Flying Away
When I left London almost 14 years ago I was letting go of a lot.
A lot of success and money, to mention materialist stuff and external stuff that never really meant much to me.
After 6 years London and her history and her streets had felt like she had become part of my blood and my bones.
I loved London.
Wholeheartedly.
I had loved the life and the crazy careers I had built there and the friendships and the relationships to cherish then and forever.
All of it and all of them had totally transformed me.
I had new scars and survival stories and the odd award and laughably large losses and a few beautifully big wins.
But I was letting all of it go.
When I arrived in London, I arrived with a backpack.
A few other things had gone into storage.
That's all I had.
Now I was flying away.
I trusted that kitesurfing and my dream to become a kitesurfing coach would guide me.
Into the unknown.
Again.
I left with a broken heart, a couple of computers, and a bunch of used kitesurfing gear that would serve me well for many years to come.
I had no idea where I was going to end up.
All I knew was that I would be kitesurfing and teaching kitesurfing on some beaches somewhere.
I had no doubt about that.
I thought perhaps this would last a year or two and then I would move on, as I usually did.
For some reason, kitesurfing stuck.
I actually tried to give it up quite a couple of times.
But I just kept coming back to it.
If I add up the hours, it's not really something that I have spend much time doing in the holistic scheme of things.
But the intensity of it is something next level.
It's a fucking radical sport.
Everything I do, everything I eat, everything I balance out is a cool calculated conscious way of getting my mind and my body ready to ride and fly the next category whatever storm.
When I left England I spent some time in a few beach hotels in Brighton where I had trained technology and design for most of the duration of my time in England. Every month or every few months I would head there to teach. And I loved that little seaside city and all of my testing and triumphant times there. It was my occasional home away from home in central London.
Sometimes I would stay in a cheap little hotel (or occasionally splash out an some kind of wayward upgrade), but, increasingly, to cut costs I would just day trip by tube and train to teach and be done with the place.
I was kitesurfing at weekends as often as I could just up the coast at Shoreham and Lancing and Littlehampton. Winter had hit and a furious storm was striking sea and shore as I walked the coastline alone in the radical rainy weather. One late afternoon two kitesurfers were out riding the storm and I was just so out of it mentally and physically burnt out beyond reasonable reason. All I could do was rest and ready myself for a long road to recovery. Nutrition and rest were key. I had done this countless times before. Burnouts where my radical routine.
But seeing those kitesurfers riding with ease in the storm just lit up my life even in my sorry state of self pity and hopeful despair. I made a perfect promise right then and there to myself that I would ready myself to ride storms. My skill levels where nowhere near ready. I had a long long way to go. Connected to a kite and that storm could have killed me right there. I would at least have been in for a long swim with likely trashed gear.
This I knew.
Now near 14 years later and I coach people to ride these and beyond these storms with ease. It feels like a fine full circle. To give back as a guide when now I know that I can confidently take care of myself to avoid burnouts and imbalances and live each day ready to ride and fly the next storm.
So far this winter we have had one 45 knot + storm. (That's gusting into the structural damage range at over 90 km / hour. The kind of storm that blows trees and busses and trucks over and rips roofs off buildings if they are not secure enough.)
And I'm perfectly relaxed and at ease riding and flying and coaching in these conditions with the right gear. It's not that I'm really pushing any limits as an amateur athlete in the sport. I just love being out there in the storms. I feel like I enter the eye of the storm and sit in the centre when I ride and fly in them. It's like a balancing meditative bliss. They, the storms somehow nourish me and bring about a kind of alchemical bliss in my blood and my bones.
It's a serious soul calling and dangerous delight, a joy.
This image here was on an early summer evening after returning from a solo vision quest across the country to study with one of my most transformative teachers and explore and prepare along the way in preparation for fatherhood. Unhooked jumps over the beach used to scare the shit out of me. Now I blend them with skybound yoga and really readily relax into the ease of it all...
What was once totally terrifying has come to be a comfort zone and a realm of safety and security.
It feels good.