A new festival was held the last weekend in April at Paso Robles,
California. Paso Robles is a small town with a huge heart located in the
middle of central California wine country. The event was great fun!
There was a good group of invited guests in attendance including Ron and
Sandy Gibian, Team Too Much Fun, Brian (Susan Shampo,Jeannet and Mark Lumas and Ron despoajdo) Todd, Dan Whitney, me, and some
of the Crack of Noon Bunch from Monterey. Jim Strealy helped coordinate
the event along with Gary Perruzzi, Paso's Recreation Services Director.

The Gibians were the official announcers for the event. Unfortunately,
that left them no time to wow the crowd with their beautiful creations.
That put pressure on the rest of us to fill up the 40 acres of flying
space that comprises the brand spanking new Barney Schwartz Park. The
Park boasts manicured grass and, an oddity for those of us accustomed to
flying at Berkeley, not a gopher hole for miles! It also boasts snack
shops, many picnic areas, a small lake for the radio control boats.....and
LOTS of light poles!

The fields were divided into three main areas. Dan, Jim, and I had our
own field for the big stuff. We filled it up easily and spilled out onto
other areas as well. Gosh, the big stuff does take lots of room. The
demo field was huge and Team Too Much Fun worked it all day. A third
field was made available for the general public.

The day was a fantastic blue sky, puffy clouds, kind of day, welcome
after several days of pouring down rain! The Park filled up with people
and soon hundreds of kites were flying above the free flying field.
The winds however were INLAND winds (ok I'm spoiled) and quite
challenging but we managed it all right and we all had fun....right up
until the end! That's when my brand new pilot kite took a turn and flew
directly into one of those zillion and a half lights surrounding every
field! AND man was it stuck there!

Before I could even get to Gary, the park official, with my sad tale, he
was already on the phone with the local fire department. Within minutes,
TWO huge fire trucks arrived on the scene, apparently happy to play with
their big shiny ladder truck. The crew set about the job of hoisting the
boom up. Tiny redheaded Firewoman, Amanda Donavan, scrambled up that
huge boom ladder like it was nothing! It was quite a scene while they
maneuvered the ladder closer and closer until the equipment stopped
inching its way nearer to my hopelessly caught pilot kite. TOO short to
reach she poked and pulled at it with a gaff hook on a 16-foot pole but
that kite was not budging....that's when they took out the pole pruner
and pruned all the bridle lines from the kite, yeup lopped it right off,
and it floated down to earth. (Well I made the first bridle I can makeanother!)

These small town festivals are often the best and I just love them! They
really seem to appreciate our efforts, often feed us well and put us up
in nice rooms! THIS one even brought out the fire dept. to help get down
my kite!! Thanks for the great time Paso Robles! Oh and if ya wanna
watch your friends eat great burgers "Good Ole burgers" is the place to
go....if ya wanna eat go to McDonalds! But that's another story! I
took a bunch of photos of the day. They can be seen on
kitefart.com/wheresbrian/may.