"DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME"
I just had to share this story, and that is the only point of this blog to share my story of the weekend . So a cold front has moved into the Idaho area this past week and towards the end of the week it caused some suh weet winds to come into town. We decided to make a little road trip to a place that has better wind that in town (two hours away). When we got there it was about 70 degrees and the wind was about 25mph and turbulent (even though this soccer complex is out in the middle of farm country :smug. So anyways as we started, my friend was a bit nervous to put up his 15m phantom but I was like dude! you can just pull your emergency release right away if it seems to be too much.

We got both of the kites up (his phantom and my scorpion). His phantom was perfect in those winds, we had the internal strap on his completely loose, and it was mostly trimmed in so it was quite manageable. My Scorpion was freaking SCARY. Because after the 25mph turbulent winds it became more like 20mph gusting to 30mph. The Scorp isn't as forgiving as the phantom so I ended up pulling the quick release. . . Anywyas, jump to the end of the day and we had both the peter lynns packed up and it was still 20mph gusting to 30mph. We pull out the 4m crossfire just for some "daring" fun . I had flown it earlier and was able to scud over 100 ft continuously which was a blast! So I dare tyler to take a go at it, he grabs it and goes... as he goes down the field he's moonwalking and doing some pretty sweet jumps and ends up at the other end of the field in about 30 seconds and ended his run with kitekillers deployed .

Ok, my turn on this thing... I weigh a bit more so the 4m is a little more manageable for me. I start the scudding and he dared me to do some jumps, and you know... You've gotta try and out-do your buddy right?! I take it across from 10 to 2 slowly and get a decent jump.

OK STOP:
So far, all day long we had held back, we were controlling the kites to jump as high as WE wanted, and to go as fast as WE wanted. We were holding the kites back and not letting them do what they truly wanted to do in these winds. This was the moment I let the kite loose (bad idea)


As i'm scudding i get ready for my next jump in my head i'm thinking (alright this is gonna be good). I bring to the left and let it ZOOM to the right as i run back and THWAAAAAAAAAP!! I get LAUNCHED. Not like a slow lift but like a youtube video where the dudes get TAKEN by the kite. While I was up there looking down I kept my cool (as much as i could) and had the automatic reaction to redirect, i kept thinking to myself as i'm falling "come on where's the redirect! COME ON! COME ON!!!!" just as i get a bit of lift again from the kite i go THUMP. I landed and deployed the killers breaking one of them. No injuries thank God and I'm glad I was wearing my knee pads ad the same time cuz those came in handy .

After talking with my brother, wife and Tyler we figured I was about 25-30 feet up (there were 10 ft soccer goals right next to where I was). 25-30ft is a little too high for me, ESPECIALLY with a 4m kite.

So that's the story.... now... what's the moral of the story?

When playing with fire, know you will get burned if you let it out of it's cage.