I once heard a tale (second hand) about a guy in Charleston who was bound and determined to learn kiteboarding the hard way. Having found a great deal on a monster kite he decided that he needed to be cautious at first. He tied his harness to a big rock on the jetti so he could practice flying the kite without getting out of hand (this was before the modern safety release kits too). To people like us, the proper thing here would have been to get a small practice kite to start with. After getting things going, he had the kite down low and really pulling hard...guess what...string to rock breaks and he is launched down the beach.

Not bleeding too profusely yet (darwinism) he decided that his brusing and scrapes were a direct result of the rope being too weak, so this time he doubled it up. Because the single line to the front of his harness also tended to make him rotate, he tied the double lines from the jetti to the front of his harness - one around his left side, one around his right. The wind is honking now. As soon as the kite gets flying and POOF it yanks him up off the ground with the two strings holding him firmly to the jetti. The strings he tied around either side of him are now squeezing him terribly threatening to disembowl him. He's screaming for mercy when some good sumaritan puts a knife to the lines on the jetti....BOING! Down the beach, over the dune, and across the street he goes screaming the whole way.

The guy doing the kite sailing was telling this story to a friend of mine a day latter - I suppose he was trying to explain why he appeared so beat up.