Lake Simcoe Kite Day

Wimpy's Diner known for their burgers

I ended up tagging along with Marc, who these days seems constantly looking for something interesting to do. He had been invited up to Lake Simcoe to the first annual kite festival. I've never been to a kite festival so "why not?".

Using the internet travel instructions we stopped off at a small local strip mall to eat lunch at a Wimpy's. I had picked the place as I was starving and wanted to try the burger, which from what I had heard through the grapevine were supposed to be huge.

Inside the place was decorated with 50s memorabilia, actually now that I think about it there were posters from 80s movies and album (yes vinyl) covers also from the 80s. It was actually a hodgepodge of imagery for the last few decades. They even had Star Trek posters and an old laser show featuring LED Zeppelin at the planetarium posterin the washroom.


A mini juke box!

Next to our table there were these old mini juke boxes. They still worked, charging a quarter a song. The food was mediocre. Marc's toast had what looked like mold growing on it. My burger tasted alright. If the bun had mold on it I wouldn't have noticed as I inhaled the burger in record time. I seemed to feel alright later, but then again I have the stomach of a hyena.


A close up of the flip song selection menu


The Wimpy's burger with turkey bacon

We got to the lake to see a row of cars and trucks parked on it. The lake was frozen. I found walking on the lake a little unsettling as I remembered a newspaper article about two guys ice fishing in a fishing hut sinking. The article was a few months, maybe only weeks ago.


Standing on the frozen lake

There's also all the stories you hear about people on skidoos going through the ice and drowning. The morbid thoughts of "The ice is going to break" went away after about five minutes of walking around. It was freezing. I had gloves on and while working my camera I felt my fingers were becoming frozen.


Surfing the frozen lake

Most of the kite flying people were in harnesses that pulled them and their snowboard along the frozen lake. There was the odd guy wind sailing but we didn't see anyone flying kites using conventional methods (ie. the odd delta kite, box kite, or even stunt kite where someone just stands there looking up into the sky). We ended up leaving after about half an hour. The festival was only on until 4pm officially anyway. Did I say it was cold?