WASECA — Everybody has a costly toy or hobby they value deeply according to Sean Beaver, who stood on a frozen Clear Lake Sunday while a dozen giant inflatable kites flew overhead.
For Minnesotans, it could be a ski boat or a snowmobile or one of the fishing houses that dotted the white expanse of ice around Beaver.
“Everybody’s got their thing,” he said.
Beaver’s thing began in a college physics course and this weekend took him on a trek hundreds of miles north from the Missouri town where he runs his business, Great American Kites.
He hosted consecutive kite festivals, first at Clear Lake in Iowa on Saturday and then 75 miles north at Clear Lake in Waseca the next day. He brought with him his fleet of 160 huge kites, the largest of which is a yellow whale that’s nearly 190 feet long.
Sean Beaver said he owns about 160 kites, the largest of which is in the shape of a yellow whale that’s about 190 feet long. Big kite prices range from $3,000 to $5,500, he said.
Beaver claims to have the largest collection of show kites in the country in the 14 years he’s been in business. He spends basically every weekend from March to October flying kites.
“We’re in the amazing memory business,” he said, a mantra he repeated throughout the afternoon. “At our core, I mean, we fly kites — that’s not who we are. We’re all about getting the kids off the couches and their Xboxes and their gaming consoles and their smartphones.”
Organizer Molly Kopischke reached out to Beaver 10 or so days before the weekend after recalling a friend’s post about the Color the Wind festival in northern Iowa. She coordinated with Ken Borgmann, chair of the Waseca Sleigh and Cutter Festival Association, who agreed to donate some money to host the town’s first-ever large kite display.
“We certainly want to do it again next year,” Borgmann said.
Hundreds of kids and “the young at heart” as Beaver, 50, referred to himself, gawked at inflatable animals and characters as the sun warmed Waseca up to the high-40s. Kopishcke’s friends who go ice fishing assured her 2 feet of ice remained despite the slush forming on the lake’s surface Sunday.
Erica Staab-Abscher said she drove her daughters from Faribault to see the phenomenon, a first for all of them. Kalea, 6, and Marina, 3, ran around the ice and jumped to touch a kite shaped like a beaver as their mother stood watch.
“They were super excited. … You should have heard them on the way down — just squealing, ‘It’s Clifford! It’s a manta ray! Look at the whales!’” Staab-Abscher said.
Sean Beaver, who claims to have the largest collection of show kites in the country, ties a knot as he prepares to fly another kite.
Winds stayed around 15 mph, an ideal level for flying, Beaver said. The kites are tied to a rod drilled into the ice and can handle maximum winds of 30 mph, he said. They’re made of lightweight nylon fabric and inflate into various shapes when the wind hits them.
The large kites on display Sunday were made by hand by Peter Lynn Kites, a business in New Zealand that opened in 1973. Festivals like the one in Clear Lake, Iowa, have grown to attract thousands of visitors over the course of a day, including one person from England who planned to follow Beaver to Waseca.
He started collecting big kites as a way to connect with his son, who is now 20 and joins his father to help run the displays.
Beaver stopped questioning whether his kite habit was warranted when he saw swaths of happy parents and their children coming to watch.
“Something’s going right when there’s this many people in the middle of an iced lake in the middle of February,” Beaver said.
Gesturing to a line of five or so kites shifting in the wind overhead, he estimated their worth at about $15,000. Big kites range from $3,000 to $5,500.
In spite of the cost and the long drives, he’s confident each kid and adult on Clear Lake this weekend will have made a lifelong memory.
“Life’s not a dress rehearsal, man,” he said. “You don’t get these days back, so you gotta finish with your fun meter on high.”
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