That is one of the favorite sayings of my good friend Winston Trice, and I've heard it often during the forty-eight years that I've known him, and that's two months more than I've been acquainted with Paula. Winston and I were in the same class in medical school, and we more or less stayed in touch during the tough years of residency training, he in Ophthalmology and I in OB-GYN. The friendship got more active again when we realized that we shared activities such as whitewater kayaking and windsurfing, and we've gotten together several times a year since.
Meanwhile, I've known my brother Mark for sixty-seven years, and after the dust of education settled (he trained as an Orthopaedic Surgeon), he and Winston and I have shared a number of expeditions to a number of places in the world, dragging our wives along when they don't pay close enough attention to our plans.
Winston, who is often referred to as "Uncle Winston" by us and "Skorch" by his grandkids, is always coming up with something unusual. For instance, several years ago he brought a 4x8 sheet of plywood to Cape Hatteras, and proved that he could kite upwind on it. Yes, that's an electric unicycle. And yes, that's the Matterhorn in the rear. It goes on and on.
My brother, who shares the same need to do SOMETHING called recently and said, "Time to go to Florida!" So, a couple of days after Thanksgiving he picked up Chris, a friend, drove to Richmond and picked up Uncle Winston, picked me up in Raleigh and got on I-95. Eleven hours later we were stuck in the sand at the kiting launch on the causeway of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge over Tampa Bay. The van wasn't THAT stuck and we got it out. After a while.
How come the Great White 15-passenger van seemed so loaded? We took a count:
4 guys ages 26 to 70
4 cellphones tuned to 10 apps on wind forecasts,
4 suitcases or duffels
4 kite pumps
2 bags full of edibles (also known as junk food)
3 helmets (the other guy says he's going to buy one)
8 wetsuits
8 pairs of watershoes
9 swim trunks
12 control bars with lines
13 kiteboards
3 foils
16 kites
16 pairs sunglasses, etc.
We lucked into some days with reasonable wind, but this was because a cold front was sweeping through. Hold it - cold in Florida?! Yep. One morning registered 39 F.
We scrounged all the neoprene we could find or steal from one another, but it was still cold.
So how in the world do you maintain proper caloric balance with all that kiting and dealing with the frigid wind? Luckily for us, we discovered that St. Petersburg, Florida has several establishments offering food, including Mexican, Thai, pizza and Cuban, and we would have found some others if we'd stayed longer. That may have also explained some of the groaning of the Great White's suspension. I think the reindeer at Pipo's Cuban Cafe has been getting into the rice and beans. A bit of 'junk in the trunk,' as they say.
Several of the mornings, it was DARN hard to finally get out of the car in the cold and tug and grunt into a wetsuit. Here, Uncle Winston and my brother Mark are watching Chris set up his kite in the cold wind out on the beach. It's clear that the photographer (me) is still in the van, and that Skorch and Mark are rarin' to go
Not.
One day dawned sunny, but without wind. So, what do you do? Shop crawl!! If the wind blows, the shop guys can teach lessons. If the wind doesn't blow, there was always something back at the shop that was ours simply for tapping our credit card. Easy!
After making sure that our credit limits still allowed for gas to get home, we drove to Jacksonville, Florida about four hours to the northeast, and visited another (cold) place to kite. Just as we got there, so did the U.S. Demo Guy for CORE kites, a top-end German brand of which we own a bunch of examples. This fellow's job for eight months of the year is to live in his Sprinter van and drive around the country in search of kiting spots where people would like to try his really excellent CORE kites. He has been a pro kiter for many years, and competes during the other four months when he's not demo'ing. While this might sound to some like a cool job, he's beginning to take his fiancée seriously and may get off the road before too long.
"You mean, you've pumped up and rigged these cool, brand new just-out-of-the-plastic-bag top-end kites, and we can just grab one and try it out?! C'mon, do we look stupid?"
He answered "Yes!" ("Do you mean, 'Yes,' we look stupid,' or 'Yes, you can grab one and try it out?' Don't answer that.")
We looked at each other, shrugged, wondered if HE was stupid and had a great time with his really excellent kites. We had the place (and his really excellent kites!) all to ourselves; only as we were packing up did other folks arrive to try them out.
So, as in all things, the trip had to end and we had to return to reality, such as it is. We slogged up I-95, dropping participants off as the Great White van went north. Mark ended up with one of my CORE kites, a bag full of orange peels and soda cans, and several pounds of sand to muck out of his van.
You know, Uncle Winston has a good point - you really do have to do SOMETHING. I think there is real value in continuing to get cold occasionally, crashing some kites, laughing with friends and seeing new places to do relatively dumb things.
Mark said to put Florida on the calendar for next year. It was already there.
Dave
