Hardwater Kiter

Okay I know I've been slacking off on this blog nonsense.  What can I say? All this Holiday Cheer business sucks up a lot of time and on top of that we've been trying to get out and ride every chance we get.  The last thing I want to do some nights after riding is come home and do this blog stuff. Okay maybe that's not entirely true.  I have to admit on the rare occasion I see something or think of something I want to put in the blog and can't wait to get home and write about it.  But by the time I get home one of two things usually occurs. One, I'm too tired to start writing or two, I completely forget what I wanted to write about.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Okay enough of that, this is a blog about kiting and kites so let's get to it.   In this blog entry I'll try to describe my first impressions of the new Peter Lynn Chargers that I just recieved.  I'm not going to go into too much technical detail because I'm g...

You know what blows?  Having perfect conditions, solid wind and a pile of new kites to ride only to haved it screwed by the fact that you're lazy.  Or forgetful.  OR BOTH as the case was with me. I got out of work at noon today and drove over to Naples to ride Long Lake off Seth Merriam's parents place.  The ice was unbelievable.  It was so clear I was looking down at the sandy lake bottom 3 feet below me.  It gives the illusion of hovering or in the Christmas spirit, you are literally walking on water. (check longlakecam.com for live footage) The wind was blowing maybe 8-10mph which I thought would be a great opportunity to try out the 19m Peter Lynn Charger.  I set my launch anchor screw, set up the kite, launched and "NEEEEOOOOW!" off I went. Try saying "NEEEEOOOW!" fast and you know what I mean. First I have to say to both pro and anti Peter Lynn/twinskins/ARC that a lot of complaints about low end will be done away with.  This 19m A...

Lake Chocorua I've held off on writing my observations of the Peter Lynn Chargers until I could get a few hours flying time in. Today I put them to work and really got more of a feel for how they handle in a variety of conditions. We've had the new Chargers for a couple of weeks now and we've had the opportunity to fly them in some pretty mundane conditions with winds blowing 10-15mph and 4" soft snow.  Sure it was some nice flying and good for getting a basic feel for the Chargers but not really conditions that would really bring the Charger's abilities to light. Until today. I got to Lake Chocorua about 3:30.  The wind was blowing out of the NW at approximately 15-20mph gusting to 30ish.  The Lake surface was orange peel textured "boiler plate"  and about 6" thick.  This was the first day I'd been out on Chocorua for the season and I was pretty psyched about the surface conditions.  Good and fast but textured so the fact...

The ice is in! After what seems like a ridiculously long period of warm weather this sudden cold snap is making serious progress in the ice making department.  Winter is  definately here and Mike and I went north on Friday to ride Lake Umbagog, one of our favorite riding areas.  It's a pretty long ride from here, appoximately 75 miles but it's a beautiful place to ride.  Often blessed with steady winds,  great ice and zero cell phone coverage it's a great place to get away from it all. The town of Errol is by my standards pretty damn awesome.  It's small and in the winter almost a ghost town apart from the snowmobilers and ice fisherman that come through during the winter months.  There's LL Cote if you're looking for a sled rental, cold weather gear or an AK47 and the Errol General Store for kickass sandwiches, coffee or just about anything else you need.  Oh, and if you speak french it will help you fit in. There's...

Let me start by saying Jim Cline (I like to call him J.C.) has what in my opinion one of the best jobs in the world.  He's a precision tree cutter meaning he removes trees from areas that are sensitive and could be damaged if the tree comes down wrong.  It's a great job because it's outside, he's self employed and makes enough money in the summer that he can ride all winter. AND, you can't cut trees when the wind is blowing.  I mean c'mon is there anything better?! J.C. showed up at the house the other day to check in, see where the riding was and find out our plans for the day. He's a character to say the least. He's a gun toting, bird watching, republican, amature astronomer and pilot. A bit of a tinkerer, and about as "hard core" as anyone you'll ever meet. He does double centuries (200 mile) bike rides in regular shorts for God's sake. He's not the youngest kid to come out and play but he's definately one of the...

Local Field Last Friday Molly and I decided to ride some fields we haven't ridden in a couple of years.  They're close to town but hard to get to if there's snow.  Fortunately we have a good amount of Alpine Touring (AT) gear so we can easily get to these fields without too much trouble. We dug our climbing skins out (strips of sticky backed mohair) and with the free heel action of our AT bindings we were able to "skin" out across the deep snow to where we wanted to ride.  Handy stuff that AT gear. What a crazy stretch of wind we've been having.  It's been all WSW and gusty as hell.  It's the kind of wind that blows 17mph and gusts to 34mph.  And it can be nukin' 20 feet to your left and not even a puff where you're standing.  It's the kind of wind that I really appreciate being on the Peter Lynns.  I prefer to rig for the lighter end of the wind range in those conditions because I can always depwer the wing if the wind gets too ...

It's be an interesting couple of days around here lately. We got hit by the storm that rolled through the midwest and got almost s foot of snow at home and more in other places. There's no ice to be had yet so were riding in the fields which is okay but getting to them is a bit of a project. Thursday Molly and I went to meet up with our new friend and future kiting addict Ron Wold up at his home in Wonalancet. We met Ron and Vickie out on Choco last season just after a session. They live on a farm with one of the best fields around for riding west winds and offered us private access in exchange for a quick intro kiting lesson.   After almost a full year of trying to get together we met up with Ron last Thursday.   We got to the farm about 1:00 in the afternoon and the winds were really REALLY gusty.  The surface conditons looked great and I headed out on our Peter Lynn 8m Venom 2 to cruise around the fields and get an...

I didn't think it would be as good as it was. I woke up around 5:00 and went out to get some early morning moonlight photos of all the white. The whole time I was out all I could think of was how good it looked and how the weather reports we saying it would be blowing up to 20mph for the day. But how much riding can you get in on 3 1/2 inches of snow? Actually quite a bit especially if it stays cold and the winds drift it around. We were out for almost 4 hours today and for the most part it was really good. The snow was thin but the grass was slick so it turned out to be decent riding. At first the snow was sticking to our skis but Molly went back to the van and got the tuning kit. After a quick buff wax the skis were a lot better and we could actually carry some speed. Molly was on her Apex 7.5 at first then moved up to the Peter Lynn 15m Synergy. Mike was flying his new 10m Synergy. I took the 15m and got some good pulls when the wind picked up a little more. I even got a couple ...

Molly, Mike and I went North the other day to see is we could get another session up by Santa's Village. We drove up and were pleasantly suprised to see the surface conditions were still prime but but dissapointed by the lack of wind. The wasn't a puff to be felt. We opted to drive around and scope out some locations in hopes of maybe finding good surface with some wind. Everywhere we went it was the same story, great surface but ZERO wind. That's the name of the game with kiting I guess, sometimes you score without trying and sometimes you get skunked no matter how hard you try. While we were out I got some pics of the areas we checked out.(see below) Unfortunately after a few short days of scratching sessions out on the small oasis of snow we had up north we got hit by torential rain and 68deg F. temps. It just killed the surface and our hopes of getting out to ride anytime soon. It rained like hell Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and then the sun came out late morning...

I'm always amazed by what you find here in the mountains. Molly and I decided to head up to Crawford today to get some riding in if we were fortunate enough to have some wind. Then later submit our GPS speeds to the Stormboarding Speed Ranking not because we were fast today but just to show our support and see how our conditions are compared to other places. When we got to the parking lot and didn't find any wind but we did find a fox. The ranger says the idiots at the "Smog Railroad" feed a whole family of foxes and they're pretty tame. He's a beautiful animal but it's sad that I could get so close to get this pic. I thought it was illegal to feed wildlife in wilderness areas. I can't ride my bike on it but they can run the train on Mt. Washington. Yeah that makes sense. Okay, gotta simmer down. Since there wasn't any wind We decided we'd head back home by way of Rt. 2 to Gorham and see if there was anywhere else to ride. We went North and...