Water lessons at the Albany racetrack... are you kidding me?

[kjl]

~4:30, today:

1) First, you were doing jumps ~15 feet from shore. I mean, that's fine (I guess) - you weren't a beginner, but you could have literally gone a single tack upwind and then a dropped kite wouldn't mean beheaded, murdered children and dogs. Slightly poor judgment.

2) You switched your bar in the water with an obviously total beginner lady who was both obviously new at this and overpowered and were apparently giving her a kite control lesson. Are you kidding me?! At a congested, multi-use beach where, directly downwind of her, there were dogs, children, adults, then big scary rocks, then giant logs and wooden posts and a bench, then parking lot and cars, and that's just in the first 75 feet. That doesn't seem like a good idea.

3) She got yanked, fell on her face, released the kite, and hey, I guess you forgot to tell her to put the leash on so the kite took off, dragging 75 feet of line and the bar through a bunch of innocent bystanders. Who could have seen that coming? I liked that your immediate reaction was not to make sure the kite hadn't killed anybody or to make sure it wasn't going anywhere else, but instead to let her get it while you went back to your car.

I wish I knew who you were but I had to run, and I'm also a non confrontational wimp. Was that your black truck with the "rentkiteboards.com" magnetic decal thing on the side of the truck? If not, sorry to drag your name into this.

You should be ashamed.

[le noun]

I hope that he let her pump at the beginning AND fold the kite at the end of the session.
Brand and color of the kite by any chance?
Definitely one of the worst spot to do a water lesson...

[Aloha]

And besides all those things the first mistake was riding at Albany in the first place!

[kjl]

Brand and color of the kite by any chance?
Definitely one of the worst spot to do a water lesson...

I didn't catch the brand; I was kind of shocked by the idiocy level. It was some reddish-purple and black kite. I was already pretty angry at the guy before he started his "lesson" - it's already a crowded beach, and he can't give the other beach goers even like 10 feet of water to play in? Dick.

Yeah, I can't think of many places that would be worse other than maybe Pt Emery where if the events had played out exactly the same the kite would have ended up on frontage road or maybe I80. Actually, Albany's arguably worse - if those lines or bar had snagged on somebody in that wind as the kite escaped, it could have been really ugly.