Secret
Perhaps you never told your little brother that it was you who hid gum in his hair and stuck his hand in warm water while he was sleeping. He's always thought it was your older brother Paul, and you've let him think that since 1976. We've all got something to come clean about. Even Election Director Dean Logan might just eventually spill about those mysteriously missing ballots. We say, let it out, no point in holding it in any longer.
Seattlest has a secret. We pride ourself on our love for all outdoor sport-like activities, pursuing old favorites and new flings alike. But there's still quite a few on the "not checked-off" list. We hope to remedy that as the temperatures are starting to climb, as many of said activities are of the warm-weather variety.
We're considering Kiteboarding for our summer outdoor sport research project. If you're not familiar with it, kiteboarding (also called kitesurfing, or just kiting) is a "fusion" sport combining elements of surfing (done that), wakeboarding (check), and windsurfing (well, once). Local organization Seattle Kiteboarding Center has classes, rental gear, and bucketloads of enthusiasm to share with beginners. And lucky for you, they're a member the national Professional Air Sports Association, who promises to help you realize "mans [sic] eternal dream of flying" while getting "insane air."
The general wisdom is to start small at nearby beginner-friendly locations like Golden Gardens or Richmond Beach before one makes the pilgrimage down to the Mecca of kiteboarding/windsurfing known as Hood River. Seattlest has a friend-of-a-friend (and who doesn't?) who is an avid kiteboarder, so we'll see how much trouble we can get into this summer. If you see someone getting dragged across Elliott Bay behind a small brightly-colored parachute-like apparatus while you're sipping a mojito at Duke's on Alki, please call the Coast Guard. And our mother.
On a tangent: "secret" is one of those strange words that once you say it two or three times, it stops sounding like a real word. Try it with us: secret, secret, secret. See what we mean?
