a shop in the UK called Zenith Kiting, and travels all over the world as an IKO examiner teaching these courses. It was a complete pleasure to work with someone so knowledgable and with such wisdom as to understand that humor and instruction can be comfortable bedfellows.

Thank you to Matty!

It turns out I really quite enjoy it. The process of teaching someone something so complex, and watching them progress and become more excited and stoked along the way is deeply satisfying.

I have thought for a while that I would love to find a local kid or two in all these places we travel around the world, and do lessons for them for free. It sounds strange, but in many of these less developed countries kiteboarding can be a way to a better life. If a local kid can learn to kite and get employment at a kite shop in their area it can be a good income and a gateway to seeing the world that would otherwise be out of reach.

Every kite spot I have been to I always see this one kid or two that are there every day, watching, with an interested gleam in their eye: Like this one, who was one of my students during the course.

It is something I have been thinking about for a while, but now as an old retired guy it started to make a lot more sense to get my instructor certificate. Often enough, Tam and I cannot afford to go to certain places because of our meager retirement budget (there are some really expensive places out there in the world), and taking a job as an instructor is a way to get to these more expensive places that we want to see. Generally, kite instructors are not payed that well (average around the world is about twenty to twenty-five dollars an hour), but often you can arrange for partial cost of accommodation in more expensive places.

Anyway, here is to a new adventure for an old retired guy:

Cheers!