Lines, mines and where did my confidence go? 

 Well about 5 or 6 days ago this story seemed so bad, but after the last three days it almost sounds good to me. It was before we crossed the boarder into Mauritania and had been forced onto the major road due to land mines, the wind for once is favorable for our direction of travel and strong. We are all flying 2m PL Hornets (our smallest kite). I have the kite ‘hotwired’ to my buggy (attached to my buggy so there is less strain on my body) and the wind is that strong that it is lifting my back windward wheel off the ground. Normally I have no problems with this and just enjoy the ride, but today I am flying a kite with a stretched canopy, which makes the kite randomly drop out of the sky and into the power zone. It was kind of like if the “cut snake” and the “chicken with its head cut off” had got really drunk and this was their love child. And to add to that a really strong gusty wind, it makes flying really tricky. I am also on the wrong side of the road so my lines aren’t crossing in front of traffic, to my left there is a steep drop off, which is followed by very large rocks, and land mines. So I am starting to get a little nervous to say the least. In normal conditions if your buggy goes up on two wheels (the front and one back wheel) if you want to go back on all three you just turn down wind a little. But unfortunately there is no down wind for me to turn, just rocks and mines. So now my instinct is to turn away from those, which will result in my buggy being flipped over, and doing speeds of 50km/hr on bitumen, and my kite being strapped to the buggy, would have ended in a lot of pain and probably a very large boom… I had officially lost my confidence and my heart beat was lets just say high. Geoff was my only solution, so I downed my kite (lol… into the mine field I might add…lol.. and actually earlier that day we had stopped to get some touristy photos infront of a land mine sign, and only minutes later a gust caught my kite and took it right into the middle where Lance and I had to go in and retrieve it…with Geoff yelling in the back ground “just leave it… or at least just one go in!” but it was a two man job, and I’m here writing this now, so its OOOK.) Geoff was very kind in letting me attach to the back of his buggy which benefited us both very much as it gave more weight to Geoff which in high gusty winds is a good thing, and it allowed me to lower my heartbeat a little. But for now I am sitting in a very hot car, on the Senegal side of the boarder while Alan sorts out a fleecing of a life time with “boarder fees” now exceeding over $2000 aussie…