NICOLA: And so to Texas and our wind problems. No, this is not a blog about farting, though I probably do have enough material to write a lengthy tome about that, but in the interests of decency and good taste I’ll refrain from sharing.

 

Anyhow, we came to the southern gulf coast of Texas in order to find warmth and wind. The aim was to fill a few weeks of the winter with the aquisition of a new skill - kiteboarding. We had seen plenty of people doing it in the Caribbean, especially around Tobago Cays and it always looked like such a fun thing to do. But we learned while the steady Trade Winds are great to do it in, the many reefs around the islands and the sometimes rough Atlantic sea on the windward side means the Caribbean is not a great place to learn how to do it.

South Padre Island however is rated as the Number 1 place in the USA for beginners to learn. Why? Well according to those in the know, it has steady warm southerly winds between 15 and 30 miles an hour, warm water, no crowds and a huge shallow bay on the west side which means you can fall off in flat water and walk to get your board.  The best time to go is late January to June. Perfect! We thought.

On the way down from Arkansas we stopped briefly on the outskirts of Houston to stuff Vera to the gills with a Whole Foods shop. Smalltown America can’t afford Whole Foods, so you only find them in big cities. We stopped at Mustang Island just off the mainland from Corpus Christi first only to be met by dense fog and torrential downpours. Then drove down to Port Isabel and out onto South Padre Island. Padre Island is the world’s largest barrier island (yet again proving the adage that everything is bigger in Texas). 113 miles long and about a mile and a half wide. It’s mostly sand dunes and beach with a good chunk of it designated a National Park. South Padre Island town has a couple of main roads, some high rise hotels on the beach and the requisite touristy souvenir/surf shops and beach bars dotted around. It’s a pretty sleepy place apart from spring break when thousands of students arrive seeking warnth and cheap booze to party like it’s 1999.

We found a campsite with reasonable amenities and enjoyed the ability to ride our bikes to anywhere we needed to get to. There are many kitebaording schools but AIr Padre seemed like it was the best and most established so we signed up with them and waited for the wind to come good. The best conditions for learning kiteboarding are steady crosshore winds between about 15 and 25 miles an hour. You need a certain amount of wind to keep the kite easily aloft. Too much and you can’t control it.

Within a couple of days we had our first lesson and it was great fun. Learned on land with a trainer kite the principles of the ‘wind window’ and how to utilise the kite power. Then donned wetsuits and got the real thing out in shallow water in order to understand how to launch it, steer it and rescue yourself if it all goes tits up. All good.

But sadly since then (almost 3 weeks ago) we have made no further progress. The regular southerly winds have been replaced by quite schizophrenic weather behaviour. Strong cold northerlies, followed by no wind conditions as the wind swings 180 degrees around to the south, then back to blasting northerlies. There have been many occasions we’ve had lessons arranged only to have them cancelled  last minute as the wind is either too weak or too strong. It’s been quite frustrating. Nevertheless we’ve used the time to make lots of progress on other stuff which has previoulsy been a bit neglected as we did our entensive travelling late last year. We’ve made great progress on the house design for the place in Bequia, Mikey has mixed a new single featuring the singing of Amanda Gooding (out March 12th) and I’ve started writing a regular blog spot for Black Mountain Ranch.

So we’ve decided to extend out stay here for another couple of weeks to give the wind a chance to sort itself out. It means we’ll be here during spring break and the ‘youth’ have just started to arrive. Either we’ll avoid the carnage by being out on the water kiteboarding or we’ll be swamped by alcohol laden bikini clad girls. Either way Mikey’s feeing quite positive about our options.

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