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FORECAST 9.1 Letter from the Editor There is a lot of passion that percolates throughout the sport of windsurfing. This magazine certainly is a work of love, and the articles we publish tend to reflect this passion generated by the wind. In the eight years that I’ve covered the sport, I’ve come across many inspiring windsurfers. Maybe because I am following my own little passion trip that I tend to gravitate to people with extraordinary lives. The outward expression of their passion is and will always be, the essence of the magazine. I’ve seen people giving up comfortable jobs just so that they can teach people how to windsurf. I’ve seen couples living in their car so that they can windsurf and build a career doing something they love. For this issue, I’ve watched shop owners punish themselves day and night so that a race event can get organized. I’ve watched them get up at 3am to pick up arriving competitors and then deliver them back at the same ungodly hours. I’ve watched organizers camp out all night at the event site so that competitors gear would be safe. I’ve seen young sailors do more than follow their passions into the water—they organized themselves to revive an event from obscurity. You’ll see and read these works of passion throughout this issue. But to keep things in perspective, this passion driven activity is a highly complicated and exceptionally demanding subject. In this brave new millennium bent on enlightenment, it seems that more and more people are realizing the need for a passion. But this enlightenment may be a go-nowhere-on the-road-to-nirvana. I say this because it’s one thing to have passion—it is completely different to follow your passion. Many of us may have found our passion but only a few of us can say that we truly followed ours. Even fewer of us can say that we’ve survived our passion. On the printed page and in the movies, watching someone follow their passion may seem romantic as hell. Not that hell is romantic, but going through hell is often romanticized. Let’s face it. It’s more fun to go through hell to get to heaven then to go through heaven to get to hell. The windsurfing industry has been going through hell for several years now. Why? Because it followed its passion. It did what every windsurfer did. It followed the wind. I might add that it also forgot to mind the store and so it must now endure the hardships of this oversight. How it will overcome the uncertainties of the future and survive this passion related obsticle is the essence of the story for this magazine. Let’s face it. Life's boring if you don’t take chances. The chances we take can usually be traced to some form of passion related reflex. You can say that the “Devil made me do it.” Or you could say that passion is the building block of great civilizations. Whatever the case may be, passion is bred into us like that of a Golden Retriever waiting to fetch a ball. It is magical and powerful, something we all possess. Some may be more dormant than others. But when awakened, we have the ability to change the course of rivers, move mountains and inspire a whole generation. I would declare to you that passion is probably the single most important and inspiring human response we are endowed with. It may come in second only to love because it usually follows love. While love may be the key to continue the human race—passion is the key to our evolution. I don’t think we can ever evolve without passion. Some people may say that passion is folly. I think if you haven’t followed your passions, you haven’t lived. If you haven’t lived, you haven’t evolved. John Chao Publisher/Editor |
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