SUP Mag UK lo-res free to readers July 2014 lo-res - free to read | Page 27

Counter intuitiveness

for the SUP

instructor

ot so long ago, he paid an eyewatering £1,000 for a four-hour oneto-one advanced mountain bike
course in New Zealand. This led to partaking
in the latest thing, heli-biking, being dropped
off high on a mountain top and riding back
home – and you don't even want to know
what that costs. It reminded me of story of a
party of wealthy businessmen who had
chartered a game fishing boat in Cairns,
Australia, who, upon running out of beer and
recognising the gravity of the situation,
telephoned the local helicopter service and
had them fly out a carton of beer at an eyewatering cost.

N

The point? Well, maybe it's that you get what
you pay for or simply that there are people
out there willing to pay for excellence and
who have in place a different set of values,
governed by how much money they have to
invest. Club Mistral offer the same bespoke
service in some of their resorts, a ‘Prestige’
package for wealthy executives and high
flyers, who want peace and solitude away
from the eyes of others and this extends to
windsurfing and kiteboarding, in which they
have high levels of expertise. Which brings
me to the thrust of this missive.

Dumbed-down

An old school mate recently visited me in the UK
from Hong Kong. The antithesis of myself, he's a
fast paced executive in the clothing game. Short on
time, long on money, he loves his sport and has
interests in kiteboarding and mountain bike riding.
A natural sportsman, he's impatient and has a need
to want to learn any new sport quickly and doesn't
mind paying for it. He has an intolerance of
mediocrity, a view we both share with regards to
paying out for instruction, and it doesn’t take him
long to calculate the ratio of quality of experience
balanced with what he’s paid out.
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