teh Forum

You might be asking yourself, "Who uses the word 'bitchin' these days?" I DO to describe what I consider the most BITCHIN extreme sport of all time! As an avid extreme sport enthusiast, who's grown up riding almost every type of board made for extreme usage, it’s a real rarity that I get this excited about a new interest. What sport could this babbling fool be babbling about?



Kiteboarding!

I first saw it a few years back in San Diego, and since I’ve moved back to the OC, I haven’t seen it at all. But after spending a few weeks engulfed in the sport as a spectator in the Kiteboarding capital of the world, Maui, I dropped a couple bills and took a lesson. Normally I would advise against lessons to save you a few bucks and tell you to go out and teach yourself, but I think lessons for kiteboarding are mandatory if you plan on getting into it due the to extremely dangerous amount of power involved. I dropped $300 just have someone strap me into one of the kites and tell me what and what not to do and how to launch the kite. I didn’t even get to strap on the board for the $300 I spent, just a lesson on the safety precautions, proper techniques, and body surfing with the kite. But if I threw caution to the wind (bad pun) and just went out to the coast, strapped on a board, and threw my kite up without knowing what I was supposed to be doing, I would have been blown all around the beach until I got hit by a moving car or drowned. But all that stupid death nonsense aside, I’m having more fun with this sport than I’ve had with skateboarding, wakeboarding, snowboarding, surfing, bmx, motocross, even underwater basket weaving, which is a close second.

Just thought I’d share my excitement with all ya’ll and tell you to rush out and spend two grand on a basic kit (kite, board, harness, strings, and control bar), cuz it’s WELL worth it!

Yeah I will certainly be trying that out soon. My mom's friend's daughter is a pro kiteboarder. Maybe I can get a free $300 (You really paid $300 you freakin fool?!? ) lesson from her.

I paid $240 for a 5 hour lesson, if you can find cheaper kiteboarding lessons, then I'm a fool. Lessons aren't cheap! And if you didn't hear me the first time, they're mandatory for this sport! For everyone! Including myself, and I have alot of water time with different board sports behind my belt. So what choice did I have if I'm not friends with a pro?

And If you think that's pricey, two days after the lesson I blew $1800 on all the gear. I couldn't wait! And now I go almost every day after school. I'm hooked!

I've seen some brave souls doing that shit on the beaches of Chiba; I'm sure you could get a lesson there, ender, for only 70,000yen...

Is it too dangerous to take that out into the open sea? Or are you limited to the coastline? I'd heard stories of people windsurfing between islands in Hawaii and I'm wondering if you could also kite-surf island-hop too. Or is that just frazy talk?

So after a couple weeks how are you doing? Is it easy to start busting tricks. What can people do on those things?

BTW - can you give me a lesson?

Goemon wrote:Is it too dangerous to take that out into the open sea? Or are you limited to the coastline? I'd heard stories of people windsurfing between islands in Hawaii and I'm wondering if you could also kite-surf island-hop too. Or is that just frazy talk?

Some pro named Adam Koch kiteboarded from the Catalina Island to Newport beach, which is about a 20 mile gap. Some of the gaps between the islands are no longer than 40 miles, so I suppose it's been attempted or is going to be. And if you get in trouble that far off the coast, there are excellent recovery protocols to save your butt. One of the coolest techniques in this sport is called the "self-rescue". If you're equipment breaks, or your body breaks, while you're a mile off the coast, and you can't re-launch your kite, you can swim to your inflated kite floating in the water and use it as a raft with a sail and just lay back and let the wind pull you in. I've had to do this a number of times. Finally I got smart and started bringing a small flask out with me so when my shit breaks, or I just get too tired, or I just feel like drinking hard alcohol out of the blue, I climb in my kite, whip out the flask, and catch a tan while the wind pulls me to dry land. good times

enderzero wrote:So after a couple weeks how are you doing? Is it easy to start busting tricks. What can people do on those things? BTW - can you give me a lesson?

After a couple weeks, I'm still learning how to carve upwind, jump, and turn. All the basics. I pretty much have turning down, and i'm almost have jumping down. I caught about 20 ft of air the other day with about a 6 second hang time and it was the craziest feeling.

You'll never believe it but Hood River City in Oregon on the Columbia River has an active kiteboarding scene. We go that way once or twice every summer camping and caving and see fools like Beeph out there catching HOOOGE air. Something about the shape of the river gorge in that area makes the water there consistently windy there all the time. It looks cool, but water scares me, ho hum.

This coming from a former seaman in the navy.

Actually I would believe it...and I knew that. Apparently the scene there rivals that of Maui.

Yeah, hood river is where the sport got started from what I hear. My brother and I met like 4 people from oregon and seattle while in Maui, 3 hippies and 1 really cute, really dirty, hippie girl. Hood is where they got into it, but they ended up in Maui. Texas is another hot spot for the sport. The stars at night are big and bright.

It's true Ry, I can hardly swim at all, just enough doggy paddlin' to keep alive is about all.

It's funny that you would reference hippies to hood river... we go there every summer for a VW bus/vanagan festival....tis groovy