Back to Camp!

On Friday, the 18th of September we picked up President and Sister Maurer from the mission home in Apex where we had left them after midnight, and shared lunch at our house.  Afterward, we met with them and the staff at the Mission Office, where at the beginning of the meeting, I tossed President Maurer the car key fob and the keys to the office (literally), and we left.

While the feeling of a weight being lifted from our shoulders was not as remarkably clear as it had been after the three years in Peru, it was there nonetheless.  The timing was a tender mercy; we left the next morning for the annual Old Guy Kite Camp at Cape Hatteras, North Carolina the date of which had been put on the calendar a year before.

So, what's Kite Camp?  Its roots go back to 1992 when my brother Mark, our medical school Winston and their wives started going to Hatteras to windsurf together.  Over the years, various friends joined us, but the core group continued.  Winston started kiteboarding in the sport's near-suicidal early days, but as the equipment figured itself out, Mark and I finally reluctantly admitted it was more fun, and have been kiteboarding ever since.  Kite Camp now draws friends and family from Seattle, Utah and Maryland, with about a dozen folks in attendance this year.  

Winston always brings something new to try and propel with a kite - this year it was water skis.

The Pamlico Sound lies behind skinny, vulnerable Hatteras Island and offers shallow, generally flat water, perfect for kiteboarding.  With Mark's jet ski for downwind rescues, it's one of the best places in the world to learn the sport.

There are always new victims, er, learners to watch as they crash and flounder about.

So what if the wind isn't blowing?  That's the other great thing about the place.  You can walk on the beach, 

read a book, sleep,

ride your electric unicycle,

eat too much, watch videos, wakeboard or foil behind the jet ski and 'shop crawl.'  That means hitting all the kite stores to drool over new toys; unfortunately (or fortunately) I didn't need anything new this year, but it's still fun.

Almost whiplash, from leading a Mission to hoping for wind while catching up on a good book. 

But as they say, someone has to do it.  We hope your late September/early October is as nice.  And that you have enough wind to try out that new 12-meter kite!

Dave & Paula