Somewhere in this sleepy little town, in a small shop along Rue Carnot, there is a wee little woman who probably gets a headache at the sight of us now. Every single time one of us wanders in, its a complete mishmash of communication, resulting in us paging through phrase books and thusly, badly mangling anything we try and ask for. Surely her smile with the obligatory “Au Revoir!” is one of massive relief that we are on our way once again… But, she is charming in her frustration.
This morning we woke up to a gorgeous blue sky without a single cloud in sight. The tempurature was noticeably warmer and the winds were a very smooth 10 – 15 mph all day, perfectly setting the stage for the second day of WSKC competition.
Ever efficient, Kathy Jarvis continues to run the competition field with a fair and even hand in her return role as field director at the WSKC… Among the best in the world, she’s helped ensure that everything runs on time and without incident.
So, far the team photos we’ve published have been from precision rounds and it’s important to mention that the configurations do change with some of them for ballet… Air-Rex expands to five, Atemoc expands to six, Watnu expands to four, and AirZone expands to six.
Below you’ll find photos (from precision) of each team’s kites, we’ll leave the guessing of types up to you… Although not shown here, 6th Sense sometimes uses Mambas and Watnu often uses STXs.
(USA)
(Japan)
(USA)
(Colombia)
(Italy)
(USA)
(Argentina)
(Colombia)
(UK)
(UK)
(Japan)
(Japan)
(France)
(France)
(Germany)
(Spain)
Performances were extremely better from all teams today, thanks to much better conditions… We got to see more of the tricks and difficult maneuvers that some teams dropped from their routines on Day 1, and almost every team had a solid appearance on the field, within the scope of their abilities.
As Head Judge for Day 2, Mike Huff kept things moving right along as he’s used to doing in the Northwest Sport Kite League, helping to bring the day’s competition to a close a little early… This worked out for everyone, giving more time for drinks and socializing before turning in for the evening.
Click here for complete Day 2 scores!
While there was a bit of shuffling below the TBAs, Day 2 showed the top five from the previous day holding strong and keeping their names off the list (a good thing)… Looking back to last year, the very same top four teams are once again at the top of the heap thus far, with Ninja being added into the mix thanks to some very strong performances on their part.
The beautiful weather brought out more people and yet more kites many of which hadn’t been seen since the start including the great “roulette wheel” bol shown above. At one point, we wandered by to find Ray Bethell intricately looping with his long tails amongst a bunch of posts and eventually entangling them there… Ray swears were not there the previous day. One thing we noticed is that when the tide comes in, it comes in fast, and leaves as quickly. There is no real dropoff that we have seen so when its out, its a long way out, providing literally miles of flying and traction kiting area.
Half in jest and half in appreciation, judge Andrew Taylor offered up handmade trophies to the three teams who scored highest on the Solaris compulsory today – Tame Bird took top honor with Cutting Edge in 2nd and Ninja in 3rd… Other compulsories flown today were the Cascade and the Basket.
If the weather cooperates again (at the moment, its still sunny and clear, so here’s hoping) tomorrow will mark the last day of competition for the WSKC… If not, the following day is set aside for any unfinished rounds. As it was last year in Lincoln City, it’s going to be a very close race again, one that will be decided with tomorrow’s Precision and Ballet scores.
Alas, it hasn’t been a perfect day. During the lunch break we sprinted up to the computer shop and managed to get the cable we needed for taking video off the camcorder (“Un petit firewire?“), but once we returned to the room, plugging in the spiffy new power adapter for the second notebook apparently took out the power on two floors and left us with the interesting smell of burnt electronics lingering in our room. Thankfully the notebook was not plugged into it at the time however, it’s likely video will need to wait until our return, lest we get thrown out of here for electrical damage. You have both of our apologies for this, these videos will go into the regular Kitelife video archives soon and we’ll be sure to tape tomorrow’s top 5 ballets as well.
Until tomorrow, au revoir!
**Article: David Hathaway & John Barresi**
