Back in 1978, I attended my first Lincoln City kite festival. Actually it was the first kite festival held at the D River Wayside so you could say we have evolved together.

I’ve seen all kinds of weather at Lincoln City events in the past 29 years. But this last one was particularly hard. We had virtually no wind on Saturday, and then blowing rain on Sunday. Lots of kiters were on hand but it didn’t make for much of a show. Wind came in off the water, then turned around and blew out toward the surf. That’s when we had something you could call “wind”. I saw more than one fine kite dropped into the surf.

The Wayside park is the site of the 110 foot long D River – officially the shortest in the world. But sometimes it snakes across the beach making flying hard. Team I-Quad managed to launch a nice show when the winds bumped up temporarily to three miles-an-hour. But the kites were on one side of the river and the fliers were on the other!

We organized Bol Races and that went pretty well. With no wind, we could run the kids across the field, and then instead of dragging the gear back to the starting point, we could just turn things around and run them back…

Saturday night, Susie organized a meal for all the fliers up here at the Gomberg Estate. It was a pleasant misty night and as people left for their homes and hotels, we could smell the rain coming.

Sunday I-Quad showed up in matching raincoats. The event was officially cancelled at 10:30. I spent the afternoon re-organizing show gear in the garage and Susie did a post-party house cleaning. And of course, by Monday, the sun was out and the wind was blowing smoothly across the beach...