Frank le prof reporting
The three F-One musketeers Bruce, Nico and Frank (a.k.a le prof), went to beautiful but COOOooold Idaho near Fairfield for the Kite Soldier snowkite event to check out the site, demo our latest Bandit 4, support the North American Snowkite Tour and cheered Chris Nester, the F-One Pro snowkite skier, who will end up finishing the whole tour 2nd in Freestyle and 4th overall.
Veni, Vidi Vici,
After the first no wind day on Friday, Saturday started to show some light wind around 1pm and the organizers rushed to set up the race course around 5 flags. While Bruce (who was kiting on snow for the first time) and Nico were playing downwind and were thinking of hitchhiking back to the event site, I was practicing the course to see how many tacks was needed to reach the upwind mark and how fast was the downwind leg, all this while listening to some French techno ( what else !) in my headphones.
Sure enough I find myself in the middle of the course when a few guys are screaming at me to get the f… out the way cause the pros are about to start …. Oh … sorry !
Pro skiers, followed by pro snowboarders, followed by women (combined) followed by amateur (combined) …. Oh that’s me !, so I stopped my ipod ( too bad that was a great tune …) and here I go, 2nd on the line following a skier upwind and uphill… while tacking I get passed by another skier and then started the downwind/downhill leg, it feels like a mogul run now after all the previous races…. I finish 3rd overall and 1st snowboarder . Not bad for my first ever race on snow ….
I watch the pro skiers finish their second heat and three of them get tangle on the finish line, full speed fighting for the 3rd spot… Well I’m glad to see that I’m not the only one who’s familiar with tangling kites on the course …
My second heat starts and I finish behind four skiers but still first snowboarder, which makes me the … Winner of the amateur snowboard division… hurray !
Je suis venu, j’ai vu, j’ai vaincu !
What now ? freestyle ? hum for some reason the organizers decide to wait to run the freestyle event until tomorrow and let us go free ride . yeahhh !
Still two more hours of sunlight so Bruce, Nico , and I, after a short nap in the car ( it is still 10 degree outside and blowing 15 to 20 outside ) are exploring the amazing terrain that this spot has to offer. After hopping some barb wires and ducking under power lines I end up at the bottom of a hill with windblown cornices and great lines. The other two turned back at the power lines and I just have a few runs in that natural playground before the sun is coming down…
That night there was another party, and since I don’t remember much of what happened to either of them beside some vague remembrances of cheap whiskey and women dancing in underwear…I’ll let your imagination do the rest.
Unfortunately that was it for the wind and the next day we waited and waited and finally gave up after the award ceremony where F-One rider Chris Nest was awarded 4th all around skier and 2nd in freestyle for the whole tour. I got a nice medal for 1st amateur snowboard in racing .
A lot of riders had tried their luck at finding wind further away but I don’t thing they scored much.
So the tree musketeers came, saw, and conquered ( well , sort of …)
[mappress]