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Miss Kitty's Travels  Photo © Jerrianne Lowther Kite takes shape as air pump inflates airfoil. We've been taking a few little trips around Alaska this summer and camping out in our VW camping van. We had glorious weather in Homer and Miss Jerrianne and her friend, Miss Sharon, went for a beach walk along Homer Spit. I stayed in the van because I don't care for sand between my toes, but I thought the pictures they brought back were kind of fun.
They soon saw that it wasn't an inflatable boat but a kite taking shape. And then the man laid out the strings and walked back to his camper. When he emerged a few minutes later, he was wearing a wet suit and carrying what looked a little like an oversized skateboard. But the biggest surprise was seeing that the man was close to their own age. He turned out to be an old friend of Miss Sharon's. They hadn't seen each other for about 20 years! John Sadusky, a well known Alaska windsurfer, was teaching himself a challenging sport he called kiteboarding. Not my style!
It didn't take long for a little crowd of people, including an experienced parasailor, to gather around with advice and help to hold the kite facing into the wind and launch it. The kiteboarder practiced controlling the kite by pulling the strings to make it do his bidding. Then he waded into the water and got his feet onto the board. Whoosh! The kite provided the power he needed to pull himself erect and skim over the water. Turning was a little tricky in the stiff breeze and he wiped out a couple of times, but John is very strong and he had several good runs that day.
Miss Sharon invited John to her house for supper afterwards and we had a wonderful meal of fresh halibut cooked a special way called Halibut Olympia. I happily ate my halibut served sushi style -- raw and sliced thin. Now THAT'S my style! Mmmmm! Good! I was very glad to be included. |
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