Call me Ishmael, hunting Moby Dick was easier and safer.
I spent this winter in Baja learning to kitesurf. As an expert mountain biker and advanced snowboarder with decades dedicated to each, I was both genuinely humble and supremely confident that if others could learn then surely so could I. More important than strength, fitness or body control, I have a highly curated capacity for suffering. My sarcasm and stoicism screen the entrance to a deep black psychological Pain Cave hardened like a Normandy bunker through endless hike-a-bikes, cactus collisions, and epic icy yardsales. I came bearing a patient approach and realistic timeline for a solid 10 days of struggle with little payoff and only incremental improvements. If a day was rough, I’d cheerfully step back until my attitude was recharged with beer and snorkeling, and my rope burns healed. I’d gird myself back up by my loins and re-rig my lines with a smile.
Call me Ishmael, hunting Moby Dick was easier and safer. Kitesurfing is the hardest thing I’ve ever tried. Drug impotently through the waves gagging and choking, splattered on rocks, snared in my own lines – each day I invented a new form of failure while spending thousands of dollars for the privilege. I should have gone fishing.
Day 1: crashed my kite onshore, an inauspicious beginning.
Day 2: strapped to my instructor bodydragging through the chop while avoiding getting kicked in the balls or kicking him in the balls.
Day 3: a random kite crashed down on top of me, the lost control bar snared my lines rendering them totally useless. I had to be saved by someone I can only describe as Superman, who alighted effortlessly next to me and towed me to safety, then vanished back into the clouds.
Day 4: Wrapped around a buoy like a tetherball.
Day 5: Kite and I become a ball of cat yarn, took an hour to drift pathetically into shore, amazed to not have tourniqueted a limb.
Day 6: used my kite like a liferaft to wallow my way between a row of sport fishing boats while narrowly avoiding their anchors.
Day 7: ended $200 lesson early after almost standing up on the board – first day without a kitastrophe! Er, nope, tore my bathing suit and gauged my toe.
Day 8: keelhauled through the shorebreak with waist harness wrenched up so violently it bruised both my ribs and coccyx. I used a bidet for the next week.
Day 9: Kite stuck in the water, drifted past the landing zone, Instructor had to wade out and keep me from floating south to Cabo.
Day 10: Lost my board in 14 seconds, 20 minutes to float to shore, 10 minutes to swim out and find the board, kite blew a hole.
Day 11: Kite becomes my Queequeg’s Coffin, 45 minutes adrift before washing up on the beach. Copied my tattoo on the kite canopy.
Day 12: Stood up on the board for 3 whole seconds, kite immediately looped three times around itself, spent 30 minute drifting to shore and an hour unfouling my lines.
Day 13: my first glorious ride lasted 10 entire seconds. For a brief moment I harnessed the wind, held my kite purposefully in the window and glided like a Katarina Witt across the water, then retired for the season.
22 hours, 13 sessions, $2600, 1 successful ride. Totally hooked. See you in the Spring Los Barriles.