I wouldn’t be caught dead…

Or maybe I would…it’s a long story. Let me start at the beginning.

You see, yesterday we rented a car and drove down the southeastern coast of Bali to scout out some fresh beaches for kiting. At one point Mike or I read somewhere that Nusa Dua was a kiting spot. I say, nay! As I’m walking out toward the beach, I can hear this horrible buzzing, which got louder as I got close to the water. Out on the pier, I could see dozens of jet skis, as far as the eye could see. They were all up and down the beach, and hauling ass. It was like there was a freeway right off the beach – it was awful. It seems to have killed all other forms of water sports there, including kiting – who wants to get run over by some half-drunk tourist idiot while they’re trying to swim? NOT ME! So instead of kiting, we ended up back in the car…onward in the search for some tasty waves or some flat water, or both! We ended up finding our next place to call home in our quest, so that’s good. We’ll be relocating tomorrow to the Little Pond Homestay…our current location includes a wakeup call every morning by 4 whiny, screaming little Balinese children at 7am every day and we’ve had enough.

Today there was great wind and we were graced by high tide, so we hit the water…myself, I hit the water several times with my face, in true form. The most notable was my second run, which ended in a tangle with – you guessed it – a JET SKI!!!! It could have been much, much worse. Luckily, no one was hurt, just scraped up a bit and very, very scared for a moment. I was almost at the end of my second long run (I’m getting so much better!) when I approached the jet ski, which was tethered to a buoy in the water. My first run I just hopped off the board and body-dragged across the line between it and the buoy. This time, I was a little more than one lines length away from it, when I crashed myself into the water, followed by the kite. Of course I got pulled down wind, and the kite went straight into, and then over the jet ski. Luckily Mike was there and swam out to untangle the lines, which had gone over and around the darn thing. I don’t know how I managed to haul my ass out of the water and grab the kite as it washed up and onto a huge piece of driftwood (it looked like a school bus). As I stood there pretty shaken up, a wave came up much higher than the ones preceding it, and knocked the log into me, knocking me over. I scrambled up and over to the kite and finally popped the leading edge.

In hindsight, it really wasn’t that bad, but there was an equipment malfunction in the midst of all this that caused me to freak out a bit. When the kite crashed, I tried to pull my safety – that’s the part that attaches the kite to the harness, which is in turn attached to your body. The safety was totally stuck, it wouldn’t move a bit. There was a bit of plastic attached to the line directly in front of the safety, which wouldn’t allow the safety to move. I’m glad this happened when it did for 2 reasons. 1) In this situation it would have been a much bigger mess if I had pulled the safety – the lines would have gotten really tangled around the tether and jet ski. 2) It reminded me that I should be checking my gear every time before going out into the water. Sounds like a no-brainer, but sometimes you get complacent with issues of safety. For example, how many times have you gotten into your car and not even walked around it to see if all the tires are inflated? I was seriously guilty of that until very recently (last year) when I got 3 flats in the space of 2 weeks. Guess the cosmos was trying to tell me something. And again…ok, ok, I get the message!

So no one was hurt, and all my gear is intact. Phew! It was a great two runs, but that little fiasco zapped all my energy, so that was to be my last run of the day. We then drove to Seminyak to check out the shopping strip and see about real estate prices. Seems possible to buy a really nice property here for a reasonable price. I think we’re gonna take some tours later in the month with a couple agents just for fun!