Kiting again
Earlier this summer I was mucking about doing a bit of tandem kite buggy flying (along the lines of this) for fun and for various charities. Autistic kids love it, I was surprised to discover. Anyway, one fact about tandem buggying is that it works much better if the person in the back is considerably lighter than the person in the front - i.e. a child in the back and an adult in the front is ideal. This is where I went wrong.

I am not particularly big - about twelve stone. The guy I had in the back was a thirtysomething who was easily sixteen stone. This does not make for an easy ride, but I wasn't doing too badly at first - getting some speed up and while the turns were a bit hairy I was keeping it together. Until I got cocky. "I know". "I'll give him a full speed downturn, that's always impressive" I thought. I was doing about 25mph with minimal safety equipment at this point. "Watch this!" I shouted. I wrenched the kite from one direction into the other, just as a massive gust hit me. BANG. The front buggy flipped instantly pinning me under it face down, unable to reach the seatbelt release. I'm told the noise of me hitting the ground was clearly audible a hundred metres away. That would have been bad enough, but it wasn't over. The kite powered up again and started looping. I was dragged over thirty metres at high speed over short, dry grass. It first ripped most of the top layer of skin off my right upper arm, then added friction burns to the next layer.

I finally stopped when my kite broke - to give you an idea of the forces involved, the part the broke has an approximate breaking strain of 200kg, and there are two of them. In other words, nearly half a ton of force was dragging me across the ground.

Fate, however, was't quite finished with me. In order to release the seatbelt I had to ask a couple of guys to lift the buggy up a foot or so in order for me to reach it. Because of the way I had shifted in the buggy during my short, painful trip, the seatbelt was lying right.across.my.bollocks. I'm not sure which was worse - the arm injury or how my balls fealt after my kind friends had got me out of the buggy.


The crowning moment of the incident was when I got home after a twenty mile drive, leaking blood onto my dad's car armrest the whole way. I parked up, walked into the house, and announced to my dad that I had "Had a bit of an accident", holding up my mangled arm.

"Where? I can't see anything"

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU CAN'T SEE ANYTHING! IT'S COVERED IN BLOOD!"

"Oh yes. So it is."



The laughter? That came from the thirty or so people who saw me have the crash. They still mock me about it, the bastards.
( MatJ LOOK, Thu 17 Dec 2009, 19:08, 3 replies)

Thought about
kite killers on the break lines? or are you in a harness?
(Speshal, Fri 18 Dec 2009, 2:13, closed)

Semi captive harness
And I wouldn't have been able to release anyway once I started going. The initial flip was much to fast to react properly.
( MatJ LOOK, Fri 18 Dec 2009, 10:29, closed)

ooops
hahahah we've all done that :)
(Speshal, Fri 18 Dec 2009, 11:45, closed)