Kite festival makes do with gentle breezes
When organizers of the 2004 Kite Festival at Clinton Lake began setting up Saturday afternoon, tethered kites struggled to stay abreast of the paltry breeze along the shore.
“OK, so who’s got the wind? Who’s bringing the wind?” joked Sean Beaver, president of the Kansas City Kite Club, which organized the free event.
A 3 to 5 mph wind that gently flaps flags is enough to launch a dime-store kite, but not enough to kite surf, navigate kite buggies or maximize the potential of power kites, said Don Moore, who founded the club in 1991 with his wife, Carolyn.
The seasoned kiter can see the wind like few others. Saturday, Moore said instinctively, the wind was blowing about 5 mph with gusts up to 8 or 10 mph.
To get going on a kite board or practice tricks with the parachute-like power kites, the wind needs to blow between 10 and 15 mph steadily, he said.
So while several anxious surfers in wetsuits waited for a mightier wind, their car-sized kites lay upside-down on the beach, forming U-shaped fortresses several feet high. Kite surfers say it’s possible for a surfer to ramp a wave, sail 50 feet in the air and glide the length of a football field. The Federal Aviation Administration has banned the kites within five miles of airports.
And you can pack up the rush and sling it over your shoulder.
“You don’t need a boat, you don’t need registration, and you don’t need gas,” said Beaver, a Lenexa resident who was trained to kite surf in Maui, Hawaii, and now teaches the 5-year-old sport.
Multigenerational activity
But although the waves weren’t capping, few of the several hundred kite enthusiasts at Bloomington State Park’s west swim beach seemed to care. Toddler and octogenarian kiters alike were content to navigate their smaller kites for several hours in the afternoon breeze.
Four-year-old Lawrence resident Ethan Lockhart ran down the beach practicing skids in the sand while his mother, Christy, untangled the knots in his miniature monster truck kite with black wings.
“Ethan, come here,” she called to her son, who was more interested in playing in the sand than keeping the truck kite afloat. “He’s better at this than I am,” she said, cringing as the kite dove toward land.
The Kansas City Kite Club has about 50 members, Beaver said. The $15 fee for families goes toward organizational costs for the nonprofit club, he said.
Many of its members construct their own kites, including 62-year-old Lee’s Summit, Mo., resident Vic Curtis. His friend Peter Peterka, 79, of Kansas City, Mo., contributed about half of the 10 or so kites the pair brought to the festival Saturday.
“We all swap patterns,” Curtis said.
Curtis and Peterka said they liked kiting because it reminded them of younger, lazier days.
That’s a big attraction, Carolyn Moore said.
“Kiting spans the generations,” she said. “I think it really brings back warm fuzzies.”
Family fun
The Moores have made their living from a kite-supply store, Wind Wizards, and have passed their passion to their children. A daughter recently opened two branches of the store in Branson, Mo., and a son engineered the four-stringed, parachute-like power kites that dominated the beach’s skyline Saturday.
Whether it’s pitting your strength against the wind and treating it like a sport or just trying to keep a small kite up, kiting is relaxing and peaceful, Don Moore said.
You might even consider kite surfing relaxing, Beaver said. Anybody with marginal athletic ability could try it, he said.
“I don’t care if you’re 9 years old or 90, if you’re able to steer, you’re fine,” he said, leaping and skidding as he practiced with his surfing kite onshore.
Maybe, but most of the older enthusiasts laugh at the prospect.
“Your bones have to be younger,” Curtis said. “You don’t want to be breaking your bones out there.”