Convention ,convention, convention...need I say more?

Man the season blew by like a stiff wind or maybe a whirlwind! Events almost every weekend in this region, Passo Robles was fun specially when they called out the fire dept, two trucks even, and rescued my pilot kite from a lamp pole!

Marina festival in Marina Ca. Just keeps getting better and better, even tho we had to put our kites away on Sunday and let the kids take over the flying areas..heck after all it’s all for the locals anyway right??

The San Ramon art and wind fest turned out to be one of the best eve. OK wind both days and huge crowds to watch us play with it. The feast at my house saw the demise of three smoked turkeys and tons of other great offerings! BY the way I spoke with the city and Im told with the economy the way it is an the city being low dough the construction plans for the fields just upwind from the festival location will be on HOLD for at least 5 years!! So the skies over San Ramon will be filled with kites the next 5 Memorial weekends! AND a big Thank You to all that participated!

On July 4^th a small group of kiters headed back to the Point Arena Light house, our mission was to decorate the entire property with kites foe some areial photos that will be used to promote a full blown festival. And boy did we put up some kites and play on that light house tower! The kites went up easy and stayed up all day almost unattended, in fact I left my black pyro up for over 24 hours!!! Dan Whitney had his huge Octopus flying on the lighthouse, the winds increased after dark and we had quite a time getting it down! It was a great weekend, memorable for sure..to bad it was foggy a lot of the time. Next summer watch for the announcement for the Incredible Lighthouse festival!

Baskl completed another great season at the Berkeley Kite Festival. Highline kites, the organizer of this great festival decided to eliminate competitions from the venue so BASKL took over the task, I think it was successful pairing.

This change at the Berkeley Fest wasn’t the only ones! The configuration of the fields was all different! The Sales tent was set up down by the main field as was the manufacturers demo fields. The BASKL comps were all the way down on the lower field and had NO spectators venture down there. But all this freed up the top field that turned into a virtual Zoo! In my life Iv never seen so many huge kites in such a small area .On Sunday there were eight octopi playing nicely so close ya could get them all in a camera lense! Kitty cats, 3 manta rays and several huge teddy nears just to name some of the color that filled the skies of Berkeley. Days were warmish and winds built to an ucomphy18 to 20. The cruise was streamlined with less speeches and trophy distribution, this left nearly an hour to look at the sites from the decks and work the bid sheets in the silent auction. O yea, I managed a 2^nd in MIB!

I have to mention a kite flyer that impressed me this year, Mark Quirmbach. Mark is an average flier with average frequency to the park, but thats where AVERAGE stops! Mark makes a difference every time he flies! When he arrives he first takes one of those grabber things and walks around and picks up any trash he finds and then disposes it. He will them fly his kites and socialize like the rest of us when he’s done for the day he packs his kites and goes to his car and unloads several bags of soil and proceeds to fill pot holes, gopher holes and low spots! Cudos to Mark, and excellent kite flier!

See ya in Dayton!