Bacliff Spillway Park, 7Jan10
The winds were strong and the weather cold this morning, but a few of us braved the elements to get a piece of this front before the weather turned too cold for even the toughest Houston kiteboarders. The morning started with a meet-up at Bacliff for a 10am start. Winds averaging around 30mph with a temp in the mid 40s. There was a miscommunication about which “truck” my wetsuit was in so I was wetsuit-less when I arrived at the Spillway. I did have a old short sleeve 2mm suit with me in my van and it started looking pretty good as a alternative to scrapping the session. So we suited up, Chris in his 5mm with the built in hood and me in my 2mm with no arms…oh yeah hardcore. At first there wasn’t much of a crowd at the park, but in no time as passerbys saw us kiteboarding fools out there pumping up we soon had a half full parking lot of spectators for our session.
We pumped up a 10m RPM and 9m 2010 Octane with the 133cm Vision and 132 Misfit boards, thinking winds would be 25mph or so. Once I got the 9m Octane in the air I could tell that is was much higher than that….gusting to high 30s. We decided the safest course would be to take turns on one kite…I also had a strange feeling this would be a short session for me and my sleeveless-wonder-suit. Made it to the boat ramp fine sometimes using 3 points of contact with the ground to keep steady in the gusts. As soon as we got on the ramp with the kite, we were stopped by a group of curious girls exclaiming how cool it looked. Of course we stopped and advised them that it got much cooler once we were in the water…I think they dug the suit. Once in the water with the board on, the power was much easier to deal with and I was soon making progress out of the spillway toward the bay proper.
I did my first jump just leaving the spillway and it was huge, high enough to totally kill any timing for landing. Luckily, I had a short sleeved wetsuit on so there was no feeling in any of my limbs for the impact. The next couple of big ones were better and by the end I was nailing them. After 40min or so I traded the kite over to Chris and headed back to the van to calm my involuntary shivering.
From the van I had a great vantage point to watch Chris’ riding. He had the same timing issue but was soon nailing his jumps. He had some real monsters that were every inch of 40ft+. There was one jump in particular (some of you can relate I’m sure) where he jumped high and just as his accent stopped you could see the gust hit and carry him an additional 10-15ft higher in the air. I think someone with a telephoto-lens could have actually seen him crap his pants at the apex, it was extremely cool. I only had my phone camera so no great shots today.
Great session! We headed back in packed everything up took a bow for the parking lot crowd and headed back to the shop.
Phil Midler
XLKITES
281-508-6485
Houston@xlkites.com