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.