Articles | Michael Behar | Writer & Editor | Boulder, Colorado

Kiteboarding | September 2011

Surf’s Up, Finally Download PDF

The world’s first kite competition exclusively for wave-riders debuts.

It wasn’t long ago—perhaps 10 years—when the idea of surfing a wave with a kite was ludicrous. Kites pulled like deranged cruise missiles. Depower was laughable. Getting onto a wave was easy; staying on it was another story. The early generations of kites would stall at low speeds. To keep them aloft, riders needed gobs of speed, which made it impossible to stay on the face of a wave unless the surf was insanely huge (the bigger the swell, the faster it travels). The physics to execute classic moves—bottom turns, off-the-lip carves, and getting barreled—simply didn’t compute. Those who claimed to kite waves were really just outrunning them. Meanwhile, surfers scoffed at the lameness of it all.

But as kiting moved from infancy into adolescence, the desire to catch waves fueled innovation. First came bow kites, in 2005, with hybrid-and delta-shaped sails to follow. The advances led to kites that hovered patiently while a rider dawdled in the surf. Today, kiters are not only shredding the world’s legendary breaks, but doing things paddle-and-wait surfers can only dream of: cherry-picking the sweetest waves in a set—or riding them all—on ordinary surfboards, even strapless. Continue reading →

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July 24, 2011 by admin

Kiteboarding | July 2011

I, Kiter Download PDF

Riders convene in the British Virgin Islands for the second annual BVI Kite Jam. Amidst steady wind, world-class waves and boundless flat water, jammers rediscover the kindred bonds that give our sport its soul.

Horseshoe reef, the fourth largest on Earth, meanders for 18 miles around Anegada, an atoll perched at the northern frontier of the British Virgin Islands. The reef encloses an electric blue lagoon fringed with frothy ribbons of surf. its thriving coral heads have trashed hundreds of laden vessels, spilling their cargoes onto Anegada’s pearly beaches. Scavenging these shipwrecks provided islanders with their primary income source for several centuries. now tourism fuels Anegada’s economy. The atoll has long been a far-flung hideout for sailors, who believe the island exudes a quiet energy that lulls visitors into a rhapsodic bliss. Perhaps that is why on a very windy day at Anegada’s cow Wreck Beach there are at least 50 kiteboarders in varying states of repose, loafing in the sand. “It was really weird to see,” Charlie Smith says. “There was a lot of chatting going on and not much kiteboarding.” Continue reading →

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April 24, 2011 by admin

Outside | April 2011

Just Waive Goodbye Download PDF

With so many novice adventurers filing suit when something goes wrong, outfitters are shielding themselves behind increasingly dense liability forms. What does the mumbo jumbo really mean? We asked a crack team of lawyers.

THE TIME HAS COME. You’ve saved up for the adventure of a lifetime, and departure is imminent. But before you can raft the Grand Canyon, heli-ski Alaska’s Chugach Range, or climb Kilimanjaro, you need to get by a pesky gatekeeper: the liability-release waiver. If you’re like most clients, you’ll sign without reading a word. But you should know what you’re getting into. “It’s just like signing a mortgage,” says Tracey Knutson, an Anchorage-based attorney who represents outfitters from Alaska to Antarctica. “This is a binding contract.” More to the point, it’s a binding contract that leaves you powerless. Refuse to sign the waiver and you’ll be sent packing with a refund. If you sign, then get hurt and file suit ? Good luck—judge s toss out about 90 percent of recreation-based lawsuits.

This wasn’t always the case. “I recall many large outfits not using waivers in the early seventies,” says Reb Gregg, a Houston-based attorney who lectures about recreational liability. So how did things get so contentious? To find out, we constructed an abridged sample waiver using language from the contracts of a few leading outfitters, then dug up the lawsuits that prompted the bombproof legalese. The result is a look at 50 years of ski accidents, shark attacks, rafting mishaps, and negligent guides. Read on—then sign at your own risk. Continue reading →

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April 10, 2011 by admin

Rosebud | Spring 2011

Sky-High Shortcut Download PDF

Heli-Hiking the Bugaboos.

“Let’s begin by learning how to breathe,” declares Lyle Grisedale, a lanky 66-year-old alpine guide and lifelong mountain bum.

I’m standing on an 8,000-foot-high rocky ridge with Grisedale and a group of a dozen hikers in British Columbia’s Bugaboo Range. It would normally take at least two days trudging uphill through wooded slopes and across snowfields to reach this perch. Our journey took six minutes aboard a Bell 212 helicopter. The brawny twin-engine beast delivered our entire posse from the Bugaboo Lodge, an upscale retreat operated by Canadian Mountain Holidays (CMH) that is tucked in a lush valley 3,100 feet below the peak. Grisedale works for CMH, an adventure outfitter founded 50 years ago by an Austrian immigrant who pioneered the use of helicopters for ski touring and backcountry hiking. Continue reading →

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April 9, 2011 by admin

Mother Jones, March/April 2011

Alien vs. Predator: Biocontrol Edition Download PDF

Can an imported weevil KO an invasive weed that’s choking out our parks and pastures? Or do we enlist bugs at our own peril?”

We’ve been driving south from Missoula, Montana, for nearly an hour on a torrid August afternoon when Noah Poritz veers his tomato-red pickup truck onto the shoulder of a gravel road and slams on the brakes. The tires slide to an abrupt stop, churning up a cloud of hot dust. Poritz leaps out and surveys the stark landscape. “This is the site,” he declares, making a long, slow sweep across the horizon with his hand. We’re in the heart of the Bitterroot Valley, a 100-mile-long patchwork of dairy farms and cattle ranches, flanked by massive granite peaks. “It is perfect weevil weather today,” says Poritz. “They can’t handle the heat of the soil. When the temperature rises, they climb the plants. When it gets hot is when we scoop them up.” Continue reading →

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February 23, 2011 by admin

Outside | February 2011

Faster. Higher. Squeakier. Download PDF

In 2007, molecular biologist Ron Evans flipped a genetic switch on test mice and turned them into super-athletes. Headlines ensued, as did nervous references to human applications and ‘exercise in a pill.’ Evans is still toiling away in the lab, and guess what? The day is coming.

Back in the early 1960s, when the architect Louis Kahn designed the airy layout of the Salk Institute—a collection of stark concrete towers aligned like teetering dominoes on a Pacific Ocean bluff in La Jolla, California—he oriented the buildings so that robust sea breezes would waft through the upper floors. But as I descend four flights of stairs to enter a sprawling subterranean lab, the sweet ocean air turns sour. Researchers at Salk are conducting cutting-edge experiments in genetics, biology, neuroscience, and human physiology. At the core of this futuristic work are 6,000 old-fashioned, defecating rodents, stacked in shoebox-size plastic cages, creating an odor far too potent for Kahn’s ingenious ventilation scheme to handle.

Despite the funk, the facility is meticulous. Wearing powder-blue scrubs, a surgical mask, a bouffant cap, and cloth shoe covers, I enter through a sterile clean room closed off between double doors. A whitewashed hallway adjoins various smaller labs, where mice are being injected with performance-enhancing compounds and forced to sprint on tiny treadmills. Others have had bits of their DNA reprogrammed to make them better runners. There are paunchy mice gorging on high-fat diets and svelte mice getting low-cal meals. Hunched over a metal table, a technician sorts through a squirming posse, plucking out prime studs for breeding and banishing aggressive males to solitary confinement. Mice are sacrificed and their muscles examined. Blood is sampled, hearts are inspected, kidneys and livers prodded. Continue reading →

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January 29, 2011 by admin

Afar | January/February 2011

Fresh from the Yucatán Download PDF

A mainstay of home cooking throughout Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula and a standard on nearly every restaurant menu in the region, sopa de lima combines zesty Old and New World flavors. The basic elements are savory chicken broth, fiery habanero chili, and a tart blast from the lima fruit. According to Chef José Vázquez, a native of the Yucatán, the soup is a quintessential example of cultural fusion—centuries before the term was coined to describe a culinary movement.

The Yucatán is wedged between the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, geographically isolated from the country’s interior. “Historically, it has had a much closer relationship with Europe than has the rest of Mexico,” notes Vázquez, who studied at the California Culinary Institute and returned home to become head chef at Hacienda Xcanatún in Mérida, the Yucatán state capital. And sopa de lima, more than any other staple of local cuisine, represents the collision of indigenous Mayan foods with European, Asian, and Middle Eastern fare. Continue reading →

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January 18, 2011 by admin

Kiteboarding | January 2011

Board Silly Download PDF

It’s rare to find a pro surfer on a production board. Now kites are discovering the magic of a custom ride.

To witness Stephen Schank build me a custom-designed, handmade twin-tip kiteboard is like watching one of those articulated high-speed assembly line robots at a modern automotive Plant. Somewhere, embedded deep inside his brain, the neural equivalent to software code is dispatching parsed instructions to his body, which moves in sync to a silent beat. His actions are premeditated, precise and blindingly fast, conforming to a series of discrete steps he’s honed over eight years of shaping. It takes Schank, who is 37, less than 20 minutes to cut, bevel and sand my board’s core. It’s carved from a single piece of very expensive and ultralight closed-cell foam endowed with unique flex and dampening properties.

While Schank is quick, he is by no means hasty. When I visit his tiny shop, located inside an aluminum Quonset hut in Buxton, North Carolina, he spends two hours interrogating me about what I hope to get from a handbuilt board. He makes notes in a leather-bound black notebook, punches figures into a calculator and finally announces a size: 132 centimeters by 40.5 centimeters. I had wanted something slightly longer, but Schank, a former professional kiteboarder and windsurfer (he’s also competed in mountain biking, skiing, ice climbing and hang gliding, among other sports), has a vision and won’t budge. For my board, he selects every feasible feature—outline, tip flex, core materials, rail thickness—to accommodate my riding style. Schank orders fiberglass specially woven for him in different weights and weaves; for me, he chooses a combination to suit chop and surf, the conditions I kite in most often. He measures the width of my shoulders and hips to determine my optimal foot stance. He even tunes each fin individually (they’re lettered for accurate placement) and sets them slightly inward because I expressed a pet peeve about face spray. Continue reading →

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November 21, 2010 by admin

Newsweek | November 2010

Can This Cure Cancer? Download PDF

Why scientists are heading underwater to search for a new generation of cures.”

When Hendrik Luesch invited me to Florida to go snorkeling, I didn’t expect to be wading through brackish muck in the Indian River Lagoon, a 156-mile-long estuary. I’m traveling aboard a 21-foot fishing boat with Luesch, a 40-year-old associate professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Florida in Gainesville. The visibility sucks, like swimming through a vat of kombucha. Luesch drags his fingers through the water, gathering a wad of flotsam. He raises the specimen into the sunlight to get a better look at the slime, known as cyanobacteria.

Cyanobacteria live in every ocean and on every continent in both salt and fresh water. One species causes a rash known as swimmer’s itch; another blooms in lakes and reservoirs, expelling a neurotoxin that can be fatal to humans. “They produce this huge diversity of compounds that have never been identified,” says Luesch, who’s been studying them since 1997. Luesch has investigated cyanobacteria from around the world—Hawaii, Florida, Guam, Palau—and last year he made a startling discovery: a family of cyanobacteria called Symploca emits a toxin that attacks tumors. Luesch sprinkled Symploca extract on cultures of colon, bone, and breast-cancer cells, and they withered within hours, as though they’d been doused with Roundup; he did the same with healthy cells, and they survived virtually unscathed. Luesch christened the new compound “largazole” (the first batch came from algae near Key Largo), and has recently completed animal testing: in mice, largazole slowed the growth of cancerous colorectal tumors. He hopes to have an FDA-approved treatment on the market in about 10 years—the typical timeline to develop a new drug. Continue reading →

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October 23, 2010 by admin

OnEarth | Fall 2010

Cold Comfort Download PDF

After suffering through another summer of record-breaking heat, it’s time to rethink our century-old love affair with air-conditioning.

Before modern cooling machines enveloped civilization in frigid air, humans living in hot climes used all sorts of techniques to stay reasonably comfy. Egyptians fashioned homes with mud and stone. Domed mosques and temples in the Middle East and India funneled hot air upward. Dwelling in subterranean chambers kept denizens of Cappadocia in Turkey and Petra in Jordan from breaking a sweat. Some cultures draped water-soaked fabric over open windows; others topped their roofs with thatch or earth to diffuse heat. Roman emperors had their plebeians haul snow from distant mountaintops and pile it along palace walls. More recently, residents of America’s Deep South kept their homes airy with vaulted ceilings, spacious front rooms, wraparound porches, and picture windows.

Then, in the early twentieth century, a tenacious young engineer named Willis Carrier introduced us to the miracle of indoor climate control. Today, the company that Carrier founded earns $11.4 billion in annual sales, but its products, having revolutionized the way Americans live, remain the least efficient appliances in a typical household. They devour 16 percent of an average household’s annual energy tab, producing the equivalent of 2,290 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. “We’ve always taken air-conditioning for granted,” Gordon Holness, president of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), told me recently. “We’ve got into these lazy patterns because energy has been readily available and cheap. Now we’re realizing there isn’t an endless supply.” Continue reading →

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