paul lang photography

I drove up to Leo Carillo to catch a day of kiteboarding and ended up having one hell of a day. The weather was beautiful – warm water, clear skies and perfect 12 meter conditions. I took off for the beach and headed upwind to a few waves that my friend Alexis had told me about. This is where my trouble started.

On the first wave I rode, I fell and lost my board. The board rode the whitewash all the was to the sand, so I followed it in. Little did I know that there were rocks everywhere just below the surface between me and my board. I found myself lying on top of a pile of rough rocks when a wave came in and tumbled me around. As I was in the washing machine, by kite came unhooked from my harness and the harness loop caught on the end of my bar. The kite powered up and I got drug right over the top of the rocks. On top of this humiliation, a lifeguard waded out to me to yell at me that I wasn’t allowed to land at that beach. I got my board back, collected myself, and took off. I went back downwind and got out of the water to check out the damage, finding my body covered with scratches and bruises. My ankles, legs, knees, forearms, and a few fingers were all scratched. They were all minor scratches, and the biggest hit was to my ego.

I went back out, and played a little further out, near the kelp fields. I found one section that was about 30 feet wide and figured that it would be fun to jump. I hauled ass at the kelp, jumped, and came up about two feet short. The board came to a stop as soon as the fins hit the kelp, breaking a fin and fin plug.

After taking a break for a few minutes, I borrowed a twin tip and went back out. I went blasting around for about 30 minutes, and then heard and felt a loud pop while I was in the air on a jump. I crashed to the water, and realized that my harness broke. the webbing on one side had snapped. I rode back in to the beach, landed my kite, and decided I’d had enough.

There was still plenty of wind and the weather was very clear, so I grabbed my housing and swam out to get a few photos of Alexis. After swimming back in, I packed up my broken gear and jumped in the truck for the three hour ride home. Arriving exhausted and beat up, I told Robin about my day. While showing her the scratches on my hand, I realized that my wedding ring was gone. As if I hadn’t had a rough enough day already.