Photography lessons

I´m finally leaving Cumbuco and my kitesurfing adventures on Monday. It`s going to be really tough to leave because I am loving (I mean really, really loving) kiting. I´m tempted to just stay here for my entire vacation and kite every day. I´ve met lots of guys who have been here since the beginning of June and are planning to stay until October. Nothing wrong with that and I´m sure it would be great but I think I`d feel guilty when I got home. I can just picture it, "What, you travelled all the way to South America and never left a little fishing village?" Plus, if I stayed here, I´d have nothing new to report in my blog.

My social life has gone downhill over the last few days because I´ve started reading a really funny book by Bill Bryson called "A Walk in The Woods". Before I started reading it my social life was great - I was going out every night with my kiting friends and having a blast. Now, when they ask me to come to go out to a nightclub in Fortaleza I decline because I´d rather go home and read this book.

Anyone who´s ever done any hiking or camping has to read this "A Walk In The Woods". It´s a memoir about Bill Bryson´s hike along the 2100 mile Appalachian trail and it´s is packed full of laugh-out-loud anecdotes about hiking and camping. For example, near the beginning of the book he´s doing some research on the trip and starts exploring the world of bears. He reads story after story about bear encounters and attacks that is summed up by story about four bears that enter into a camp and try to get into the food stores. He´s getting more and more nervous about encoutering a bear on the trip and he asks himself:

"What on earth would I do if four bears came into my camp? Why, I would die, of course. Literally shit myself lifeless. I would blow my sphincter out my backside like one of those unrolling paper streamers you get at children´s parties and bleed to a messy death in my sleeping bag."

Anyway, I learned the other day that Brazilians are terrible photographers. I went out with my Dutch friend Quierin and my Slovenian friend Branko for dinner the other night. It was a beautiful setting on the beach so I asked the waitress to take a picture of us in our surroundings. The first picture turned out like this:






I wanted her to get more of the table and the sand so I asked her to take it again, this time getting more of us and the table in the shot. Here´s take two:







She managed to take the exact same picture only this time with her thumb in the shot. She noticed the thumb in the picture so offered to try again:





Hmmm, could be time for some photography lessons

First Jumps

The learning curve for kiting is surprisingly steep.

The first few days are tough - you spend most of your time in the water and when you actually do get riding you are generally going straight downwind. You spend the whole time battling the direction of the wind and the waves and ultimately you end up pushed downwind. After flailing around in the water for a while you inevitably look up and realize you are far downwind of your starting point so you head to shore to walk back. They famously call this the "walk of shame".



Well, after a few days of the "walk of shame" I can now consistency stay upwind. That means I can ride around for as long as I like and come back to the same spot on the beach.

So, the next step was to learn how to turn around without a big crash. Now the technique for this is really quite easy. Picture riding along, going to your right, with your kite out in front of you at a 45 degree angle at about 2 o´clock. To turn, you slowly fly the kite up directly above your head, to 12 0´clock, carve the board upwind and steer the kite in the other direction to 10 o´clock. This pulls you in the other direction and off you go. Easy enough, right?

The only problem is that if you do the exact same thing, only fly the kite across the sky faster, you jump.

Really high.

Guess what happened the first I tried?

Hacky, the guy who runs the school, was watching from the beach and said I flew about 8 feet into the air. Now that might not sound like a lot but when it is totally unexpected it´s a little scary.

Luckily, when I was in the air I instictually steered the kite back up to 12 o´clock wich made the kite act like a bit of a parachute and I landed very softly. By the time I landed it was actually a really fun feeling and it has happened a couple more times since.

Now I´m off to the beach to practice turning and perhaps try some intentional jumps.

Kiter Demographics

Two Frenchmen, two Dutch, a slovenian, four Norwegians and a Canadian walk into a sushi restaurant in Brazil.

Is this the setup of a bad racial joke or is it a typical night of hanging out with kiters in Brazil? If anyone can come up with a punchline of the setup I´d love to hear it.



The people I`ve met here are quite interesting. The locals are all very friendly but none of them speak any English and as you saw in a previous post my Portuguese sucks.

The foreigners are all here to kite. 99% of them are men and 99% of them are European (I think I´m the only North American in town.) All of the kiters easily fall into one of two categories - either they are surfer-types who have moved here because they want to drop out of European society or they are type-A professionals here for a quick adrenaline fix. The type-A´s far outweigh the dropouts. You can tell right away if the guy you are talking to a dropout because when you ask about their day they reply by giving the exact same sign. It´s hard to explain because I´d really have to demonstrate for you, but they flex their arms in towards their chest like they are holding a bar really tightly and then they start making crazy wind and grunting noises. I think it means they had a crazy day out on the water but I haven´t heard the official interpretation. Talking to the type-A´stheirt thier day (I´ve met three management consultants, one fund manager, three doctors and a I-banker) they all give you very precise details about what equipment they used, the wind and wave conditions, what time they went on the water and how they performed.

The thing that seems to unite all of us is age - everyontheirin thier late twenties or early thirties. I´ve also noticed that the majority of us all have slightlye slighly-receding hairline. It makes me wonder if wanting to kite is somehow genetic?



Everyday after kiting I´ve gone for a run either on the beach or on the dunes that are right in behind the town. It´s been great to stretch out the legs while running through somesceneryful scenary listening to the I-pod. I´ve mainly been listening to the CBC radio 3 podcasts. The other day a song came on by Old Man Luedecke called I quit my job. You can probably guess what the song is about but you should have a listen by clicking on the link. I can´t think of a better moment - running on a dune during a sunset after a day of kiting with a nice banjo-driven song perfectly summing up your mood. Not a bad trip so far.

No Wind

The past two days have been slightly cloudy which translates into no wind. Given that this whole town is based around kitesurfing there is almost nothing to do when it isn`t windy. The first no-wind day reminded me of an exchange between Jerry and Elaine had on Seinfeld:

Jerry: What did you do last night?
Elaine: Nothing.
Jerry: Nothing? You must have done something?
Elaine: No. I did nothing. I just sat and starred.

That`s what I did for the first no-wind day. I sat on the beach and stared at the ocean waiting for the little ripples to turn into whitecaps but nothing happened. At the end of the day I felt completely useless.



The next day the weather was exactly the same so I took the 30 minute bus ride into Fortaleza with a nice couple I met to do some shopping. I was on a mission to buy some laptop-sized speakers so I could play music in my room off of my Ipod. I spent the entire day going in and out of electronics stores trying to explain to the Portuguese speaking sales people what I was searching for. Finally, after three hours and about thirty stores, I found a pair tucked away in an office supply store. They looked perfect and they were cheap so I bought them. On the way out of the store the sales women, who only spoke Portuguese, kept pointing at a power bar next to her computer and kept showing me how to plug them in. I wasn`t sure what she was talking about but she seemed a little crazy so I smiled and walked out of the store. When I got back to the Pousada (guesthouse) I excitedly plugged the speakers in and started cranking music (Wolf Parade`s I am a runner for those of you who are music fans).

After about thirty seconds of music bliss, the speakers started smoking and stopped working. They were really hot and the whole room smelled like burning wires and plastic. After a lot of swearing and cursing, Rob, an English guy who is staying at the same place, figured out that the speakers are made for 110v and the plugs here in Brazil are 220v. The women at the store was trying to tell me that I needed to plug the speakers into a voltage transformer.

I need to learn Portuguese.

Kite Lessons - Take 1

I now think I know what it`s like to take a violent beating.

I´m sure kiteboarding lessons are designed to torture every single muscle in your body. Even without the dramatic high-impact crashes my arms and shoulders are sore frosteeringng the kite, my neck is killing me from constantly looking up in the sky and my legs are in agony from straining to walk the kite upwind against the resistance of the 25 knot wind. Basically everything hurts.

I took the three day introductory kite course with a Dutch couple who have recently moved to Brazil. The guy, Juli, has just finished a few years of modeling in Paris and wants to get out of "the hectic life". Me and a British guy who hangs around the school have nicknamed him Zoolander because he was telling us that he`s never read an entire book in his life. Anyway, the course was taught by a really chilled out Austrian dude named Haki (standing behind Juli and Kim in the picture below). The first day of the course was all on land just learning safety aspects and how to steer the kite. Day two was all in the water without the board learning how to "body-drag" by flying the kite through the power zones. Day three was the big day with the board and unbelievably I got a few of really good rides right away. The learning curve for kiting is a lot like snowboarding - the first two days are a complete write-off and then suddenly day three is magic.



This sport is a great mix between Snowboarding, Wakeboarding and Windsurfing. I`m loving it. I`ve already made plans to extend my stay in Cumbuco by at least a week.

Oh, a number of you got the right answer (Pulp Fiction) to the quote prize but there seems to be some controversy. Megan was the first to post the answer on the blog but Watson was the first to reply by email. I was leaning towards giving the prize to Watson because according to the time-stamped video replay he technically submitted his answer first. But, after consulting with the judges, it looks as though we have a tie. Both can expect a South American gift upon my return.

Brazil

I`ve realized that Brazil is a long, long way from Vancouver. I left Friday night at 10:30 and finally arrived at my destination in Fortaleza at 3pm on Sunday. The flights down were quite relaxing with the only real stress coming at JFK airport when I checked in at the Varig desk. I was supposed to have a 12 hour layover in New York so I was quite excited to check my bag and spend the day wandering around Manhattan. When I got to the desk she told I should get on the the flight that was delayed from the night before and was set to leave in a few hours. When I told her I´d rather wait around for the evening flight so I could spend some time in New York City she told me I´d better catch this flight. Her exact words were ^you never know if there is going to be another Varig flight^. It turns out that the airline is on the verge of declaring bankrupcty. Not the most confidence building statement but I got on the flight and fotunately the situation ended up working out in my favour. When I got to Sao Paulo I had an overnight layover and had to either spend the night at the airport or go to a hotel. The women checking my bag for my flight to Fortaleza didn`t seem to care about anything and gave me a voucher for a free nights accomodation at a local hotel. I liked my introduction to Brazil.

When I arrived in Fortaleza on Sunday I was picked up by a local taxi driver. He didn`t speak a word of English and I realized that I only speak one word of Portuguese - Obrigato which means thank you. After a few minutes I managed to tell him where I was going by pointing to the name of the town on an email. We got into the taxi and he was blaring something that sounded terrible on the radio. The man on the radio was screaming like his children had just been abducted. It was only when he screamed out ^Gooooaaaaallll^ did I realize it the guy was announcing the finals of the world cup. After about 10 minutes of trying to communicate with the taxi driver I finally found out the score was 1-1 in the game. I got to my pousada in time to watch the overtime of the game and the shootout. After each penalty shot there were cheers from the entire village. Everyone was watching.

So, now I`ve spent a couple of days in Cumbuco. It is a really sleepy fishing village that has been semi-overtaken over by kiters. The town has only recently been discovered as a great kitesurfing spot so it still doesn`t have a lot of tourist infrastructure. There are a few small restaurants and about 20 small guesthouses. There is a nice routing that I`m settling into here. All of the kiters get up in the morning, wander down to the beach and wait for the wind. It usually picks up around lunch so everyone rides until sunset at six o`clock. After that, people eat and go to sleep pretty early - around 10pm - and get up the next day and do it all over again. It`s a very quiet, relaxing place.

I`ve started taking Kiting lessons from a couple of really cool Austrian guys at a kitesurf school. I`ll give more details in another blog but I will say that it is really hard. I`m surprised there is any water left in the Atlantic ocean - I think I`ve swallowed most of it.

Thanks Ryan!

RMac managed to save me from having one the most embarrassing conversations of my life. I think it would have gone something like this:

Brazilian Customs Agent (BCA): Hello. Passport and visa please.
Me: You need a visa to travel in Brazil?
BCA: Yes
Me: Oh, I don't have one.
BCA: Then you can't enter the country
Me: When's the next flight back to Vancouver?

Thankfully Rmac gave me the heads up on the Visa three days before I was set to leave. I had to postpone my trip by two weeks to get it but everything turned out really well. I got to spend two more weeks in Vancouver hanging out with my family and friends. It also gave me two more weeks to rekindle my desire to move back to Vancouver when I'm finished school.

Now I'm sitting in the airport lounge getting ready for the red-eye flight to New York. From there it's on to Brazil!

Calling Shotgun

When most people call shotgun on a roadtrip they normally are saying they want to sit up front in the car. Well, on night one of the road trip, somewhere between drinks at the crazy Cactus and shotgunning beers in the fountain at the Bessborough hotel, Sandy and Watson decided it would be a good idea to buy an actual shotgun for the trip home. Now, normal people would probably have laughed and said, "yeah, great idea!", and would quickly forget it. Not us, we went to three different stores in the morning looking for the right gun before we found a store that sold the right shotgun and trap shooting device.

So, the usual mind-numbingly boring drive from Saskatoon to Calgary took on a whole new edge. As soon as we left the city limits we started looking for a place to start shooting our huge box of clay pigeons. We realized that a shotgun makes a fairly large amount of noise and on the flat prairie the sound could carry a long way. Normally on the drive from Saskatoon to Calgary all that you can see in any direction are empty fields. Now that we were actually looking for an empty field all we could see were farm houses in everywhere. Finally, after about an hour of debating, we pulled off the highway and drove for a couple of minutes up a grid road. We ran into a farmer who was mowing his lawn. Sandy bravely jumped out of the car and asked if he would mind if we took some shots in his field. The farmer seemed totally unfazed that three guys in an Audi would ask to shoot a shotgun in his field and gave us permission to shoot. He even gave us some pointers for launching the clay pigeons (always launch them into the wind, who knew?)

Shooting is fun.



I was by far the worst shot of the three but by the end of the second session we were all hitting every target. We started to launch two at a time and then launching them at different angles and speeds. All those of years of playing Nintendo's Duck Hunt had finally paid off.