Norwalk Kite Festival, CT, 1995

This year I had the time to visit another anual event for the first time - the Norwalk kite festival. I drove down on Saturday morning thru a flood of rain coming from the sky.

Saturday at the flying field - it was really messy there and even I was not willing to fly a kite. Sometimes the visibility was down to about 100 yards just by the rain! The wind gusts were up to 40 mph. I forgot my flippers to swim over the flying field ;-).

Next day there was still a lot of water left on the field. I junked my Sneekers next day! I made a lot of pig-jokes because I was as muddy as a pig coming out of his most beloved spot :-). I German we call such a spot with mud "Sule" - I don't know the english word.

Paul and Annette Brainard were setting up a number of very nice art-kites in the back-field. Paul had a very nice Rokkaku up, later two, a patchwork snake kite (very nice), a big delta with eyes (or did this one belong to the founder of ConnectiKiters?) and a wild behaving delta that had a tendency to crash but was nice. Richard Amirault flew his new Flowform the whole day. Nice kite. I also put up a number of my kites and the light poles came in very handy. At the beginning the wind was very gusty. In one of these gusts my Patchwork Rokkaku came down in the electric lines around the field - 10.000 V as I heard. Nothing happened except for a broken spar. I flew my two arches, my big DC, two patchwork kimonos, my patchwork delta and later also my patchwork Hakkaku. All At once - so I wqs running a lot to fix problems here and there. If anyone thinks si~gle line kite flying is no action - join me. At night I my legs were hurting from all the running.

Later Gary Engvall also joined us. He made a new Arch and was flying that, his KONE Rokkaku and also his Parafoil (Stretch Tucker model). He was very helpful in saving some of my kites - thank you Gary. We all had a good time flying and a lot of fun.

On the main field stunt kite demonstrations were going on permanently, moderated nicely by Sarge. Team Uproar was one of the hits. Also Jessy and Bruce Kapsten demonstrated a lot there as well as others. I don't know exactly what was going on there because I was primarily on the back field.

There was also good food available and even German mustard was present - as I heard especially for me :-). Thank you ConnectiKiters! The kids had a good time and the open field was full with selfmade kites. A workshop was held by Dave Young (Forever Young Kites) and he made a lot of kids and grown-ups happy.

I would like to thank Sarge for setting this nice event up! I am sure that it will be bigger next year - a number of people couldn't come because of the rainy Saturday.

Happy Kiting

Kai