AARP Goes Kiting!

[ricki]

True story and as they say, none of us are getting any younger so tune in. Some role models for going hard at it in later life are about to speak up. Michael Behar contributing writing to Outside Mag. did the article at: http://www.aarpmagazine.org/travel/kiteboarding.html



and exerpt follows:

Flowin' in the Wind

In North Carolina and across the country, older adventurers are going crazy for kiteboarding: a fun and waaay-fast watersport

I’m kiteboarding with Mary Hammond-Tooke across Pamlico Sound, a 300-square-mile estuary of waist-deep water ringed by North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Mary, a 63-year-old former midwife, is attached to a behemoth blue-and-white parabolic kite, dwarfing her with its 25-foot wingspan. Her technique is careful and deliberate: one errant maneuver and the kite could slingshot her airborne or plow her into the water. But Mary fearlessly dips her steering-control bar and the 100-foot kite lines snap taut, sending the nylon sail into a power dive that catapults her downwind. She leans back and throws her weight into her hips, edging her board and carving a deep upwind tack that ejects a foamy white rooster tail. Now she’s slicing through the balmy water with ballerina precision at close to 30 miles per hour—startlingly fast for a relative beginner who has been kiteboarding for only about a year.

“I love the speed, the thrill of moving with the wind,” says Mary, lean and limber, with the body of a long-distance runner. “It makes me feel alive.” After 20 minutes of riding, as we zoom across the sound, I finally get close enough to see her irrepressible grin—the adrenaline surge is working its magic. The kiteboarding rush is instant and intense, a giddy high that lubricates muscles and masks fatigue. I’ve kited five-hour sessions and hardly felt tired (though there’s a morning-after effect strangely akin to a hangover).

(Con't. at http://www.aarpmagazine.org/travel/kiteboarding.html)

There is also a video interview with riding footage at the website link listed above.

AARP = American Association Of Retired People