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Post-event Report 2006


As always I wonder where to start on stories like this. What really makes an interesting tale? Is it the behind the scenes laughs, and jokes, the early arrivals or the fact that one might be there for the beginning, middle and end? All I know for sure is what we do, chasing the wind, then capturing it, riding it for all it's worth, attracts by far, one of the most diverse group of fun loving people I've ever had the pleasure to know. Here we go.

We usually look forward this time of year for Peter Lynn to grace our shores. Not this year, but he did send his son Pete, who few know actually design the kites that bare some of his dad's name. Meanwhile, I'm up in the bay area looking at real estate, and just have time to go down to the desert in time to meet Blake and Meg, but not before my business partners daughter calls from San Diego with ‘Daddy, I'm moving out and need you to come get my stuff, but don't come on weds, I'm taking finals, come say around 11:00 Thursday so you can take me out to lunch…." So before we start I'm already looking at driving over a thousand miles, just to be near Adelanto and El Mirage where the pre-event starts.

No sign of bad weather this year, right up till the week before, and then it comes, but it ain't enough to slow us down, no sir, not only that , but we have wind, oh yes. By the time I make it out to El Mirage on Friday there's Dooley and a few others already there.

Now meanwhile, Claxton, Meg, Blake, Pete Lynn, Dave Culp and who ever else can fit, are staying at my temporary place and laboratory in Adelanto. It's official, the party has begun.

I'm anxious to buggy as I know I'm not going to be able to once NABX actually starts, it just has become impossible, so when I get to the lake, I can't wait to get my kite in the air. Winds are smooth and high, I'm flying a 9 meter phantom and people are starting to arrive. Saturday the lake starts to fill up and we are booking all over the place. Steve Bateman has come over to the dark side, using a bar, and is really ripping it up. AJ from Texas is flying big, and going fast. You can always tell AJ as he usually flies a ribbon off the center of his kite. Out here in the big desert its hard to know who's who, so these little things we do to our kites and buggies really helps to let others know who they are watching.

By now the first buggy town is built and in full swing. Mike Jura has arrived with his girlfriend and is also assisted this year, our very own Claxton Thompson. Of course we always welcome Mike and he didn't disappoint this year. He brought new toys and rebuilt one of my favorite buggies of all time that our friend Dave Kennedy built, and I broke some years ago, called the rail buggy. This is a cush cruiser of epic proportions, probably at least 10-12 feet long, four wheel, extended steering, very soft ride, feels like you are driving a limousine, holy wow! JD takes it for a few rides and I can't get enough of it. You must try it if you have a chance.

Sunday by the time we get it together we get out to the lake just in time to see the first departures to Superior. That's where we are headed and can't wait to get there. It takes for ever though, as for some reason, every stop we make, we have problems, or it takes the group to long, or we can't get gas or we don't even know, but for whatever reason, we just can't seem to make it out there, until finally, somehow, and at last we crest that last hill, north of Barstow, there she is, Superior, stretched out in front of us, just gleaming in the afternoon sun, looking so good, with kites out, wind blowing!

Camp is already set up and Corey is out buggying! I saw him buggy! First we want to set up our camp so we don't have to do it after dark, and we get that out of the way in time to get in on the final buggying. The wind is falling and I've made the classic rookie mistake, I've not brought every kite! I left my biggest at home! One more size up and I'd be going with everyone else, but NO, I had to jinx things by not bringing my whole quiver! Shame on me!

Sunday night was bliss and a good time was had by all. Biggest gathering I've ever seen on Superior but I hope not the last big one. The military has been threatening to take this lake over(like they need more space!)and there are signs that they are around, so we do not know how much longer we might have out here. Keep your fingers crossed as this is one of the greatest dry lakes I've ever had the pleasure of kite sailing.

Monday, Monday was the day, wow, how to describe wind worshipping bliss. This is what you pray for. Winds might have been better, but we had wind, and we were able to make it to all three lakes(you read right, there are THREE!)and back with no problems, and then later we gathered the whole camp and had a caravan back to the furthest lake, and Pete and I even found a new uncharted way to go, up over and through some very difficult desert terrain. There's just something to be said about a cross country jaunt in your own kite buggy!

Tuesday morning, the worse sound you can imagine woke me up. The sound of rain falling on the tent! Oh NO! It didn't sound like it was going to stop and it was cold, and wet. We started waking up, and those in the know knew it was time to move the vehicles off the lake just in case(all these lakes have lots of clay in them, when wet are slipperier than ice)the rain didn't stop. After about an hour, as scary daylight reared it's head, we decided, Superior was done, and we packed up, headed to Barstow for some restaurant food, and ended up in Denny's. It was still like 6 am or something and what a bleary site we must have been. Around ten of us I think, and we need coffee! The porcelain of the restroom was not unwelcome either if you know what I mean!

We followed the rain across the Mojave, as my phone rang off it's little hook, with calls from everywhere, one emergency after the other, the shirts aren't ready, this, that, new news from BLM (don't get me started)and people wanting to know if the event was canceled! Canceled, I've not even made it to Ivanpah, we can see this rain is done, no don't worry, we will buggy, we will! Don't worry, we don't it doesn't help, and the weather is the one thing man has never learned to control.

Get to Ivanpah, the rain has stopped, but the lake is closed. Whew, not again, can't take another rained out event, stay calm, the land sailors had a great event, this rain is done, it will be perfect in the morning. By golly it must be time to drink and hang out. I spent a lot of time driving around the parking lot meeting new people and seeing old friends. One of the most interesting people I met was a guy named Jake, who looks just like ‘the Dude' in the film The Big Lebowski , well maybe not exactly, but It's his laid back manner that really sets him apart. Very mellow, giving and attentive, here to learn all he can about modern traction kiting, in his big four wheel drive van, all about Flow, and just finding out how it relates to aoxomoxoa. Jake, or Jay, or Dude, ended up being one of my favorite new folks to hang with, have a shot, or just talk kites and philosophy(which is of course what all wind worshipers do when not buggying).

Some say I got a little lit that day, but I was just happy to see everyone, and finally made it to bed in time to get some much needed sleep, remember, we'd been up since very early.

Wednesday dawned overcast and chilly but no rain. I drove out on the lake at 8 am and could not find any wet areas, so we decided to open the lake and get on with the show. By noon, a better part of buggy town had been built and things were looking great. Not real windy, but here and there, was some wind. We were trying to get the word out to not drive in the ruts that have been created by years of bad planning on the part of the BLM much to no avail. How do you tell people that they have to stay off the ‘road' and drive on either side of it? If we sit down and talk about it, it makes sense, we want to spread the impact out, but with our meeting with BLM breathing down our necks, and no mass communications system it's a tough nut to crack and some folks didn't get the word. Meanwhile some of the crew took off for Lake Mojave, a stunning drive through the Joshua forest and through Spotlight gets you there for amazing views. To bad the wind was offshore that day, but hey, that's what we're in for.

Thursday came and wind is still spotty so we did what we could to bring it back. We drank and hung out and met folks and looked at Dave Sabilino's super pimped out uber tribal buggy. This guy is just amazing! He doesn't stop and this year he went all out, with a five wheel chopper style buggy, including a gas tank that hid the electics. Wow! Meanwhile, we checked out Chip Brown's buggy, which had a hand tooled leather seat, with this year's shirt art on it(Chip won the design contest we had) and the most amazing aoxomoxoa on the back. This on top of a hand shaped steel seat back. The top tube was wrapped in leather and the buggy also had stretched rails, and a custom rear axle, along with a sizeable trunk for storage! Another big Wow!

Friday I may not of been all that on top of things as we'd gone in to Las Vegas for our annual ‘Vegas Night' get together(late fees people, late fees)but we were still able to run the rag flappers race which was an amazing collection of NPW riders racing on their own for the first time that I know of. I'm making a short film about it so stay tuned for that. Glenn Pedro was hands down the winner, but Susan Orgeron came in second, and some how beat out our own A.J. Damn, what a race!

Meanwhile and not far away the land boys are ripping it up with their own private skate style park. MBS mountain boards came out and did a terrific demo for us bringing all sorts of props and folks that just flat ripped it up.

We are becoming a three ring circus and with so much room can you blame us? We are encouraged that kite buggiers don't resent people that worship the wind in slightly different form from us. No indeedy, we had Blo-karts, we had wheels of doom, we had land boards, mountain boards, we had roller blades, we had all kinds of buggies including the ‘Crab' all the way from France, we now have a production buggy named after our event, the NABX Buggy from Peter Lynn Kites, we had stretched buggies, we had four wheel buggies, we had a two seat buggy, plenty of different trailer arrangements, and all in all, we had one of the most diverse get-togethers I've ever been to.

Friday night, we had a super nice banquet brought to us by Mike Jura, who served us up a magnificent carne asada that was to die for, I mean melt in your mouth it was. Hopefully I didn't bore the crowd to much with my M.C. ing, but you guys don't want Corey up there do you?

This year the wind never did cooperate with us fully. We missed out on a lot of organized stuff. It just never filled in. I'm so sorry about that as we really had a lot of really cool stuff organized to fulfil our buggy fantasy's.

We recognize the importance of planning and realize that you can only do so much if the weather does not cooperate. Still, for next year, we're going to have beginners classes that we can hold regardless of the weather. We can still do classroom stuff and will do them as we have some of the best kite buggiers in the world to help teach us. In addition, we want to begin a volunteer organization to help us administer to you in a more work-like fashion. We're going to ask for volunteers to work with us in exchange for a staff T-shirt and the knowledge of helping grow this amazing festival.

It takes quite a crew to make this all work, but one of the hardest working induhviduals in our little group, and one who never asks for anything is Claxton Thompson. When you see him tell him what you think. For sure we can't do it without the rest of us, there is no doubt. Meg worked tirelessly to calm BLM and book the hotel, while Bob never lets us down with the web site.

Saturday the same spotty winds, and more people leaving. Nice day, more of the same, and then we got together for a group photo which came out pretty dang cool! Hope everyone has seen it and gotten a chance to get a copy!

We started cooking burgers and hotdogs and gave away a whole bunch of beer, which is always a good way to start a party. We found out who won Pimp Your Buggy, with it coming down to David Sabilino and Chip Brown. The crowd and David agreed that is was Chip in the end with his leather buggy! Way to go Chip! We also had table crawling and beer bottle walking, and we had an auction which we needed as our costs somehow keep going up, no end in sight if BLM has their way. All in all a very nice end to what turned out to be a great party and get together, but not as much wind as we might wish for.

Thanks to all who make NABX what it is. Sponsors, we can't do it without you, thank you, folks who register and pay your way(which also pays for those who don't)thank you and big shout out, you guys and gals rock! Workers, I don't know how you do it. Thank you!

Finally to those who went where we will all go someday, Bob Hogan for his tireless help making this event what it's become and to Dave Kennedy who took it to another level.

Last but not least is our founder, the Godfather Fran Gramkowski. Thank you.

Aoxomoxoa
dean