Floats like a butterfly... stings like a bee-yach!

There may not be any decent tigerfishing to be had down here in the Cape, but there's still plenty to keep one occupied. Summer is still in full swing and that means plenty of sunny weekends, although the first few cold fronts are beginning to creep up form the south, which has meant some windy days. Since a patch of the pesky 'flu kept me off my bike this weekend I decided to try a bit of kiting - an activity that I have sadly neglected of late. The conditions at Noordhoek beach didn't fail to disappoint the blue skies and a the wind a steady 20-25 knots, so it was with a bit of trepidation that I unfurled the 'Angry Bee' - 4.8 sqm of brute force and not a whole lot of forgiveness for careless flying.

As always, getting it up was not much of a problem, but staying in one spot on the beach was not that easy. Nonetheless, kiting seems to be a bit like falling off a bike once you've done it a couple of times you don't forget and I managed to get in some good skiing and even a few decent jumps, while managing not to take out any kids, dogs, horses and other bystanders who never seem to realise that standing downwind is NOT actually the safest place to be. The session ended a bit ignomiously with an emergency landing in the surf whne the wind picked up and it looked like I may be heading for deeper water, but all in all a good outing. It made me realise though that I think I really do need to get a bigger kite and a board. Skiing on the beach is fun for a while, but the open water beckons...

Two days later, and what I didn't realise just how buggered I'd be. Bloody hell! 40 minutes of hanging on to onto a few square metres of the south easter and I can't even walk up stairs without flinching and I'm certainly not going to be doing any heavy lifting for a while. It just goes to show, one form of exercise is not neccessarily equal to another. I'm open to any massage offers...

Meanwhile, also in the Cape, I wasn't completely crippled and have managed to make some further improvements to the blog. Keen fans can now subscribe to email updates - just fill in the form on the right hand side, above the archive and whenever we publish something it will be delivered straight to your inbox and... cool huh!

Right, I'm off home to have a discussion with my good friend Voltaren... laters.