The Berkeley kite Festival ended the competition season in awesome fashion, the usual summer fog never came in and the days were absolutely fantastic and the crowd of spectators were bigger than I an remember. Hundreds of kites large and small graced the sky while eager competitors battled it out on the lower fields.. Check gwtw-kites.com for pictures, Dan has 5 or six pages up. I always have a gang staying at the château Champia for local events, photo shows this years guests to be Phil Kalenowsky from Reno , Susan Shampo from San Diego, Ray Bethell from Canada and Jim Strealy from Merced..

I recently had the pleasure to attend the Port of Brookings event in Oregon. This small event really gives a great example of hospitality, they shuttled us around feed us housed us and provided a fine banquette. The local folks bring their chairs and sit all day and enthusiastically clap and cheer all day long! We all found it a pleasure to do our demos for the crowd!

Then to top off a perfect weekend Miguel and I got bumped from our flight , it was a small (twenty seats or so) plane and with all the Sundowners Gear as well as the Ron and Sandy Gibions and Susan Shampo and Alan Strohs kites and bags it was overweight.

United provided us with a private cab for a sightseeing tour down the redwood coast to another airport about 1 ½ hours away, gave us lunch and dinner vouchers AND 400 bucks each! All this and still had us home by 6 pm that evening. This kite thing just keeps getting better! COOL tickets to Billings

Kiting here in Region 11 seems to be growing , though competition participation is down, the retailers say its never been better AND we have at least 4 new events that look like they will become "must do" festivals on the California calendar .One is the new Crescent City Kite Festival scheduled for Sept. ! Another new one is the Pismo Beach festival scheduled for October 21, This event will be the first ever kite festival in Central California

Speaking of new events the Crissy field dedication kite festival was a huge success, both in terms of the show but also in terms of PEOPLE there must have been million people in that park that day…All having a great time. The picture shows (tiny dots) thousands of the little yellow diamonds they passed out FREE. They put 9 thousand kites in the hands of happy kids….and some of us older kids got one too! For lots of pictures go to http://Kitechamp.tripod.com/ My son Aaron has several pages of photos up

Crissy field has to be the most spectacular site in the Bay Area to fly a kite, Huge plush grassy fields almost directly under the Golden Gate Bridge, The Bay Area Sport Kite League is looking into doing doing an event there next season, contact with the National Parks folks is very encouraging as they are trying to promote activities like Kite flying in the new park.

On a Sad note, this Issue of Kiteing will be the last one edited by Roger Chewning. His job and personal enterprises are taking more and more of his time and feels he cant do the newsletter justice any more.

I have enjoyed the years of kiting Roger has produced and thanks Roger, billions for your efforts.

See you all in Billings