January 2002

Newsletter, January '02.

It's 9.30pm on New Year's Eve and guess what I'm doing for the first time ever at this time of this significant day of the year?- that's it, working.  Well, if sanding and filling a new kiteboat qualifies as work.  Feels a bit strange, not quite right somehow. 

But, I'm reassured by the excellent company - Jenny and Elwyn are here working also- and they are indubitably doing real work, that is, things with bits of paper and computers.

It's not that there's any particular business crisis or out of the usual pressure, there just doesn't seem to be anything better do to. 

Or maybe it's the anti-climax after the sequence of millennial new year's of 2000 and 2001, each vying to be THE one.  It will be 98 years until there is a new year even one tenth as important again, so no need to get excited just yet.

Maybe it's just because there isn't anything interesting on television -

Hey, if this last is the reason, the three of us are in serious trouble- have lost it I would say.  

But, after Sept 11, will there ever be anything riveting on television again?

Maybe it's just a sign of our, um, er, maturity.

But what are the signs and portents of maturity?  It's not exactly synonymous with age, although from my current perspective I will admit there may be some general correlation.

Focusing on solvable problems is one sign of maturity.

Immaturity, with the attention span of a Nagasaki Hata, tilts at the world's really big questions- like why it's all gone wrong in the last 100years or so*, why kite's fly, and etc - and fails miserably of course,- and then has to have it's fragile failure burdened over-compensating self esteem propped up by insincere praise from the overseeing wise by way of bullshit like "it's not success that matters, it's trying your best" etc.  Whoops, got carried away there for a bit.

Maturity attacks solvable problems with dogged unrelenting persistence- like how to tell which country you are in* and why did the paint for my latest kite boat cost more than the new electric outboard motor for same* 

Of course, at the far end of the immaturity-maturity continuum lurks senility: dogged unrelenting persistence applied to really big questions- like does the yard need mowing today?

Hey, silly examples aside, there's an insightful theory in this somewhere.

Anyway, must go, things to do, problems to solve- like some time in the next week or so I need to work out just why kites fly- and possibly the yard needs mowing.

Peter Lynn, Ashburton, December 3, 2001

*Why has the world gone all wrong?  I say it hasn't.  Clyde Cook, my inimitable, sometimes misogynist kite festival companion, says it has and that it's all the fault of one Samuel P Kettering.  Sam developed electric starter motors for cars in the 1920's, removing the main barrier that had been keeping women at home until then.  Kinder, kuche und kirke became kinder, kuche, kirke and kar- with far reaching consequences.

*The jet age problem of determining where in the world you are?  This one's easy: When it's colder inside than outside it's the tropics, when it's colder outside than inside it's nearer the poles. The Thai civil service has just directed staff to take their jackets off while at work- to save electricity.

*Why did 4 litres of paint cost more than a new outboard motor?  Ha ha , suckered you on this one it didn't- not quite.  But now I remember why I don't usually paint boats.

PS.

Congratulations to Stefan Cook for second place overall in the hangtime at the Mangawhai Red Bull KiteSurfing event.  In the final, Stefan, using a new 1600/9.5 F Arc was just 0.2 secs behind the winner, Robbie Naish- and Stef was jumping his natural way which just happened to be downwave that day., wow.

And, our E Mail was out from Xmas for a few days at plk@peterlynnkites.com- your E Mails were going somewhere but not to here.  Nobody can yet tell us where they were going.  You wont have received a failed delivery message so if we haven't replied to anything recently, and you think we should have- please send again.  Sorry.  peterlynnkites@peterlynnkites.com was and is still working.