But, all the being said, it was simply the most amazing trip we have ever undertaken as a team, bar none and of course, there are people to thank for that opportunity. First of all, BEN and Revolution Kites for helping us get there, from festival #1 straight through to 100, they've been a huge help and likely without their support, we'd have never reached 25 festivals, let alone 100. Same goes for our other sponsors, The Kite Shoppe, Laser Pro, Glued to The Blue, Kitelife, and my own Simian Studios. Without the people who have helped us along the way, we'd be nowhere. And we are proud to represent them all. (AND, a SPECIAL tip of the hat to Aerochic/Carolyn Leshock who did a truly stunning logo to help us celebrate the event! Carolyn, I could sit here all day long and tell you how much people love the design, and I can tell you how I kinda cried a little when the Bintulu organizers rolled out a HUGE banner with that logo on it as a welcome to iQuad when we arrived. I can also tell you that it was one of the key things that made this trip work the way it did. We are forever grateful to you (and to all our sponsors!))
As many of you know, when Meaghan and I went last year to Bintulu, we had a fantastic time. The Malaysian hospitality is fantastic and when I left there, I promised the organizers that I'd do everything I could possibly do to get the team over there for the next one. And, while this literally took an entire year, it was well worth it. I'll write a much longer piece for Kitelife (somehow) for the next two issues, and sincerely, there are literally 100s of fantastic photos on Facebook, you have all likely seen piles of these already, but here's a quick look at the trip, since I am awake at this ungodly hour of the morning due to lingering jet lag issues.
Day 1
Travel Travel Travel. Vancouver - Hong Kong - Kuala Lumpur - Singapore. 18 hours in the air alone, before layover hours. If I remember right, the trip was roughly 30 hours from pillow to pillow. We were pretty wiped out by the time we rolled into our hotel in Singapore. And what an exciting hotel it was! But, great location with great food mere steps away in every direction.
Day 2
First day of Asia's very first (and likely not the last!) iQuad rev clinic. Done much in the same format as we have done all over the place already, the first day was pretty easy on us as it was mostly DUAL LINE stuff, and thus, JOHN'S thing
We made appropriate catcalls, whistles, etc, and spent time with the Rev flyers. And got used to the heat. It's safe to say that nearly every day of the entire trip was 30-35 + celsius in temperature, with a little touch of the humidz, or, as we call it over here, 100% humidity. Just a fantastic day, but, wow, did we ever sleep well that night.Day 3
Onto the Rev parts of the clinic! We were flying in a small park in the middle of town called Punggol Walk. Not the bestest place to fly, but a good location for a clinic, right on the transit lines and lots of grass. This was also the day we saw the most stunning storm of the trip. We were literally sitting down and eating lunch (Canada 2 4 1 Pizza no less. No, really.) and we watched a huge bank of clouds come rolling in. As soon as we got back to the field, the skies opened up. Imagine the worst rain you have ever seen, and for most people, this was much worse
and it had a 35 mph+ wind attached to it. Stuff blew EVERYWHERE and everyone was quite literally soaked, head to toe, in the mere 30 minutes that the storm lasted for. Thats it. 30 minutes and it started to clear up. However, when the storms do that there, they suck whatever little wind there was and make it dead still. So, we taught low wind technique. When the wind hands you lemons, better get with the lemonade business...Day 4
We took a vote. There's a great beach in Singapore, called East Coast Park, where the kings of Singapore team flying, Airnergy, work their magic. Every single clinic participant voted YES so, off we headed to the beach. While it's not a very deep beach, there was certainly much more useable wind and thus, the day was spent teaching basic team moves. Needless to say, there are now a bunch more people in SG who are going to be flying a lot more team soon. SWEET! Complete success! Got some street flying in too, downtown Singapore! WHOOOOO!
Day 5
Ah yes, a travel day, but, a simple one, get from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur, a 1 hour flight! We went sightseeing around KL afterwards, caused trouble, had fun, shopped the chinatown market, drank lots of Tiger beer, ate a small bamboo rainforest worth of Satay in the very area it was first served in, flew a routine on the side of a building, drank more Tiger, went to the Petronas Towers, SLEEP.
Day 6
Or as I called it, The Monkey Returns to the Batu Caves with his monkey friends". Last year when I went, all i could think about in the Batu Caves was "man, this would be an awesome place to fly". This year, we made it happen. John and Rama Kristan wangled permission from the management of this sacred spot (uh, you want to do what in here? fly your kites? seriously? are you insane or just weird?) and bam, we were flying in the Batu Caves. Wait till you see THIS video, usually, I'd say "holy (something) but, given the nature of the Batu Caves, I'll display a rare moment of grace and just say WOW.
http://en.wikipedia....wiki/Batu_Caves
We were not the only Rev flyers along for this, by this time, Penny Lingenfelter was with us as well. She had a blast for the entire trip, I don't think she ever stopped smiling and laughing.
After flying the heck out of the caves, we went to one of the local flying fields which had a view of the petronas towers and ran a bunch of practice stuff on this amazing skyline, much to the amusement of a few dozen local children (and one pet monkey). Penny taught'em all to fly her indoor as well. The evening? The usual laughs, great times and good people! EVERY night, we'd fall asleep in mere seconds, completely worn out, yet excited the next morning to get back at it.
Day 7
Another travel day, this time to where the festival is happening, Bintulu, a little town on the Malaysian side of the Borneo Island
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bintulu
Where the organizers unveiled a HUGE banner welcoming us to Bintulu and congratulating us on having our 100th festival at THEIR festival. It had been a stressful day of travel, we were all worn out and quite frazzled and yet, we all could do nothing but smile hugely when we saw that, I think I even shed a tear or three, but sssssssh, don't tell anyone. I'd actually forgotten about this, but, when I left last year, I'd directly promised a few people there that'd I'd get iQuad to Bintulu come hell or high water and one of those guys thanked me for that as soon as I stepped off the plane, "You did it! You brought them all back!). BLOWN AWAY by how well we were treated by these people, we will never forget it. Sleep? Heck ya, we sure needed it.
Day 8
Or as we call it now, one of the most trying days in the history of the team. We went for a tour of one of the Iban longhouses in the morning, and when we got back, we figured we'd head down to the field and play around, There was nothing serious on the agenda beyond a big fighter comp fight, so, yay! Rest! Play! Get ready for Day 9, the opening ceremonies! This was not how it played out, at all. Suddenly, it was announced, they were going to run a full slate of demos. With 15 minutes notice. We have -never- been caught that flat footed. No demo music, no radios. NO WIND. I mean, really, it was around 1 mph and super swirly. We had to actually sit out our first demo while we sorted music out and got our crap together. It was brutal, and really, the rest of the day went about as bad. We still had fun, but, man oh man, that was easily the worst day of the whole trip. We tried our best to get a groove on in that "wind" but, nope, it never happened. Talk about feeling like a buncha chumps.
*sigh*
Day 9
The Opening Ceremonies. Given this is likely the biggest event in this town all year long, every single politician feels the need to come out, be seen, make speeches, etc. (I will say this however, the minister of tourism gave a REALLY funny speech!) The wind was much like the day before, ie, really crappy. We'd pulled the Zens out and even those were having issues. We were tired, even more frazzled and getting somewhat freaked out that we had to open the show up in front of all these government people and roughly 80,000 people.
But.
Apparently, the iQuad bubble had simply been delayed in shipping on Air Asia, because about 1/2 an hour before we had to try and make a go of it, the wind came up. When the wind is "right" in Bintulu, it's barrelling down the old airport runway at about 8-10mph and thats exactly what it started to do. The standard sails (black variant, race rods) came out. And when they called out our names to fly, we flew what was quite possibly the best fly through the Raiders music we have ever flown, period, anywhere in the world. And I know I sniffled a little bit in the very middle section when we expand out to a slow rotating ball, and again as we nailed a super blender. There's video of this on Facebook. I've never felt prouder of the team for pulling a rabbit out of the hat at the most crucial moment of the entire trip as I did right then. As we landed out of the radar at the very end, the crowd exploded, the government types were on their feet, and I looked back across the whole team, and then looked right at my main contact for the festival. He had two thumbs up and a huge smile, I guess we did the job for him.
Honestly, I've never been so overwhelmed at the end of a fly. The rest of that day was just magical, we flew great and that evening, the organizers threw a happy 100th party for us at a local restaurant with 60 guests, including all of the Rev flyers at the festival. BOOYA! We had secretly placed a big bunch of DVDs, stickers, vinyl cuts, pins, patches under all the table cloths, much to the amazement of the crowd. Penny acted as our MC, we held a trivia contest for the last 5 sets of trading cards in existence and had everyone sign the huge banner. The day that made up for everything that was very hard about this trip. :-)Day 10
Well, more of the same really, we flew our butts off all day long, sometimes as a six, sometimes we'd add on the 4 dudes of Airnergy (Singapore based and SUPERB guys to fly with!) sometimes we did larger megaflys. All in all, a hilariously, fun, relaxed day. Late in the day, they asked us to dance and fly our kites to a local dance they had done at the longhouse trip of Day 8. PRICELESS! I know there is video of this on facebook as well. By the end of the song? We were flying over top of a couple hundred poco poco dancing malaysian. They loved it, we loved it. Must find more video of it. Pro tip - its really kinda tricky to fly a rev and dance whats essentially the hokey pokey at the same time. I had my green Bazz Eyes with me, Chua Lin (SG) and Leong Cee Wan had THEIR eyes with them, and voila, we had an eyes megafly. All three of them. Bazzer stood and watched as a proud father.
Day 11
The final day of the festival. And, more of the same, though this time we threw in an Asian megafly, combining ourselves, Airnergy, Taiwan 8+, 8 flyers from the world championship Japanese team, Air Rex and a handful of local flyers for a 28 person SINGLE LINE megafly. Alas, no chance to get a grid going, but, we managed it with very few issues. More Poco Poco flying, more great runs thru our own routines and a fantastic final banquet where we were given "Best show kites of the festival" and a beautiful framed certificate marking our 100th festival. Did I mention sleep? We did a lot of that this evening as well but, nowhere near enough as....
Day 12/13
The day started at 5:00AM, Monday, Bintulu time. By the time it ended for me, it was Tuesday, 3pm in the afternoon Bintulu time, so roughly 34 hours of travel time to get home, and for once, it was the shortest for me. JB and TK simply did laundry, rested a short while and they were off to Wildwood for AKA.
Thats the short version ;-)
Also, I'd like to specifically thank all the organizers of the Bintulu festival that we worked with to make this trip happen. Our deepest hope is that you loved what we brought to your festival, and we certainly loved our time spent both there and in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Truly a unique and stunning trip on so many levels, I could go on about it for DAYS, but, I'll simply say.... terima kasih.
(note, I did not say kumbaya at any point this trip.)
