Talk to the wombat cos the kitesurfer ain’t listening... part 1

by Emilie Marx
(Part 1/3)

I feel that this months issue is going be a classic….

There’s one remarkable thing about me: I am excellent at giving sensible advice that I am absolutely incapable of applying to myself…
It’s so obvious sometimes that I can only admit having a little “je ne sais quoi” of wombat in me….
Ok, let me clarify my thought there….

A wombat is a very cute Aussie native animal, it sort of looks like a mix between a hamster and a mouse, but twenty times bigger.
I’ve often asked myself how come the wombat isn’t as well known as the kangaroo or the koala (when it’s just as popular to Aussies), and I believe it is due to its lack of esthetical characteristics: wombats are plain little furry balls. No funky pocket, no eucalyptus leaves, it is no less than some sort of big rat, hence, I reckon, its lack of international popularity.
Now, it still has for me, one very particular feature: it’s oh so efficient defence technique.
Wombats think that if they don’t see the danger, the danger no longer sees them – a thought process also found with ostriches ….

But who needs to be smart when looking this cute?

That’s why a wombat crossing a road will stop right in front of your car and simply look the opposite way, convinced that if it doesn’t look at you, you can’t see it either.
In the wombat’s logic, the world stops existing when it doesn’t look at it.
I absolutely love the concept even if its efficiency in terms of protection is open to discussion -one can be allowed to think that the wombat species doesn’t owe its survival to its intelligence…

In spite of all my efforts to slow down the process of the sun bleaching my hair, sometimes the idiocy of my behaviour is so evident that I can only admit to having a certain wombat tendency…
Nope, this is not to blamed on bad luck, it’s not the winds fault, not my equipments fault, not the reefs fault, not the waves fault, I can’t even put this on the adrenalin junkie, this is just me being bluntly retarded….

I had a “wombat moment” the very day I put “The sound of the underwater Christmas Carol” online - which was rather ironical to say the least.
There are two truths I’ve said in this story (I find that to be a lot, knowing how many wise things can possibly come out of my mouth in the course of a whole year…)

The first truth is that everything breaks.
The second one is -and I’m gonna have to quote myself here because this is too good to be true - “opening the safety doesn’t guarantee the kite’s survival when it comes to big waves, but it’s the least one can do to do some damage control….”
Can you all see the picture described in my last issue, of a big fat wave about to explode in a kite sitting leading edge down in front of it?
Anyone who has kited in waves has already experienced this situation, and when it happens, timing is everything (because a decision must be taken within seconds.)

Is there time to re-launch?
If not, do I consider the wave threatening enough to open my safety and take the risk to get a worse mess in my bar and lines, be unable to get the kite back up and have no other choice than drift back to the shore?
But then, is my time that precious that I’m ready to gamble the life-span of my kite?
Ah, decisions, decisions….

And while this is going on in one’s head, the wave still has a life of its own and the clock is ticking….

I was in this precise situation the other day (yeah, I know…. “again”…), calculating the risk for my kite when I actually thought:
“Hey, I’ve put my kite through so much these past weeks; I’ve crashed it in much bigger waves than this, this is plain “cute”! Plus the wave is fat and slow and I’m actually quite sure I can still get my kite up or at least on its side, it will just go smoothly above the wall of whitewash, right? “

Wrong.

To read the second part of “Talk to the wombat cos the kitesurfer ain’t listening”