May 18 - Bus ride to Kitty Hawk

The trip started at around 3:30 on Friday afternoon. TapRoot rented a large charter bus for the trip to Kitty Hawk on North Carolina's Outer-Banks. As there were only about 12 of us in the group, (and two of those were already at Kitty Hawk), the 50 person bus was way comfy. Several coolers iced down and stocked with water, sodas and beer were on board for the 3.5 hour drive out. The beer cooler was definitely the more popular. I'm kind of a light weight drinker, so I had only one on the way out. On the drive, we all yacked it up, laughed, told sea-stories, shared different opinions about music and literature, etc. I managed to get a few pages of reading done.

At about half way there, Hugh and Glen (CEO and Director of Engineering, respectively), who were already out at Kitty Hawk, phoned in to say that our hotel arrangements had disappeared. There was some SNAFU, and the reservations were lost. So Hugh and Glen were going to scramble over the next couple hours to find replacement accomodations, and not to worry. Hmm. This could get interesting. We all started envisioning sleeping under the stars, in the tall grass on the beach. On the bright side, we did have the beer.



As we approached the Manteo side of the sound, Hugh and Glen called in. They had found a cottage (beach house) to rent for all of us for the weekend. It was one of the many large, 3 story homes that just dominate the residential element of the OuterBanks. All 12 of us fit comfortably into it. Jim Crites and I shared a 4-bed room, most others had single rooms.



So OK, we didn't have to sleep under the stars with the beer, but we still made friends with the beer.

After we unloaded the bus to the house, and made our mad dashes in search of acceptable room selections (we managed to avoid fist-fights), we all headed out for dinner. So, here's the thing. This trip was planned at the very end of the off-season. Next weekend is Memorial Day, all the tourists come en-mass, and all the prices triple. Generally, it's a reasonable bet for really nice weather. Turns out this time, we got hit by a cool front, and it was about 55 degrees that night. The restaurant was only about 3 blocks away, so it made no sense to take the bus. However, the walk was cool and Kitty Hawk is almost always windy - its not for nothing the Wright brothers selected the area for flight testing. Fortunately, I anticipated the cooler weather, and brought a sweatshirt with me. I was still cold on the walk to and back from dinner, and I felt sorry for the handful with only T-Shirts on, walking stiffly with their hands shoved deap into their pants pockets.



After we got back, a bunch of us took to the rec room ping-pong table. Justin talked us all into a game called beer-pong, and we traded off various different teams for doubles beer-pong. Beer-pong consists of regular ping pong, with 4 cups of beer set onto the table, one in each quadrant of the table. When the ball hit one of the cups, the player in front of it had to take a swallow. If the ball actually went into the cup, the player had to dring it all, and refill the cup with another beer. It was loads of fun, although being the lightweight drinker that I am, I insisted on playing with my cup only half full. I made it through the game without getting too intoxicated, but should have probably stopped 1 game earlier. We all finally knocked off and hit the sack at about 12:30.



I have to add a comment about Nate Watterson here. Nate is a recent hire. I was involved in his interview process. He comes out of Carnegie-Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. Carnegie is one of the most highly respected software engineering universities in the world, and Nate easily passed our sometimes long and fatiguing, both technical and personality, interview process. In the following few months, although I did not work with him directly, I got the sense that he is a very serious fellow, and rarely if at all did I see any light-side. I was comletely taken by surprise to find he is really very funny. His delivery is dry and serious, and he had us all howling with laughter on numerous occasions. I was glad to get to know him better this way.

May 19 - Kiting on Dry Land

Saturday woke up with not enough sleep, and a slight headache. I knew it would be with me for the next couple days, so after dressing, I took an aspirin. Then I went upstairs for breakfast. Someone had made some scrambled eggs, bacon, and English muffins. They also had OJ, and I had brought my own Twinnings tea. A very satisfying breakfast, indeed. Out the dining room window on the 3rd floor, I could see the ocean between the other houses.
After breakfast I quickly set to collecting what I thought I would need on the day's kiteboarding lesson. It was still cold, so I wore my sweatpants and stowed my sweatshirt in my carry bag. Also with me was sunscreen, and change of clothes - I understood Saturday was all land based, but just in case. Finally, my headache was still the same, so the aspirin wasn't working. This meant Tylenol time, and it went into my bag as well. Everybody climbed into the bus, and we were off.



The kiteboarding facility was no more than two miles down the road. Two big empty fields, with an outrig shack on the sound shoreline. The 5 instructors introduced themselves to us, and sat us up on the 2nd floor deck for an initial whiteboard lecture. The day was sunny, but the temperature was still in the upper 50s, and the wind made it biting. After not too long, I had to get my sweatshirt. Shortly after, others followed suite.



After we shivered through the lecture, we were taken out to the field for land-based kite lessons. The kites are measured in terms of square-meter area, and the ones we were set upon were 3.5 meter kites. That's about 37 square feet surface area - roughly the size of a twin mattress.



These land kites are quite sophistocated, and really cool. They are alot like a steerable square-rig parachutte. They lay flat on the ground until the wind fills their veins, then they take on their wing shape and the wind just lifts them into the air. They catch the air very easily, and we had them flying in rather light wind, around 6 to 10 mph. There are basically four lines to it, one tied to each of the (sort of) four corners. There is extra fanout of the control lines at the kite end for extra surface-area control. Back at the handle end, we're left with a 2-ish foot long bar, with the 4 control lines merged to just to lines harnessed to the bar. Tug on the left side, and the kite drifts leftward. Tug on the right, it goes right. Pull hard on the bar, left or right, and the kite will move more dramatically.



So the thing about this is that it's not quite that simple. There is a region of the sky where the kite builds up simply enormous power, and if you're not careful and your kite drifts into that region, you'll endup catapaulting through the air until the kite crashes down. This "power zone" as its called, is, of course, the business end of the whole kiteboarding activity. However, we were just trying to get a feel for control left and right. With your back to the wind, the power zone is about straight in front and perhaps 30 degrees up. We were therefore flying our kites straight up in the air, directly overhead at our zenith. Drifting the kite left or right, even all the way to just above the ground was ok - i.e. no appreciable power. So that's what we did.

Later, we tested dipping into the power-zone a little bit at a time, and then a bit more. Each time getting a feel for how strong it can be, how quickly it can come on, how to lean back on it to maintain control, and how to pull the kite back out of the power-zone.



I took a nice spill at one point. I must have hit the power zone without leaning back hard enough, and found myself being pulled down the field. When it was clear to me I was going down to the ground, I tucked my right shoulder and did a body roll (rather than belly flop into sand-spurs and pricklypears). When I came back up, I remember thinking to myself, "wow, I didn't know I knew how to do that!" :). One or two others had similar tumbles.



We went through several other exercizes, and then broke for lunch. After lunch, they fitted us with body harnesses, and broke out larger kites - 5 meters. Once launched, we each took turns being hooked into the kites, and practiced the same maneuverings we had done in the morning.



This was rather different. With the harness, we didn't have to worry about holding the kite back, it was held back by our bodies. On the otherhand, there was no getting away from it if it took off. However, the control rod was also more sophisticated, and you could push it out away from you, loosen the kite lines, and the kite magically floated up to zenith where there was little force. Very cool kite!

We ended the day at around 4:30. On return to the house, everyone showered and we headed out for a nice dinner at the Windmill Point restaurant, kindly sponsored by TapRoot.



Windmill Point is located immediately adjacent to the kite camp. The theme of the restaurant is the cruise ship United States. Inside it is decoured as the famous 1950s luxury liner. The bar on the second floor is the actual bar off the ship. I am told they had to lower the bar, in tact, into the restaurant through the ceiling. After dinner, we took a short social at the bar. I really enjoyed the piano player's jazz.

Back at the house, most congregated on the third floor to watch some Japanese competition show. I thought I had seen the show before, and thought the English voice over was too stupid to watch. So I stayed down in the rec room and played pool with Mo. We had fun, but after 5 games I think we were done, so we both joined the group upstairs. The show was similar to what I had seen, but the idiotic English voice-over was gone, and instead there was English subtitles that actually seemed to match what was being said. So the show was of lots of women in single time-based physical competion on a Rube Goldberg type obstacle course. It turned out to be entertaining, and inexplicably addictive. We all finally broke up for bed at 12:30.

May 20 - Kiting on the Water

Sunday came too soon, but I managed. I had set my phone alarm to go off at 7:20am, but it didn't, so I woke up at 7:40. We were told the previous night to be ready and on the bus by 8am. So I rushed through getting ready, collected my stuff again, and was waiting on the bus for the last guy :). The last guy turned out to be Amit. He did not get the word that the bus-time this morning had been changed from 8:30 to 8am. Everyone gave him a fun-loving hard time, and he tried to defend himself. It was no use. We drove off to a nearby restaurant for breakfast. Most of the group got the buffet, but it didn't look that appetizing to me, so I (and 2 or 3 others) ordered off the menu. Well, that meant most were done while the rest of us were just getting our orders. I wolfed down my omlett as well as I could. But it was a huge omlett, with toast and grits. Far more than I normally eat for breakfast. I definitely did NOT want to overeat before a strenuous morning, so I ate until I was full and left a third of the omlet, and half the toast and grits. Good breakfast though.



On arrival at the kite camp, they had us unroll and set up the kites ourselves. This took some time, and the instructors came and fixed any errors. These water kites were a bit different than the land kites. The leading edge is inflated as well as a small handful ribs perpendicular to the leading edge. These inflated sections give the kite its basic wing shape, and it can 'catch' the wind easily after this. You have to either hold onto the kite, or put something heavy on it or it will fly away all by itself. So we inflated the leading edges and structural ribs. We were now just about ready to take to the water.



However, although the day was much much warmer than Saturday (very pleasant in fact), the water temperature had dropped to about 62 degrees. This is colder than most mountain white-water I've been on. Alghough 62 may not sound so, it is definitely *cold*. Hugh and Glenn ran off to get us all wet-suites.



This was the first time I'd ever been in a wet-suite, and it was strange. A few of the suites were purchased brand new, and those who got them had a real struggle getting into them. I got into mine without much difficulty, but I did put it on backwards at first. Its a tight fit, and not particularly uncomfortable. In the sun it can get hot, but it was still in the mid to upper 70s, so that kind of warmth was just fine for this kid from Florida.

Off we went into the water with our kites. Our feet and ankles were exposed, and I really felt the cold of the water, but the suites were amazing at keeping the cold out and away from my body. This was great! We powered boated off not very far to close to a small island in the sound, jumped out with the instructors and kites, and began doing our kite-flying controls we had learned the previous day.

Soon the instructors had us try dipping the kite into the power-zone to get a feel for it on the water. This was way different than on land. There you wanted to lean back on it to keep from being dragged over rocks, pavement, etc. Here, it was more difficult to lean back, and it didn't much matter anyway - we were supposed to learn to get dragged. Getting dragged that first time was a bit of a surprise. The power is pretty intense, and you learn quickly how to keep your head above water. If the power stroke is strong enough, it lifts you out of the water altogether. However because you're dragging in the direction of the kite, the kite eventually drops from the sky. So another part of the lesson is to learn, where possible, how to recover the kite to the left or right side of the power zone, before it hits water - this lets it gently rise overhead again.

If the kite actually collapses into the water, its a bit of a trick to get it back in the air, but again, the kites today are so advanced that with a few pulls on the correct control lines, its not too difficult at all - if your wind is good. Our wind that morning was not good. We had maybe 40 minutes of 5 to 8 mph wind and a bit of flying, but then it died to between 0 and 3 mph. All kites were in the water, and even the instructors could not get them up for very long. So after about 2 hours of this, we returned to the shore for lunch. Weather reports indicated the wind would pick up in the afternoon.

Lunch was picked up from Subway sandwiches. I wasn't very hungry yet because of that huge breakfast, so in order to wake my appetite I ordered a BMT sandwich - hard salamis, not very healthy, but yummy. Most of us got 6 inch sandwiches. Nate got a foot-long, unbelievable. I think I'd puke after eating that much along with the work to come in the afternoon.

Come afternoon, the winds had picked up, and we had great fun out on the water. Finally we were ready to try our luck on the boards. This was *hard*. Nearly everyone wiped out on their first round of trying this. I tried it 3 or 4 times, and got awkwardly dragged throught the water, losing the board each time. Barry Hawes made it up for a brief second on his first try though - I think he might have been the first one to do so. Lawrie Gibson's first try was themost spectacular. Just after getting her feet on the board, her kite dipped too deep into the power-zone and took off. Of course, she was already hooked-into it, so she went with it, and launched about 8 to 10 feet into the air, and maybe 20 feet down wind. Wow, that was great! But she forgot to take the board with her :).

After my first round of trying, I seriously considered not trying again. I wasn't aweful, but it wasn't so pleasant being simply dragged throgh the water while in this ungainly posture on the board. But 40 mintutes later, when it came around my turn again, I had managed to overcome the desire to give up. This time was much better, and I actually made it up for just under a second. That was way cool! I think I could actually do this if I had another half day or so at it. Glenn was telling us the night before that we're gonna start going towards the kite, but then that will kill power on the kite, and we'll both come down. He said after getting up, redirect the board to be more sideways to the kite, thus keeping tension on the kite and retaining power. It seems I remembered only the last part, and kept sideways to the kite the whole time. That doesn't work. I've got to point towards the kite until I'm up - this I didn't do.

As we were in 3 groups of 4, I didn't see everyone, but I heard that a small handful of us had some successes. Barry was the best in our group, but I heard that Hugh, Justin, and Mo also did well.

Towards mid afternoon, the wind died down again, and lots of time was spent trying to get our kite back up in the air. Finally we all knocked off, but before giving up, I had transitioned to another group who's kite was taking the air better. I got a last chance to let the kite drag me around a bit. This time, I let go of my caution and dropped the kite over and over again into the power zone. Oh my gosh. What a blast! It hauled me half out of the water for 10 feet and came out of the zone. I immediately sent it back the other way and into the zone again, and I was off for another fast 10 foot drag. I got to do this continuously for about 7 or 8 times, and got near the shore line where I had to stop. The instructor finally caught up with me and took over to land the kite, while I stood at its length and caught it as it came down.

I'd really like to try that again sometime.

We pealed ourselves out of the wetsuites, dried off, changed, and climbed back on the bus. Back at the house, we all showered and emptied the house of our stuff. Then we were off back to Raleigh. The day on the water, in the sun, apparently beat us all up, because the first hour or so of the return trip was completely quiet - everyone was sleeping. Eventually, we pulled off for a quick dinner at a Bojangles Chicken. Greasy fried chicken, mashed potatos, biscuits, super-saturated sweet tea. That'll wake me up!

For the rest of the trip back, I listened to podcasts from NPR and The Economist I had donwloaded to my iPod prior to leaving on Friday.