My fellow kiters who can throw it down:
 

Good to see everyone at LP lastnight! First off, Danny loved the hazard lights on the board, too cool. Secondly, as I enter my second year, I've started paying less attention to the overall ooos and aaahhs as you guys throw down some serious tricks but more to kite movement, board angle, body position, etc, to see how you are getting it done.

What I was hoping is that each of you, could tell me what you guys are thinking as you pull off your favorite trick. If possible just title the trick and give an in depth look into how you accomplish it. Skyway, you're limited to three... I know there's no fourth ;) j/k

I think it would help out a lot of us guys that are somewhat intermediate looking for progression and build on the fundementals that we're starting to gain confidence on.

Danny: How about the kite loops you were pulling off? Hoss, Leighty, Tom, Chris, Skyway Scott, to name a few, I expect some feedback!

ill be feeling the loops for another 3-4 days easy....
i already decided that if it was blowing solid 20 this morning i wasnt going to go, it hurts to much :)

pratice hitting the loops when under powered first, just to get a feel for it...
dont try them moderately powered, that hurts, only reason i was doing them last night was because i though i was powered enough to get high enough to finish the loop and get some lift be fore landing.... i was close, but needed a bit more juice, 5 more knots would have been perfect......

definately easier to to explain it in person...
hit me up next time your out there.....

truly for me its a struggle to "tweak" anything.. i overthink everything.. a few NASTY slams will do that to you. on a good day like yesterday where there is a lot of room to work with I got on a tack and did the same jump over and over again.. and try to do it better each time.. often if i come off the water a little odd i will give up and just boost but if i am able to hit back to back jumps i can get a better feel for what i need to do.. been working on roll w/ grabs and its easy enough when i do it.. but i am not consistent.

when its more crowded it much more difficult as you are typcially limited to jumping only when you see a gap. and typically just one jump per tack.

and like a said.. after a few crashes i have not even tried a kiteloop for months.. i almost landed the first one i tried.. i landed the second one i tried.. i got WORKED the third one i tried and I got WORKED WORSE on the 4th one.. i gave up.. hope to revist this again soon. :)

truly tho.. for me, its a learning experience.. others have a much faster pace to learn stuff.. others have a much slower..

Glad to hear it went well at LP last night. I hooked up with Matt, Randy, Trip, Gabor at SW. We got skunked until the late evening. Forcast did not account for the heat wave, once the sun got closer to the horizon around 7PM last night the winds shifted NE and we rode til dark and then some.
Matt was out on the new 11 M REV tearing it up! I gotta check out THAT kite now too! I was on my 9 Rastaroo and LIT as well!

I tried my first kite loop trick last night and it was WAY too much wind even on a NINE for me to even DREAM of landing that shit. One of my eye lids is still stuck behind my eyeball!

LOL

REPEAT this evening! SW or LP? I am not sure yet...

Well, since I can't do handlepasses yet, my favorite trick is probably a sick kiteloop. I am usually thinking "oh uh this is going to hurt".

Last night though, I boosted so huge on a few jumps my thought was "OH NO I JUST JUMPED WAY TOO HIGH!". I seriously thought something was going to break and I was going to fall 25 or 30 feet into 1 foot of water. Got ripped up so hard and fast that my stomach went to my feet... couldn't help but groan out a scream on those! sick!

Seriously... it was blowing 35 and I was on a 12M waroo, fully depowered, bar all the way out, back lines as long as they would go on the knots, and I still could just barely hold it down at times. It was SICK!

Everyone was pretty much going nuts and jumping big... just about everyone got worked at some point.

Tom officially joined the "true" 25 foot jump club last night. He was going huge, pretty sick. Danny was doing true kiteloops... the kind you rarely witness. He was going 15 to 20 feet up and was horizontal with the kite, it was SICK. I have only seen a few people ever do that. Once we film it, people are going to be in shock. (Hopefully Danny won't break anything before then).

I actually only have one trick, the key is to tweak it so hard that it looks three. Seriously though, I just focus on fun. I had a total ACL rupture from kiting 5 years ago, it knocked me out for a full season.
I decided it's not worth going thru that again if I don't get paid for it.
Forty ain't no spring chicken, either.
I try to learn 2 tricks a year (good enough) and I do consider rigging correctly a trick. :D

Pretty sure a few them were more than that :D The mast on my sailboat is 23Ft and I went WAAAAY higher than that!

they key to going huge... being litt out of your mind...... easy as that...
to bad by the time i got on the water it dropped to the low twenties :(

... and a small wave, and timing ...

I think a little technique helps. Tom is going as huge as anyone minus maybe 2 riders right now.
My estimate of 25 feet is what most people routinely claim is 35, to put it in perspective.