Well that was a fail. Not because I was a fail but because the wind wasn’t there. The instructor was using a 6 meter kite and he couldn’t even keep it afloat so what did I do you ask. Well I am glad that you asked, I went to the beach to work on my tan and get some salt h2o on my skin which I do have to say is pure awesomeness.
Now for those who are not already accustomed to the equipment of Kite Boarding let me fill you in. The kites are sized according to the square meters of space that they take up. They are also classified by the style but since I don’t have a grasp on that I am not going to attempt to confuse you with it either. So for training you are supposed to use a 1.5M or 2M kite until you can grasps turns and overall awesomeness that is Kite Boarding. Then after you get the very basics they bump you up to a 3.5 for more control maneuvers which is primarily single handed operation of the kite with both your left and right hands. Then once you have mastered that you go to a 6M kite for finer tuning and if you are good there then you go to that h2o where I will be tomorrow but that is the next blog I am going to write, since it has yet to happen, so stand by for more information. So at this point if you are able to guide a 6M kite you should be able to guide a 8-12M kite but since you are going to be on the h2o that is why you need another lesson.
So I finally get my lesson on my 2nd day down here in Tarifa, which I do have to say is extremely nice. The weather is very warm. The h2o is nice as well and is salty, just the way I like it, and the people here are extremely friendly. Be it for the fact that I don’t speak Spanish and well since they are a tourist destination they are used to it or for the fact that they are extremely friendly to begin with who knows but I still like it here. So I am on my way to the center and I get a call on my movil, which is pronounced “mobile” as in mobile phone, asking if I can come to the center because there are 2 more students that are going to be starting from the beginning so I can just in with them. This is good two fold. First since the wind yesterday was not cooperating the 45 minutes of lessons that I had has been nullified and second by having more people in the group I get more time allotted for the lesson. Normally the lessons are with groups of 4 people totaling 9 hours being that each pair of persons gets a kite and therefore get 4.5 hours of fly time over the 9 hours. So by having 2 more students instead of 3 more one of us is going to get more fly time and low and behold it is me since the other 2 people are friends who don’t speak English so they are paired up, naturally, and I am off by myself. So while going over the technical stuff that I learned yesterday with the other students I am left to set up the kites which is a learning process for me and one that I enjoy.
So after doing the whole group instruction thing for a while we are let loose to get flying the kites. I crash mine sometimes but overall I am doing much better than person numero dos who doesn’t grasp the “push-pull aspect of steering” the kite. So while Antonio, the awesome instructor, is helping those guys I have managed to learn self-launching of the kite and began the one handed steering all on my own. So after letting person numero tres take over my kite I am shagging downed kites. This is good for me since it gets me a chance to learn the launch windows of the kites which will help if I need to get some random person from the beach to help me launch. It is after shagging downed kites for probably 20 minutes or more we stop using the 2M kites and bust out the 3.5M kite for some more tuning and what would begin the lesson for one handed operations.
Now being that I have an extraordinary amount of time on my hands while at work, I mean after hours of course, I have watched countless YouTube.Com videos so I already have a basic grasp, haha pun intended, on how one handed operations work. So once I have been deemed qualified on the 3.5M kite I do the “truffle shuffle” over the creek to the shop and get the said 6M kite that wouldn’t fly for me yesterday. So once that is inflated I am basically left to myself since Antonio is helping the other two guys. After a couple of crashes Antonio comes over and gives me some pointers and they greatly help with self-launching. Now with the training kites that I was learning on are self-inflated but with the non-training kites they are not self-inflating and this is why I can essentially work autonomously with just a few pointers here and there. The good thing is that the 6M kite is actually starting to pull me a little. At one point towards the end of the session Antonio and I were talking about my progress and where to go for the next session and the kite actually pulled me about 3 meters because I wasn’t paying attention. So I did what I was trained to do and released the bar and the kite lofted for a moment and then tanked, hard. But that let Antonio and I continue our conversation and we decided that it was best to come back in 90 minutes or so and begin the 2nd session since I was progressing faster than the other two, thanks YouTube.com, and that the next session would be on the h2o.
This is all good news to me since I figured that would be retained to the beach for the 2nd session and the 3rd would be on the h2o. So I leave and get some lunch with the plan of rendezvousing 90 minutes from now and be riding confidently on the h2o by the time the shop closed. Although this did not happen because of a scheduling conflict, dang private lesson peoples, I am confident that before the afternoon siesta tomorrow I will be a wave riding-kite surfing machine! Or at least I will be able to get up on the h2o and be able to launch, re-launch, and get from point A to point B with some dignity.
Well it is time for me to work of the “Sun Drunk” hangover that I have, since I slept on the beach for 2.5 hours after finding out about my lesson, and I also have to cook some dinner and rehydrate.
Stay Frosty
-C
20 June 2011
The start of my 22 day vacation
Well I would just like to begin this with the fact that I swaying back and forth in a peach colored canvas hammock that is extremely comfortable and extremely convenient for allowing me to catch up on my blog writings.
So after a confusing trip down here to Tarifa in the Cadiz province in Spain I finally arrived in what would exactly be described as a bungalow. Although I was hoping for a beach sided bungalow I am content with the fact that for the price I am paying I did extremely well for myself. I have two sun tanning chairs, a picnic style table, said hammock, an outdoor sink, small barbeque, a real live cactus, some chickens in a chicken coop and two lovely furry dogs among a dozen or so medium size bushes and small palm trees in a delightfully landscaped high hedged yard with 2 ½ other bungalows. One is the same size as mine just a different layout and the other is 1 ½ times the size and is the only one occupied, said dogs stay here. As far as the accommodations for the bungalow itself, well that isn’t half bad at all. . . . Sorry about that pause I had to push the hammock again since I had stopped swaying. I have what would be considered a queen size bed here in Spain in one room, 2 single beds in another, an L shaped couch, 19” T.V. bar style high-top chair equipped kitchen island for dinning along with a full size, for Spain at least, refrigerator and quaint kitchenette. Not to shabby when it is all tied together with hardwood, actual hardwood that is, flooring and several screened windows. Oh how I absolutely miss screened windows. It seems here in Spain that they don’t believe in them and that is really annoying since I would love to leave my windows open all year here but since they don’t have screening I don’t.
Anyways, enough about that stuff back to my trip down here. Well I had booked a lesson, well three actually, to learn how to Kite Board something that I have always wanted to learn for a while, but just never got around to actually learning. So I figured that with Tarifa being a so called “Kite Boarding Mecca” I would give it a go here in Spain. So while I was here with Timmy back in April, more on that in another blog which I promise is coming . . . eventually, I got a bunch of names of companies and what not and then did my homework as to see the difference in class length vs price that way I can get more bang for my buck, which is actually a little more now since the exchange rate has come down since I originally was planning on it or about 12 cents on the Euro which helps. So I found this place, emailed to set up a lesson, booked accommodations, what would end up being this killer bungalow, and I was all set. Well except for the fact that my Spanish cellular phone then decided to stop taking incoming calls and messages. Although it is nice to not get stupid messages it also meant that I missed a few messages saying that my accommodations had fallen thru and if I still wanted to do the lesson I would have to call and work things out. Well 10 days went by and the school didn’t hear from me and thus cancelled my lesson and accommodations. Then Thursday, a week before today, I called to finalize my arrangements and was told about what I missed and my only thought was FML. So after a whole lot of phone tag and emails back and forth I finally had a reservation and a place to stay but that wasn’t even finalized until Wednesday at 11:25 am when I was supposed to check in at 6pm and of which I did not get that message until 4:30pm after returning to my computer after being out walking around Seville and hanging out with some friends in Utrera and also getting a phone that works, Hoo-Ray!. So I get home and pack, 3 bathing suits, 2 shirts of the button down style, 1 pair each of shorts, socks, sneakers, and flip flops and some food, mainly tuna packets and energy drinks, and I was off and driving.
230 km, 150 minutes and a few wrong turns later and I was in Tarifa and still lost since I failed to get directions before I left. I guess I was hoping that I would just instinctively know where to go and apparently I was wrong. Well after making a few calls and driving around I finally met up with Javi who would get me settled in my bungalow. He showed me how to work the gate, the door lock, told me where the lights were and said watch out for the friendly dogs and that was good enough for me.
I’ll be right back. It is time for my first Kite Boarding lesson which is the beginning of awesomeness on the verge of EPICNESS!.
Stay Frosty
-C
So after a confusing trip down here to Tarifa in the Cadiz province in Spain I finally arrived in what would exactly be described as a bungalow. Although I was hoping for a beach sided bungalow I am content with the fact that for the price I am paying I did extremely well for myself. I have two sun tanning chairs, a picnic style table, said hammock, an outdoor sink, small barbeque, a real live cactus, some chickens in a chicken coop and two lovely furry dogs among a dozen or so medium size bushes and small palm trees in a delightfully landscaped high hedged yard with 2 ½ other bungalows. One is the same size as mine just a different layout and the other is 1 ½ times the size and is the only one occupied, said dogs stay here. As far as the accommodations for the bungalow itself, well that isn’t half bad at all. . . . Sorry about that pause I had to push the hammock again since I had stopped swaying. I have what would be considered a queen size bed here in Spain in one room, 2 single beds in another, an L shaped couch, 19” T.V. bar style high-top chair equipped kitchen island for dinning along with a full size, for Spain at least, refrigerator and quaint kitchenette. Not to shabby when it is all tied together with hardwood, actual hardwood that is, flooring and several screened windows. Oh how I absolutely miss screened windows. It seems here in Spain that they don’t believe in them and that is really annoying since I would love to leave my windows open all year here but since they don’t have screening I don’t.
Anyways, enough about that stuff back to my trip down here. Well I had booked a lesson, well three actually, to learn how to Kite Board something that I have always wanted to learn for a while, but just never got around to actually learning. So I figured that with Tarifa being a so called “Kite Boarding Mecca” I would give it a go here in Spain. So while I was here with Timmy back in April, more on that in another blog which I promise is coming . . . eventually, I got a bunch of names of companies and what not and then did my homework as to see the difference in class length vs price that way I can get more bang for my buck, which is actually a little more now since the exchange rate has come down since I originally was planning on it or about 12 cents on the Euro which helps. So I found this place, emailed to set up a lesson, booked accommodations, what would end up being this killer bungalow, and I was all set. Well except for the fact that my Spanish cellular phone then decided to stop taking incoming calls and messages. Although it is nice to not get stupid messages it also meant that I missed a few messages saying that my accommodations had fallen thru and if I still wanted to do the lesson I would have to call and work things out. Well 10 days went by and the school didn’t hear from me and thus cancelled my lesson and accommodations. Then Thursday, a week before today, I called to finalize my arrangements and was told about what I missed and my only thought was FML. So after a whole lot of phone tag and emails back and forth I finally had a reservation and a place to stay but that wasn’t even finalized until Wednesday at 11:25 am when I was supposed to check in at 6pm and of which I did not get that message until 4:30pm after returning to my computer after being out walking around Seville and hanging out with some friends in Utrera and also getting a phone that works, Hoo-Ray!. So I get home and pack, 3 bathing suits, 2 shirts of the button down style, 1 pair each of shorts, socks, sneakers, and flip flops and some food, mainly tuna packets and energy drinks, and I was off and driving.
230 km, 150 minutes and a few wrong turns later and I was in Tarifa and still lost since I failed to get directions before I left. I guess I was hoping that I would just instinctively know where to go and apparently I was wrong. Well after making a few calls and driving around I finally met up with Javi who would get me settled in my bungalow. He showed me how to work the gate, the door lock, told me where the lights were and said watch out for the friendly dogs and that was good enough for me.
I’ll be right back. It is time for my first Kite Boarding lesson which is the beginning of awesomeness on the verge of EPICNESS!.
Stay Frosty
-C
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