The retail world of sports gear can be separated into two basic types of customers: There are those who are looking to fill their garage with some future dust-catcher which currently serves to just pass a fancy. Then there are the rest of us--Gear Heads. We love our gear. We research it. We dream about it. We save up for it. We order it. We wait for it. We can look back on the day of the purchase and remember the smell of the packaging. We remember and relish every turn of every screw as we assembled our first kiteboard or glued our first paddle handle.
These are the types of people that I knew I wanted to work with, to teach, and to sell to. They understand. They get it. Gear Matters.
I got into kiteboarding when a crazy old Swiss man gifted me a traction kite. It had a picture of his face, which happened to look like Albert Einstein with his tongue sticking out. His name was Rene Kung and he owned www.activepeople.com . It was 1998. I tried to teach myself how to use the two-handled foil kite. I tried to figure out how to pull myself through the water. I ended up hitchhiking on lots of passing boats after stranding myself in the middle of rivers.
Finally, I saved up and went to a 3 day kiteboarding camp. That's where I learned all about the gear that I needed. Chris Moore from www.kittyhawk.com and Paul Menta from www.thekitehouse.com were my instructors. They taught me what I needed to know. From there it was time to shop. They set me up with a Wipika Classic. This was one of my first rides on that kite.
Then it was time to pick a board. The magazines were full of pro-riders. And every one of them was riding a Jimmy Lewis kiteboard. While most of the other boards looked like cartoon printed wakeboards, Jimmy's boards shined like an exotic car. The water beaded up on the surface. The shapes looked fast. They looked mean. I had to have one. I went to www.jimmylewis.com to read up on every model and watch Jimmy shape on the webcam. Of course I never actually saw him on camera, but I watched nonetheless.
I saved up. I watched eBay.com relentlessly. Finally, it was available. It was a red Jimmy Lewis picklefork called the Slayer. It was hand shaped and hand painted. It was before Jimmy invented the Dominatrix concave bottom and soft rails, so the edges of the board were like razors. It had a red pair of Liquid Force bindings. It was beautiful. It stayed in the living room, much to my wife's disapproval. It was too nice to put in a closet or the garage. The bindings weren't very practical for learning, but I wasn't having anything else.
From that time on, I owned several Jimmy Lewis boards. The 137 Rad-F helped me race 60 miles down the Florida coast (pictured above at the finish line). The Buzz board was a 70cm finless creation that was dreamed up between Jimmy and Lou Wainman. That was a fun but impractical thrill ride. And finally there was the Model 3. This was the game changer for me. It was designed by Jimmy for Shannon Best. He was my favorite Pro Rider at the time. His style, his attitude, and his speed put his riding above others in my mind. That Model 3 was the smoothest board I had ever ridden. And it did have Jimmy's Dominatrix shape (soft rails with concave channel set a few inches inside either rail.) The design was based on the slalom water ski to have the most control under speed. And it did.
When I later got into teaching kiteboarding, my students wanted to purchase gear. I wasn't going to sell them crap. I was going to pass the torch of appreciation for good gear. It's worth it. Save your money when it comes to groceries. When it comes to gear, there's nothing like having the best.
us.jimmylewis.com
