The Holy Grail?

I’ve been searching for a while, and I think I may have found it. No not some mythical cup that purports to hold the elixir to life. I’m talking about a bag, now before you switch off this is a very special bag. As I look round the office I have about 5 camera bags, actually second count make that 6. Why so many, well I need a bag for every occasion it would seem but a fair few of them are ones that I have at some point used to take on mountain bike shoots.

My old pack fully loaded!

You need a very special pack for this, consider hammering down the Megavalanche in the middle of the race while carrying £6,000 worth of camera gear… You want something that is up to the task. Riding a bike with a load of gear isn’t much fun. In fact it is a really great way to ruin a good bike ride! Having a decent pack can change all that, and actually make it manageable and indeed enjoyable!

Saving nearly a kilo, same amount of gear inside, just a better bag!

In the past I have modified various Dakine bags for the purpose, the main one being fitting straps to allow for a hydration bladder. Climbing up a mountain in Spain in the heat of the summer isn’t much fun without water! So all these bags have always been a bit of a compromise. Until now…

Meet the Clik Elite ProBody Sport, a bag designed for biking, hiking and generally being outdoors, whilst of course carrying a load of camera gear! Now what makes this bag special is that it is deigned to carry a Pro Body SLR, with a 70-200mm lens attached. The 70-200 is the workhorse of many a photographer, including me, so having a bag that carries this attached to the camera is a must. The ProBody Sport does this, but also makes it very easy to access too! Add in the fact it comes complete with a pouch for your hydration bladder and you have a near perfect pack, certainly the best one I have found so far. Riding with it is just so much better!

Anyway enough waffle, check out the video…

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A late night out…

Busy working on Issue 30 of IKSURFMAG at the moment, and last night I was up till 3.40am uploading, downloading the writing test reports! In between the madness I popped outside to shoot the sky, It was a pretty clear night which is rare for this time of year. Bitterly cold though!

The constellation of Orion with Betelgeuse the reddish star on the top left of the constellation. It's a super giant Type Red star that is nearing the end of it's life. When it explodes you'll be able to see it in broad daylight. 643 lightyears away from us though, so we should be safe!

View of the sea from our terrace in the garden. The bright star top left is Sirius, the brightest star in our night sky. Bright because it is pretty close, just 8.6 light years away, also known as the Dog Star.

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A Great Photo Shoot…

I spent the other day shooting Dan, Dan and Chris from Cube Bikes UK. We were in the Forest of Dean, expect a full article in the next issue of IMB. I am supposed to be keeping a lid on the images, but a couple of them were too good to sit on!

Chris gets the sunset blaster...

Working until dark, this produced the POD in my opinion!

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Out of much tragedy comes greatness…

It’s been a busy month, so busy I’ve hardly had time to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and put down some musings…

A couple of months ago I nearly died on a boat in Mauritius, I won’t go into the protracted tail of how it happened here, you can read the full story in the latest issue of IKSURFMAG. But like all life threatening moments it kind of changes your perspective on things. You vow to spend more time doing the things you love, see the friends you’ve not seen enough of and embrace everyday that life gives you with a fervor that perhaps you had forgotten.

Moments before the boat crash... Mitu on the wave and Ydver shooting from the same boat. He lost all his camera gear too.

It also affords you time to reflect on the fragility of human existence, for we are but specks of dust blowing in the wind. Of course while your thinking all of this, telling tales of the high seas, huge waves, sharp reefs and shark infested waters life carries on around you. And for me an unexpected incident came and hit me from the left-field which left my mere delusions of grandeur over my accident seem so insignificant it was hard to reflect on them without even putting that into perspective. Surviving a serious boat crash with minor injuries was nothing to hearing the news that a friend I had been mountain biking with in Surrey over the weekend had fallen off his bike just 5 days later and shattered his number 6 vertebrae and fractured number 5, resulting in a severed spinal chord and paralysis from the neck down. Rejoice in the small mercy I swam away from my accident…

Stig on the far left before the weekend before his accident...

Then hardly a couple of weeks later an email from a friend told me how his young wife had been diagnosed with several forms of cancer and was seriously ill. We don’t know the prognosis but you wouldn’t wish this sort of stuff on anyone would you?

So where does the greatness come from in all this tragedy? Well I’ve been to see my friend with the neck injury, the first time I had to feed him sweets and he was flat on his back. This second visit and I found him in a wheelchair coming to terms with his injuries and working harder than I could have imagined on the physio to ensure he can get back to his wife and kids as soon as possible. He figured he would be at work in 12 months, and while his whole life will be very different from here on in the courage and foresight he showed was nothing short of mind boggling. There is also much love coming on from family and friends all pulling together to raise money to aid him in his quest to bring some form of normality back to his new life.

Friends organised a clothing sale for Stig, they raise over £2000 from this one event!

And it’s the money in question which brings on my next point, the husband of the sick woman grew a moustache for Movember, emailed a couple of friends about his charity efforts to raise money for Bowel Cancer UK and within 2 days had smashed his £500 target. What did he raise you might ask? £36,000 and counting… That’s just incredible.

Rob Claisse and the £36,000 moustache!

What greatness has come from my accident, I’m not sure yet, I’m taking a more relaxed approach to life and I guess that is a start…

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RingGo Home…

I’ve just got back from the British Kitesurfing Wave Riding Championships in Gwithian, theoretically I should be there until Sunday this week but things conspired against me.

Namely the atrocious service offered by RingGo, which was enough to push me to the limit before the Sunset Surf Cafe pushed me over the edge and sent me packing.

Do yourself a favour... Never, ever call up these jokers.

The event was the usual shambles, no fault of Pete the organiser who had been given the arduous task by Dicky Gowers who was in Peru, but not having a key to a gate on the first day to get the jet ski to the beach meant we couldn’t start the comp until 2.30pm. Which was a shame as Gwithian was firing out some monsters and the wind was howling. In the end the comp got underway and the girls fleet was run, albeit with the usual dubious judging decisions. Next up at 4.10pm it was the turn of the Pro Men and my fleet to get wet. Sillsy was on the water ready to go, and his opponent for the first heat was on the beach all set. But nothing happened. After half an hour Sillsy was on the beach wondering what was up and it transpired there were no judges to judge the men’s event. So we missed a great day of big waves and ended up running the comp the next day in questionable winds and 2-foot slop.

This is meant to be the pinnacle of UK wave riding, and while the riders were displaying skills befitting of a UK competition the organisation of the competition itself was shocking. 10 years the BKSA have been running events, you’d think by now they would have the know how to put on a good one. Considering the distance many of the riders had travelled it seems a real shame.

Anyway the comp is still on, so they may get better conditions at the weekend and be able to salvage something, but I’d already decided to cut it short as my time could be better spent elsewhere. My plan was to stay around till Thursday and I headed to Gwithian car park to meet up with everyone and have breakfast with Dom Yule and Dom Moore at the Sunset Surf cafe. This was where RingGo reared its ugly head and unravelled a sequence of events that had me back in my own bed before I could say “retarded RingGo”.

The ticket machine wasn’t accepting coins; at least it wouldn’t accept mine anyway. But never fear there are big signs telling you if the ticket machines aren’t working simply call RingGo and pay with your card over the phone. Simple, at least you’d like to think it was! The RingGo system uses a voice recognition program that evidently runs on a ZX Spectrum, it asks you for three pieces of information, rather slowly. Firstly your number plate, then the make of your vehicle and lastly the colour of your vehicle. Once you have given you this information it reads you a long-winded message and then reads you back a random registration number. At this point you have to tell it “no” and indicate it got the rego wrong. This message then sends the ZX Spectrum into a crash with the sounds of buzzing tape decks grinding out code in the background. “Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait, Please Wait after about 5 minutes you recall the 80′s when this sort of thing happened in your best mates bedroom while you were trying to load Pong or some other primitive game you had copied using a TDK C-D120.

This is the hardware that runs the RingGo speech recognition software, it also makes a good doorstop and a paperweight. Handy!

The thinking man at this point restarts the process, calls the number again and speaks in the finest Queens English at RingGo the Retard. Of course you can see where this is going, swimmingly right up until the part where it reads you back the number plate, this time it’s even further from it’s first attempt. Fortunately this time you have the foresight to not wait 5 minutes whilst listening to the “Please Wait” message. So you call again, ensuring the phone is out of the wind and you try your hardest to be as clear as possible. Guess what same result…

This was found outside the RingGo Data centre, apparently they have upgraded to a "floppy disc" system...

This was enough, I’d been plugging away trying to get a ticket for longer than I cared to park. I wrote a note, explaining the situation, stuck it in the window and headed to the Sunset Cafe for some breakfast. Dom and Dommer were there tucking in and it looked lovely, 2 full English’s please was the request that went to the lovely lady behind the counter. “I’ll just check with the chef” was the reply I wasn’t expecting. Much less was I expecting the chef to come out and tell me that breakfast had just finished, but would I like lunch? It was 12.03, breakfast finished at 12pm I had been in the car park for 20 minutes messing about with the fecking parking and now was being denied breakfast on a technicality of the passing of time. You’d think being Cornwall, the fact I’d spent £20 on food in there the day before and was around for the comp all week they might of made an exception. They would do that sort of thing in the North of England you see, so sometimes you kind of expect it. Alas it wasn’t to be and that was enough for me to utter the immortal words. “F**k it, I’m going home…”

Strangely enough the warm embrace of the M25 was a welcome relief from this trip to Kernow...

Dom looked bemused, “what, proper home?” To which I replied, “yes proper home, I’ve had enough of this shit” and with that I turned on my heel and left Cornwall for the Garden of England. I’m not blaming Cornwall for this, no doubt the RingGo ZX Spectrum is housed in a data centre in Slough, and the BKSA have the capacity to cock up events no matter what county they are in. And perhaps the weary staff at the Sunset Cafe just couldn’t bear to go the extra mile for yet another hungry tourist with pockets full of money they want to spend on breakfast.

One thing is for sure though; it was good to get home…

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2011 Race Season Ends

You may remember me putting a few kite racing blogs up here at the beginning of the summer, tracking my sessions and reports from the races. Sadly the BKSA runs the racing alongside the freestyle events, so we end up riding during the spring and autumn, as traditionally it is windier in the UK at these times.

This meant that since the Redcar event there was a very long summer off as far as races with National rankings went. Windfest was the next big race meeting and it was a great turnout, sadly though I missed it as I was in Mauritius. Next up it was Ayr but due to a boycott at Windfest the racing at this event was cancelled. This left just Blackpool to go as the final event on the calendar and I’d be lying if I said I drove up there full of joy. The event clashed with the magazine deadline and I was proofing articles and making amends to design layouts from the M1 services at Toddington at 1am on the morning of the first race!

This is as close as my race gear got to the sea on Day 1!

I’ve also lost a bit of love for racing, before Redcar I was training hard and getting on the water as much as possible. In the last few months I’ve hardly ridden my race gear at all and certainly haven’t done any serious training. Time constraints and strong winds have put me off; if I’m totally honest I was even questioning whether I would continue the series next year. I get frustrated at missing events due to work, and it is also a lot of training for what essentially boils down to a few competitive weekends a year… Anyway back to the event!

I arrived just in time for registration at Blackpool to be confronted with a high tide, howling winds and big messy waves… Hardly your ideal race conditions! After the usual hello’s and catch ups I headed to the beach to pump up, only to be told that the conditions were too rough to get the boat out and that until they could lay the marks, racing for the day was postponed. This suited me, as with not a lot of sleep and a lack of any real motivation I wasn’t really in the mood. So the day was spent holed up in the fisherman’s hut hiding from the elements.

Eventually they cancelled for the day on the promise of better conditions in the morning.

Saturday I awoke to strong winds, although not quite as hectic as the day before and the waves had abated enough to allow the boat to at least lay the marks. Racing was on and I took my 7m and 10m kites to the beach to pump up. We had a sausage triangle course laid out and the first lap was a sausage followed by a longer triangle for the final lap. My first start since Redcar went well and I finished the race comfortably 4th. The next start I decided to go on Port tack and was just weaving through the start line when a wave took me out and pushed me offline. Callum had to take evasive action, so apologies for that mate, and I crossed the line well behind the fleet. Mogsy who I was battling with for 4th in most races was in front of me but dropped his kite on the first sausage. I managed to get past but he wasn’t far behind me and chased me all the way to the line for another 4th.

Tough gusty conditions in the morning, with a huge rig right in the way too... Photo: Craig Sawyer

I didn’t really feel too competitive upwind and I just couldn’t put my finger on why I was failing to point as high or ride as well to the windward mark. I was having to rely on my downwind speed to make up for failings on the upwind legs and was having to ride my socks off to keep 4th place. The third start of the day was a total shambles, with the tide dropping the whole start line was full of white water and while I was in good position to make it across I got hit by a wave at the same time as the fickle wind dropped. I was washed past the start with some other riders and had to make another attempt at it on Port. Just as I was lined up and flying a plastic bag caught on the fins and I had to stop, flip the board, remove it and start again! Eventually I got over the line and out behind the white water, luckily I wasn’t the only one struggling and eventually I clawed my way back to, yes you guessed it, 4th place!

Thats me with the black, red and white kite heading for the line... Not a bad start on this one. Photo: Craig Sawyer

We broke for lunch and what I thought would be a long drawn out affair turned into a quick 30 minutes feed before pumping 14m kites and heading out for another 3 races. This time the decision was made to race for 3 laps round the sausage and thankfully they moved the start out of the breaking water! 1st race didn’t go so well; I dropped the kite on the gybe and couldn’t relaunch it, thank god for discards! The next race was pretty standard and I was 4th again. Then on the last race I realised why I was having a lack of performance. I’d neglected to trim my kite at all during the races. On this upwind leg I fully depowered it and found I was pointing with the rest of them and instead of not feeling like I was in with a chance I followed the three top guys round fairly closely over the three laps. Eventually finishing, yes you guessed it in 4th place…

So 4th overall for the event and I think 6th overall for the season. If I had made it to Windfest I would have finished 4th overall on points, sadly I missed out on scoring any there so have ended up further down the fleet than I would have liked. There is a slim chance i sneaked 5th, but I need to see the full results from Windfest, which sadly don’t seem to be published anywhere. Still 4th for an event was my best result of the year and with some proper training over the winter I’m hoping to get at least a few podium finishes at events next season.

Denzil Williams takes the title for 2011 with Callum Edge and Ben Todd close behind. Photo: Craig Sawyer

I was going to give the racing a miss next year, but I do enjoy the competitive nature of it not to mention the riding and technicality of controlling the board in all sorts of conditions. Racing is best when it is 15 to 20mph and flat water, we never got those conditions this year and I doubt we will next year either. So the goal will be to practice as much as possible put in the hard work so I can see the results…

Huge thanks goes to North Kiteboarding for the race gear, and to Kitesurfing Fins for the new fins from Vector. I am currently running 42cm Canefire’s at the front and a 38cm Volt at the back… Also to Craig Sawyer for the pics and the BKSA for putting on the series.

See you upwind yeah?

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Eurobike!

This was my first trip to Eurobike, sadly it clashed with the F-One trip to Mauritius this year. I had to go to Eurobike in order to secure some of the 2012 budgets from the bike brands that exhibit there for IMB. We’ve not been before and it’s where all the mags pitch for business so the trip was really important in terms of keeping IMB going.

Luckily the good folk at F-One have allowed me to fly out afterwards so I still get to see all the new kites and boards, albeit without the company of Dom Yule and the UK journos. Currently I’m sat on the Eurostar going under the channel for the second time in less than 12 hours…

Alex and I decided to drive down to Friedrichshafen where Eurobike is held at the huge Messe exhibition centre. Having not been before we didn’t really know what to expect but had decided to camp as it would mean we were staying really close to the event site. Hotels get booked up months in advance and there isn’t much in the town itself so the traffic getting in and out can be a real nightmare. Camping would avoid this, but as usual we hadn’t really thought it through and to say we were unprepared would be an understatement! We actually wrote a list of all the things a good camper should have and came up with about 20 essential items. We had 4…

The show itself has to be seen to be believed. Everyone in the industry is there and there are literally thousands of exhibitors in over 10 huge exhibition halls. It’s overwhelming, crazy and apparently there is a 3 year waiting list to exhibit there! I had been preebooking appts for the three weeks before and my diary was rammed. Pretty much every day, all day I was booked up. This was great as it meant there was a strong interest in IMB. But it didn’t leave me with much time to get around and actually take pictures and write stories about the new gear.

It did mean I was out selling though and we managed to sew up a considerable amount of business for next year with plenty more brands making decisions over the coming weeks which was very exciting. It was also great to put some face time in with everyone and meet some of the people we work with from around the globe.

By the end of Friday the constant running about, talking and standing up for hours on end was taking it’s toll! The plan was originally to head back Saturday first thing so we could get back in time to re-pack my bags and get ready for Mauritius. I ended up having an appt with the guys from 661 though at 9 which was very productive so we ended up leaving about 10.15. Pedal to the metal and we were at the Channel Tunnel 8.5 hours later to find the biggest queues I have ever seen!

End of the school holidays meant over 9000 people where using the service as opposed to the usual 2000! We had a to wait a couple of hours but we did at least get an earlier crossing and get back to England by about 8.30pm. Surprise surprise it was pissing down!

We’ll be back at Eurobike next year, 2 editorial staff and 2 dedicated people on sales should ensure we can do everything we want to. This year Alex and I were very hard pushed to get it all done on our own!

Euro Tunnel, the only way to go across!

Euro Tunnel, the only way to go across!

Camp IMB, missing flags, IMB tent and a ton of other stuff!

Camp IMB, missing flags, IMB tent and a ton of other stuff!

Just one of the huge expo halls!

Just one of the huge expo halls!

Off in search of food we had to protect Camp IMB from zee germans!

Off in search of food we had to protect Camp IMB from zee germans!

Cedric Gracia signed some stuff for our features editor George!

Cedric Gracia signed some stuff for our features editor George!

A bike, well I guess we were at a bike show!

A bike, well I guess we were at a bike show!

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Moon Rise Kite Surfing…

I had a bit of a family day on Sunday, yacht sailing with Mum, Dad, brother Alex, sister Tor, nephew Dan the Man and Mary. The wind was pretty light but we managed to sail from Ramsgate down to Deal against the wind and the tide and then cruise back for lunch. My 90 year old aunt joined us for along with my brother in law. It was a great day and we had lots of fun.

On the way back home however as we dropped down into Dover I was greeted by a sea full of white caps and an urge to get wet. Sadly it was already 6.30pm and what was surely the last of the sea breeze would be gone by the time I got to the beach. Luckily it lasted and although everyone had packed up and gone home I rigged a 10m on my long race lines and took my race gear for a spin. It was a great session, I got to watch the sun set and then the moon rise, that’s never happened to me on the water before. All on my own it felt a bit eerie as the wind dropped off in the dying light. But the race board powered on and in the end it was fatigue and an urge for a pint that took me off the water as opposed to a lack of light!

Happy days!

Sunset over Hythe...

Sunset over Hythe…

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Race Training, GoPro’s and Callum Edge…

I’m on deathline at the moment, work is overflowing out of my ears and it is proving very tricky to get the latest IKSURFMAG out the door. Last night I was all set for a hard evening of stress when good friend Callum Edge called up out of the blue asking if I wanted to go race training with him. Callum is the North Kiteboarding rep in the Uk and also the current British Kitesurfing Associations Course Race champion. We normally hook up at national events around the UK, so to have him in my own backyard was a real pleasure.

Hythe and Saltwood Sailing Club as seen from a very small camera on the beach...

In an effort to not totally skive off I took my trusty GoPro camera to take some shots using the new KiteHero mount that the guys at KiteHero in the US kindly sent us. So arguably I wasn’t skiving at all I was in fact working, and what a lovely evening it was for it too…

The KiteHero Mount, it really is rather clever...

We had a good session, using a course that involved the “Mile Marker” for the outfall pipe off Hythe Beach, then coming downwind to the inshore marker for the same pipe and another buoy that sits just off a large groyne. The wind was pretty light and it was almost 6.30pm by the time we actually got on the water. The sea breeze was well and truly on it’s way out! The run upwind was great, I ran across some sort of line underwater on the second leg and lost Callum a little, but it would be fair to say he was ripping while I was distinctly slow. I’ve not ridden the race gear for a well over a week (yachting and a cold got in the way) but it was good to be back out on the water. Callum pretty much pulled my pants down all evening, the downwind leg from the mile marker to the shore was a real leg burner, literally blasting off the wind on the same tack for a mile…

Me in front of Callum, this lasted approximately 5 seconds...

Tacks were OK, dropped a few towards the end, gybes were much better getting them with speed now but still need a tighter arc round the mark.

The camera was the real highlight, normally with the GoPro it takes a while to get it set up properly, not today, the KiteHero mount works straight off the bat and took some belters! The new GoPro software now takes a shot every second, so for racing the “view” gets pretty boring after a while. Looking forward to trying it out in some waves though, where I think it will really come into it’s own…

Love this shot, impressive camera really, shooting straight into the setting sun...

We ended up doing a lap and half of the huge course, before the wind was dropping enough to make us want to be a little closer to shore. A bit more tacking and gybing practice and it was time to get back to the grindstone…

Callum kindly slowed down for this shot to be taken...

One last blast in the dying breeze, oh go on then...

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True 10 Years Of North Kiteboarding

Back at the end of 2010 a good friend of mine Christine Gutter called to ask if I could help her proof read some text. I hadn’t spoken to Christine for a few years since she had left North Kiteboarding where she was in charge of marketing. She explained she was working on a book for North but that it was very secret and I couldn’t really tell people about it. Obviously I was honoured to be asked to help out, North Kiteboarding are the biggest brand in the industry, but I was also concerned about how I would find the time to complete the project. Christine assured me it wasn’t too much work and that they were hoping to have it finished just after New Year…

10 Years of North Kiteboarding History await you...

If only I had known! I went to a meeting with Till Eberle, Philipp Becker and Christine in Munich and the size of the task dawned on me, 300 pages, a pure English language version and countless texts and chapters that needed work. Oh and I also agreed to write some of it too… I came back from Munich excited but daunted and together, Philipp, Christine, Till and I started work. Some texts needed more work than others, not making much sense from the German translated to English and there was a lot of rewriting. I also interviewed 6 or 7 of their team riders for the book and sent those texts over for approval. In the end what should have taken a few weeks evolved into a monster and my life was tranformed for about 3 months! Finally there was light at the end of the tunnel and I was doing final read through’s of the PDF’s for the book.

Remember that film?

Every time I thought it was finished another job would come through over the phone or the email, and the whole while I wasn’t meant to be shouting about the book as North were keen to keep it under wraps until it was released. Those who are close to me know how stressful it was adding this huge task to my already overcrowded work schedule! Anyway after many false alarms the book was finally finished and it arrived today after being available in the shops for a couple of weeks.

Proud to say I was there when these groundbreaking images were taken in Egypt in 2005!

So what is it about? Well it covers the last 10 years of history with North Kiteboarding, that involves the birth of the company, the first Rhino kite, right the way through to the present day. It’s an interesting read that highlights many things even I wasn’t aware of. Add to that some stunning imagery from all over the globe and a finish that is second to none (you even get a 5th line as a bookmark).

Now that is a kite loop!

Of course it is a book about North and their history, so it comes from their side of the fence, but after all it is North who have commissioned and put the book together. Even so, if you aren’t a die hard North fanboy it makes for an awesome bit of reading and will no doubt be adorning coffee tables around the world soon. They only printed 10,000 on this run so be sure to snap up a copy from a local kite shop soon…

Slaying it...

It was great to be involved, and even better to see a huge project like that finished and completed! Philipp and Christine, I will miss our stressed out, late night conversations, but I guess this makes us part of the history now too.

Touching on the ethics of running a huge kitesurfing business.

My kind of chapter!

A little paragraph all about me!

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