Hardwater Kiter

If there’s anything I’ve learned through all these years of playing in the outdoors it’s that sometimes I have to pick my battles. It’s a fine line between pushing your personal limits and doing something totally reckless and stupid. I wonder which side of the line I was on Friday. Winterstieger As I posted in the short Blog entries the past day or so we were set to get some wind, a lot of wind. And the weather reports were actually right this time! I also described a few of the variables that I thought could be a problem for me to get out there. After a sleepless night I decided to improve my odds of having a good speed session by taking my skis over to a couple local shops to tune them up. Trim disk edger I usually tune my skis by hand but since my hands aren’t working too well these days I decided let a machines do most of the work. Here's a lesson, tune lightly and tune often. I slacked off and my skis were spent beyond my ability (at the moment) to get a good consistent ed...

Just saw the weather report for tomorrow. Partly sunny, gusty winds 20-30mph with occasional gusts over 40mph. Woof!

Or so they say.... So the forcasts are looking pretty good for Friday as far as a speed day goes.  The ice reports I've been getting have been suprising.  After the torrential downpours we had the last few days the ice seems to relatively unscathed.  In fact the surfaces are all back to smooth glass that we had a few weeks back.  Not so good for some riders especially those on snowboards but good conditions for me and good conditions for a speed session. This can go one of two ways.  If you've been following my blog silliness you're familiar with the entry about how easy it is to screw one's self and Friday could be one of those instances.  This could go one of two ways.  The first (and my prefered way)... I pick a good spot with good surface and awesome winds.  I mount up a new pair of Rossignol race technician tuned speed skis to rail on the smooth ice.  I take out the12m Charger (it's itching to have a speed sess...

No Wind Blowing, LETS GO BOWLING!!!! Sometimes we just have to accept defeat. Sometimes, even with all the best wishes and prayers and animal sacrifices in the world, we just can’t change the weather systems no matter how much we’d like to think we can. It’s frustrating and it sucks. Winter in New England can be pretty long and if you don’t have something to keep you occupied you probably drink a lot and have frequent urges to kill yourself or somebody else. Or, you waste every hour, minute, second of life waiting for the next episode of American Idol to come on. In which case I wouldn’t hold it against you if you killed yourself. As a snowkiter you learn to adapt to whatever weather you get stuck with. In the most basic sense it can be as simple as a clothing, gear or location choice. But when the weather doesn’t cooperate at all you really have to dig deep and go with “Plan D” to keep yourself entertained on a cold New England day. This is where you thank whatever dei...

Early Morning Kite Area. Kiting is too much fun.   Fun to the level that some days I struggle with feelings of guilt about it when I'm out there especially when I'm flying solo.  Friday was one of those days because I hit Province again.  The weather was awesome, the wind was awesome  and the surface was awesome.   But inspite of it all every cruise, jump or turn I made there was a little tinge of guilt in the back of my mind knowing that Molly was working and I was getting some miles in.  Kinda sucks but I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. There wasn't much wind in our neck of the woods Saturday.  We wanted to stay close to home and debated whether to go to Chocorua or hit Silver Lake for the first time this season.  Silver is a good spot but comes in late because the depth is around 160'.  Chocorua at 20' freezes much sooner.  Mike went down to Silver an...

I hate to use the term "addiction" but what else can I call it?  Snowkiting is present in almost every thought and every waking hour of every day in the winter.  What else can you call something that causes your heart to jump every time you see a dead leaf fluttering outside a window?  What else causes you to drive 40 minutes to sit out on a frozen lake for hours with your kite dead on the ice waiting for a puff of wind?  What else causes you to look at a couple meters of fabric with a price tag of $1300 dollars and say to youself "That's sick!, I need that!"  I wake up in the morning and fall into the same routine. Turn on computer to start checking multiple weather sites, make a cup of tea, turn on the TV and start bouncing between the weather channel and the local weather, make and take calls from other kiters and try to figure out where to go or who to go with. All in a futile effort to get a ROUGH i...

Gear intensive.  That's what kiting is.  You start out with a 3m trainer kite then you move up to a 5 or 7m either fixed bridal (non-adjustable angle of attack, limited or no depower) or 4 line sheetable (depower, adjustable angle of attack).  Then one day you get skunked by either too much wind or not enough wind and you go looking for another size to fill that wind range.   Before you know it you have a quiver of 5 or 6 kites to cover every wind range you might run into.  Then you buy more kites because your lovely wife rides too and you need to cover her weight (hopefully lighter than you) for the same given wind. Now you've got 9+ kites and only 3 or 4 get used regularly. But I think I've found the alternative for me.  Almost the "Holy Grail", a one kite quiver, the Peter Lynn Charger 15m. I can't stress enough how broad a wind range the Charger has.  I thought I had it figured out a few days back but I never really got caught in ...