i ken report she was all goode, in many more ways than one if you canny get me drift geeza.
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yessir, the first annual april fools KITEFORUM.co.nz fancy dress beach party extravaganza / kiteboarding fiesta was a great success. why? because EVERYBODY loves dressing up...
as contest director i confess to having a few nervous hours after i made the call to shakers for 1pm kick-off. by midday, auckland had a very light westerly (which is unworkable at shakers on a high tide) and i knew saner kiters would be heading for muriwai. regardless, jake and i set up the barbie and sat in the sun with little else to do but hook into the beers as we willed the wind to swing more to the south as forecast. we knew no-one else would drive all the way out to the end of the whangaparaoa peninsula if there was zero chance of kiting and the only surefire way to create onshore puff was to make serious inroads into the well stocked chilli-bin.
this strategy paid off and slowly the wind oscillated around to the SW and filled in every now and again to a solid 12.375 or so knots tempting us to deploy our stunt kites. even more incredible was elvis presley's grand entrance with two costumed kids in tow. the party was on! there were now three keen drinkers and a whole afternoon ahead.
by 3pm we were well and truly sloshed and amazed to see more true believers showing up clad in some outrageous costumes. the hippy made an immediate impact with his intricately designed homemade suit and as he does, he ran around in ever decreasing circles until he had all his kiting kit together in one place, then immediately charged out into the breeze now nudging 13 knots!
all those that could drag themselves away from the free booze and sausage sizzle were soon out on the water and what a spectacle! saddam hussein and ronald reagan's appearances got the conspiracy theorists wagging while micheal jackson and elvis preferred to mooch around on the beach. there was an assortment of ghouls, geeks, freaks and gavin sporting a very revealing bikini and riding his surfboard with a stance that left nothing to the imagination. his stock with the judges quickly plummeted and the consensus beachside was anyone can see the old boy's buttcrack any day of the week.
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amazingly the wind built to 14 and a quarter, but the best was still to come. the girls arrived, god bless them, stunningly presented as erotic fairies and strutted their stuff, causing the boys to up the ante in the deranged antics department. ian flew his fairy from his kite's leading edge and seemed to improve his upwind performance. various costume parts started getting claimed by the ocean and the hippy lost his headgear (a beekeeper's helmet with a windsurf fin mounted on it) in one daring move.
by now it became clear that no matter how hilarious a costume you had on the beach, more points were being scored by those doing their thing in character on the water. elvis (masquerading as shane murrell) claimed it still wasn't windy enough as his cape was only a flutter, but alex (sexy fairy #1) polished off 2/3 of a bottle of wine then made her move - the first fully made-up chick i have seen on a kiteboard. when she returned after an hour clad only in a flimsy string singlet and asked if her mascara was running, i replied "no - but your headlights are definitely on!"
the afternoon wore on in this fashion with many innocent beachgoers forced to re-evaluate their long held beliefs about the meaning of life. there was still enough wind at dusk to experiment with ian's mannequin, who we forced into a harness, attached to my 17m and filmed kent launching her into the air with the obligatory face down drag down the beach. this was fantastic fun and a real crowd pleaser but somehow the girls didn't find it as funny when ian dragged the same doll behind his car doing donuts.
as darkness fell, the punters scarpered back to suburbia and it was down to the twelve apostles for the prizegiving ceremony. big ups to the sponsors (Slingshot, Kiteworks and DVNT) who added to KITEFORUM.co.nz's unprecedented generosity and provided a goodly pile of loot.
gavin was the most generous and amongst other things put a couple of G's up as prizes. a couple of G's?! yes, alex and lola deservedly walked away with genuine slingshot g-strings in their respective sizes and i look forward to checking if these fit right soon - a man has to keep his eye in. as contest director / chief judge and general red-blooded male i continued to shower the girls with more gifts including an impressive naish board bag from kiteworks, wine and slingshot apparel - in the interests of encouraging the fairer sex in the sport. eventually they stopped accepting more prizes and i was getting uncomfortable silences from the boys.
to be fair, elvis won the best costume award (collect your DVNT t-shirt from me shameless) but he gave away critical points for his non-performance on the water. ian also won a DVD in absentia for his strange torvill and dean tandem performances, while hippy scored the most undefinable wierdo award with his self-styled 'pole proof suit' coupled with his first on - last off the water enthusiasm. kent took out the prize (a jar of fresh homemade hippy honey) for constantly changing costumery and eventually there was nothing left but the big spot prize draw which turned into such a re-draw saga i can't even remember who won or what they won.
completely motherless by now, we all caught taxis home and a group of die-hards gathered at my pad for the invite-only after party where we got even more bent while watching the DVDs, scoffing junk food and telling porkers.
all up, and after a day of detox, i can report the fiesta was a great way to spend an afternoon at the beach and already we are planning to make this prestigious event bigger and better in years to come. in 2006, april fools day conveniently falls on a saturday so start planning your outfits now and if we're all still alive and kiting in fancy dress hasn't been banned completely by act of parliament - let's do it all again!
p.s. i look forward to the photos surfacing to prove the above wasn't just my personal flash-mob delusion. i have placed some in the news section of this site.
p.p.s where the hell was osama? the closest person to him was the butcher of baghdad: saddam hussein, who despite the seppos claims to the contrary, still maintains he has no links to al-qaeda.
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