WKC riders in Peru

Hey everyone, Its been a looong while so I'm going to back up a bit. A quick review, Peru was great. Todd, Patrick and I had a great time in the waves at Lobitos south of Mancora. Peru is definitely a wasteland, at least where we were. No vegetation, just dirt and rocks and rusting oilfield equipment. Watch a Mad Maxx movie and you get the idea. But the waves were sweeet. Super clean and looooong lefts. I rode my 9m Rev every session and I'm pretty sure Todd and Patrick stuck to one kite the whole trip too. Winds were gusty though so a bow kite was nice to have. Wave sizes are kind of like fishing stories to me so I won't venture to say how high they actually were but barrels were common and a couple definitely got my adrenaline pumping. I did get swallered up by one and my board smacked me in the head but other than that no tragedies; unless you count the ecoli laced pizza that Todd and Patrick insisted we eat on the last day. Besides the pizza, the food in Mancora was incredible. Steak, potatoes and veggie platters with a local brewski ran about $10 US. The same meal would cost you $40 here. It was really unbelievable and high quality food. We stayed at a little hotel right on the beach. The rooms were clean and the maids were awesome and trustworthy. No hot water though so showering was bitter sweet since you came out clean but with a mild case of hypothermia. Northern Peru is pretty much a desert. The humidity is very low and the air doesn't hold much heat so when the sun goes down, it cools off fast. We rented a diesel 4x4 truck complete with baha tires and a roll cage and threw out any maps we had since most of the roads were winding, narrow oilfield roads that weren't on any maps anyway. Driving to and from the spots we were riding each day was half the fun. 30-45 minutes of dirt and gravel roads just begging for drifting and no speed limit (or I should say, no one to enforce the speed limit). I think we drove more sideways than we did straight forward. Mancora is a pretty cool town with lots of Europeans and hostels so the night life was decent. Everyone had a different story to tell so just chatting up strangers was waay more interesting then your average bar crowd. Todd is stoked to go again this year so we'll see what happens. We pretty much have the place figured out so it would be easy for others to tag along this time. Its funny that we couldn't give you directions to any of the spots but if we got behind the wheel again we would be able to find them. Kind of a muscle memory type deal. I definitely remember where not to eat pizza though. I can see the plastic tablecloths like it was yesterday. Here's a couple of pics and a video. We didn't get a single shot of us riding because we were all too busy riding! Lots of great memories though on and off the water.

Other than that, I haven't been riding much as some of you noticed I'm sure, so forgive me if I don't have a whole lot to write about everyone else's winter season since I wasn't around much. Had some nasty whiplash in the fall and torqued my foot pretty bad a few months ago and it still keeps me limping in the morning until it warms up some. Not sure why its taking so long to heal but I'm about ready to cut it off. I did get some good days in Jamaica and Grand Cayman, last month. Went on a cruise for songwriters and brought ALL my kitegear for the days we were at port in Jamaica and Grand Cayman and Cozumel. The good thing about cruises, they couldn't care less how much gear you have. No baggage charges; if it fits in your room, you can bring it. I had 3 kites, board, my guitar, clothes for a week, laptop and gadgets. I'm not much for shopping and touristy stuff so when we had a day in port I just asked the cruise staff for a detailed wind report for the day, picked a kite and took a taxi to good spot and rode all day. Montego bay was sweet and there was some big swell. I was getting a little too cocky on some waves breaking on a nasty reef and ended up literally parked on the reef in about 1 inch of water waiting to get destroyed by the next roller coming in. Somehow I managed to hot launch myself out of there just as the wave broke and rode the whitewater out scraping the reef with my fins. Talk about adrenaline. After that I played it a little safer. Grand Cayman was crankin from the North at about 33mph but we were on the southside so it was totally offshore. Decided to risk it anyway and told Brent (he came on the cruise too with his girl. Brent is an amazing piano player btw) that if he saw me go down for 10 minutes that I was in serious trouble and would need to be rescued or I'd end up shark food sometime in the night. Luckily nothing happened and I did this huge downwinder and landed at a Wendy's off the main road. Hopped in a cab soaking wet with my gear full of sand and made it back to the ship before shove off. It was sweet. My kind of vacation.

Anyway, I'm hoping this is the last nuclear-winter-type cold front to roll in. I could use some serious heat to loosen up this lame foot of mine.

We'll be having a WKC Season Opener session/party some time in the next month depending on weather. This will be our 3rd season so that's cool. I know there are some new comers who definitely need some WKC hardware and rank promotions. And I vow to get some cool WKC shirts and stickers going this season. Looking forward to riding with everyone again very soon!

Pump it and chunk it.

Oh and this summer I going for the kiteloop slim, so I'm putting it out there so you guys will hold me to it. Plus that way if anyone starts whining about hard hits they are taking in learning a new trick, I can chime right in :)

Doneskies.