It’s Sometimes Better to Ride Alone

The Escape

It’s 2005, and I am driving along the coast just below San Francisco. I see something out of the corner of my eye.

Just offshore, a blue and red object drifts across the sky and arcs down to the water. I feel an instant, deep excitement. Kitesurfers. I recognize them from magazine pictures and videos on the new YouTube website.

I pull into the beach parking lot and walk fast towards the beach.

These guys are gliding across the water. 20 mph? Or maybe closer to 25 mph? My pulse increases as one rider dives his kite and accelerates towards an approaching wave. You gotta be kidding me.

I stare as he rides up the smooth, 12-foot swell face and launches another 20 feet higher into the air. Somehow, he controls the kite and slowly floats, drifting across a 50-foot stretch of ocean for six or seven seconds before landing softly and continuing on. I had to do this.

The Wind

My mother tells the story of driving down the freeway in the Houston summer in her unairconditioned, Volkswagen Beetle with the windows rolled down. She looks in the rearview mirror and sees my hot, sweaty, red, two-year-old face laughing and excitedly announcing, “It’s wind-ing! It’s wind-ing!”

The wind has always been an energizing force for me. By the third grade, I was sailing small dinghies alone. It was fun, and I loved the independence.

In high school, I wanted speed and greater challenge. I started sailing a catamaran off the beach and into the Gulf of Mexico. If it was windy and I was alone, I aimed for a three or four-foot swell. I wanted to go airborne. The 320-pound cat would clear the wave and drop a foot or two back onto the water. The metal wires connecting the mast to the hulls shifted violently from slack to wind-filled tension. Miraculously, nothing ever snapped or broke.

I headed off to college and sailed on the Delaware River.

And then abruptly and almost unnoticed, work, marriage, and kids took over.

Kitesurfing 101

When kitesurfing emerged, it was so revolutionary that despite years of sailing, I didn’t really understand the physics until I was up and riding myself.

The Technology
All sailing vessels share the same architecture. A soft sail connects to a tall mast. The mast connects to the boat deck and hull structure. The wind blows, the sail catches the wind, the mast transfers the pressure to the hull, and the boat moves forward.

Kitesurfing breaks the rules. The kite performs the job of the sail, but it’s now 70 to 100 feet in the air where wind speeds are higher. The rider can actually dive the kite to create apparent wind which has the effect of increasing the total winds speed and power generated by the kite. Combine all of this with the ability to use different sized kites proportional to wind speed, and the ride can make a low wind day exciting.

But it gets better. Kitesurfing eliminates the mast and gives the job to the rider’s own body. The pulling power of the kite travels downward through the four strong, 800-pound test polyethylene kite lines to a single point on the rider’s waist harness. That pulling power continues from the waist, down through the legs, and to the feet which rest on a lightweight, low-friction board. To avoid being ripped across the water, the rider leans back, angles the board to push against the water, and the laws of physics kick in: the board moves forward.

The end result? A kitesurfer could now access the largest waves without a boat or travel in waters only 4-5 inches deep. One could also travel much greater distances as speeds increased.

West Bay, Galveston, TX. September 2011.

The Conditions
Kitesurfers are intimately connected to their surroundings and conditions are never the same.

Above the water, the sky may be an ominous gray with low-hanging clouds or an electric blue clear sky. The light of sunrise, midday, and sunset all produce different landscapes. Invisibly, but most importantly, a wind of 10 mph gusting to 12 mph is similar to a day of leisurely hiking. When it blows 30 mph gusting to 38 mph, it’s an extreme sport as the speed, risks, and need to focus all increase.

Smooth conditions tempt one to maximize speed, jumping, and tricks. Choppy bay waters and offshore swell create ever-changing skateboard parks. And if the surf and wind line up the right way, one can ride more waves for longer distances than traditional kite-less surfing.

Below the surface, the water can be a numbing 35 degrees or an unrefreshing bathtub temp.

And if you are lucky, turtles, dolphins, and other neighbors may appear.

The Exploration

I didn’t know it at first, but my use of kitesurfing would be different from most.

As everyone must, I took lessons and started riding at the primary local spot on lower Galveston Bay. It is a shallow one-square-kilometer area and it’s great to have others nearby to help launch or catch your kite when coming in. Kitesurfers as a tribe are friendly, helpful, and look out for one another.

At kitesurfing locations around the world, most riders stay in close proximity to one another for camaraderie, peer learning, and safety. I continued to go to the popular spot, but I always set off for a distant point. After a year of progression, I sought others who wanted to explore other parts of the 600 square mile bay system. I rarely found any takers.

So I started to kite alone.

For several years I explored the western sections where the one to three-foot water depth is too shallow for boats or the distances too far for most fishermen in kayaks. When I rode in these ten and twenty-five square mile areas, I rarely saw any movement other than birds or the dorsal fins of fish swimming away.

As a child and teen, my favorite stories were of adventure and exploration. I dreamed of sailing solo circumnavigations and hiking long trails in remote areas. These half-day trips into the bays satisfied the yearnings of youth and delivered the micro vacations I needed.

The Meditation

For the next decade, I went to the beach and launched alone into the surf of the Gulf of Mexico.

I typically played in the waves for a few minutes, but inevitably rode out past the waves of the third sand bar, and turned left or a right depending on the wind direction. I often rode for 2-3 hours non-stop covering as much as 35-40 miles.

On one of these long rides, I noticed that I didn’t remember the past seconds or was it minutes of the terrain I had crossed? I closed my eyes to see if I could ride without seeing. I realized, not surprisingly, that I could ride with my eyes closed, navigating by sensing the patterns of the swell with my legs and the wind direction by my face and hands on the kite control bar. I always ride with my eyes open, but I often don’t remember the terrain.

Over the years people commented on my pattern of riding alone, and some other person would helpfully volunteer, “Michael is a loner, introvert, or doesn't like people.” My thick-skinned, dry-humored response was a variation of, "Can you blame me? Look at who I associate with, work with, live with!”

If I understood it myself more clearly at the time, I might have explained that kiting is often a place of meditation. It's where I journey without the burden of a destination. It’s where I can overcome a challenge and have a sense of accomplishment if that has been missing. On every ride, it's where muscle memory and intuition take over and a state of awe will at some point emerge. For a few minutes or hours, the views or sounds become greater than any swirling thoughts or consuming emotions. Kiting is where I go to reset.

Underneath the exploration and meditation, kiting is always youthful play. And if play is all that I want, and someone in the group text asks, "Who is up for hitting El Jardin," a more advanced, deep water location for launching foil boards, I enthusiastically reply, “In!”

As I write this, my kids are out of the house and I no longer have employees. The social aspect has become more important. When I arrive at El Jardin it's great to see everyone. We catch up and talk about the latest on equipment and learning progression.

We rig up and head into the universal one square kilometer area for each to practice a new skill and check each other out as we ride past. But invariably at some point, I will make at least one long ride beyond the physical and mental boundaries of that space to remind myself why I love to ride alone.

Thanks to Charlie Bleecker, Stephen Samuel, Chris Wong, Sam Millunchick, John Nicholas, and Clarke Read for reading drafts.

Galveston, TX. West Beach. November 2014.

Drum Bay. March 2014. Exploring while the alligators sleep.