Like Hepburn and Fonda Kiting "On Golden Pond"

                              

    Golden Pond

Okay maybe 50-60mph on glare ice isn't quite the way Henry and Kate cruised around Squam Lake. They were more likely to be seen in some beautiful vintage wooden power boat or paddling a canoe like in the movie. But in the spirit of this up coming Valentine's Day and on the eve of our 18th anniversary I’m feeling a little romantic. I like to think there are some parallels between me and Molly and Norman and Ethyl Thayer. They’re characters I can relate to. Characters that make you say “Man, that’s where I want to be at that age.” I’m not talking about being a crabby bastard or any of that. I’ve already got that covered. I’m talking about being with someone for the long haul, someone to play with (and fight with), lean on and support through the years.

I’m really, really lucky.

If you haven’t seen “On Golden Pond” it’s worth a gander.

Molly

Squam Lake is located just north of Center Harbor and Lake Winnepesaukee. Like a lot of lakes around New Hampshire has an unfortunate lack of public access. We fly out of the town beach because Jim Cline is a resident and has been kind enough to give us one of his guest permits for parking at the beach. I hear that they are pretty strict about enforcing the “residents only” rule so I’m psyched Jim gave us another permit this year. Thanks Jim!

Squam

The funny thing about Squam (like most lakes) is that it is really good or really bad depending on wind direction. Most of the lakes we ride are really good with NW. Which is great because that’s mostly what we get here in the winter. Squam on the other hand is really good in a SW wind which we’ve had a lot of this year for some reason. Anything with N wind in it doesn’t work well on Squam. Jim Cline rides there on SW days and routinely puts in between 80-100miles in on a session. Last week he did 110miles in on ride. The guy’s an animal.

The other funny thing about Squam is where we launch out of is a pretty tight cove with an even tighter cut from the bigger part of the lake. This funnels winds well and has a tendency to deceive you into thinking the wind is doing one thing when it can be completely different out on the lake. On our last session on Squam I was slightly underpowered on the 12m Charger most of the time on the big part of the lake but had to trim to get out to the big part. Fortunately the winds were changing and I got some good pulls but it’s always a good idea to carry a backup kite on Squam.

Molly rode her Apex 2 7.5m and I rode the 12m Charger. The winds were blowing mostly out of the W with a little NW thrown in. Made it hard to get out of the cove but once we got out to the broads the winds were good and you could cruise just about anywhere you wanted. We got out a little late in the day and I figured the winds were going to be changing a bit as we were out. Hopefully we would make the right choices at the right time and get back to the van before the wind died.

Charger

When Molly first went out and I set up she felt a little overpowered. Now we’re both out and the winds had died a bit and we were both slightly underpowered. Not too much but enough that we had to work the kites a little bit once in a while. Times like that I’m glad the Chargers turn like they do. It makes working the kite, well, a lot less work.

After a while the wind came around and we were cruising at speed. The wind on Squam can be really smooth and it really nice to just lean into the harness and go. There were no snowmobiles out, ice fishing huts, nothing. Just us.

I like Squam because it seems really isolated. It’s close to a lot of stuff but they’ve done a good job of keeping the idiots of the world from building huge stupid houses all over the shore and kept other development to a minimum. There’s nothing going on out there in the wintertime so the few houses you do see are closed up and it has a very peaceful, remote feel to it.

The wind picked up and we started making some speed runs. At one point I had gotten into a dead spot in the wind and didn’t want to go back the way I came. I was standing still working the kite to keep it in the air when a small Piper Cub landed on the ice near me. The pilot was the only one on board. He climbed out walked to the back of the plane, messed around with the rudder and climbed back in. He oriented the plane into the wind, throttled up and took of in what I swear looked like about 30 feet of take off space. I figured there must be wind where he was to take off so quickly so I headed over to where he was in an effort to keep going west and NOT go back the way I came.

I got to where he took off. No wind. I got suckered in by the Piper Cub. It may have been a Super Cub with the bigger engine because he took off like he was launched off a carrier. A Super Cub with just one person in it can do some amazing things from what I’ve read.

I limped my sorry butt back the way I came.

While I was out chasing zero mph winds and Super Cubs Molly had stopped to watch how my situation panned out. While she was watching she could hear an annoying female voice yelling “HEY!” over and over in an attempt to get her attention. This woman was on skates and her husband was on a bike with studded tires. Molly said the woman kept yelling “HEY!” to here right up until she was 3 feet away and Molly stopped her by telling her that she could actually hear her and she didn’t have to yell.

They apparently had some questions for Molly about the kite thing. She said they were in their late 40’s maybe early 50’s and about as rude and condescending as can be. The husband was arrogant and a little obnoxious and the wife was just fowl. I find it ironic that of all the user groups we’ve encountered this season the mountain biker is the one that was the worst. I’ve spent most of my life riding mountain bikes and both directly and indirectly have made my living riding mountain bikes.

But I have to be honest and say there are very few endearing qualities to the mountain biking ilk these days. Between the late middle agers who act like complete yahoos when they get together and do some “epic” (every ride is “epic” with this crowd) ride with their buddies or the Red Bull swilling 20 somethings shuttling or riding lift access all day I don’t have much patience for the current participants of the sport. Very few are good ambassadors of the sport and most just make the rest of us look like jackasses. But that's a blog for another day.

Molly put them in their place and they wouldn’t even look at us when they passed us loading the van. That’s my girl.

After I finally limped the kite back to a windy area we had some good fast runs. Molly got her top speed so far for the year of 51.4mph. I had some fast runs but didn’t bring a GPS. Mike was there and got his fastest for the season at 53.3mph. After a bunch of fast runs we could feel little changes in the wind. It was getting late and we instinctively knew that it was time to head back.

Just as we approached the cut going into the cove the wind died. We stood there with our kites on ground and waited. A lot of times like this the wind dies but has occasional short wind spells before it completely dies. You can pack up the kite and do the “walk of shame” or you can be patient and hope to catch some of those last breaths of wind. We waited for about 5 minutes and SHAZAM! The winds came back briefly.

Molly and Mike

Just enough to get us back to the van.

This weekend we’re going over to Burlington Vermont so Molly can help Rachael Miller (owner of Stormboarding) with the Girlstorm all girl (oh yeah) kite weekend. I get to ride and maybe hook up with Curtis Savard to finally do the photo shoot for Peter Lynn. They don’t have any snow over there either I guess so I’ll sharpen up the skis. It will be nice to hit Sandbar and I hope to get some good touring in. I’m sure it will make for a bit more interesting blog entry than this one.

Keep an eye out for the next installment.