For those of you who don't know, our team (6th Sense) got invited to the World Championships in Berck-Sur-Mer France. We found out a month prior to leaving that we were going so it was a scramble to get a bunch of practices in prior to going. The following is my impressions (and mine alone) of France, Berck, the World Championships, etc.  6th Sense is Scott Davis, Wayne Turner, and myself Bill Rogers. I had never been to Europe prior to this and the only foreign countries I had been to were Mexico and Canada. I found Berck on the map and thought to myself "that is just right across the channel from England. With England being that close I am sure there are lots of English speaking people in Berck". I couldn't have been more wrong. From the first day there I realized real quick that English is a very rare language spoken there which made for an interesting time. Ordering food was quite an experience. Luckily one of my team mates (Scott) knew a number of french foods and that helped quite a bit, but it was still very difficult to communicate to the waiter/waitress what you wanted, or to ask questions about the menu. All in all though, I liked the food that I got and didn't eat anything I wouldn't eat again. I liked the people and really wish I could have communicated better with them. Berck is a small town right on the English Channel, about 100 miles north of Paris. Nice little town and a great place to fly a kite, if the wind is off the water. Unfortunately, pretty much the whole time we were there the wind was offshore, strong and very gusty. It was chilly every morning but most days warmed up enough to only have to wear one coat or sweatshirt J The time of things there is different from what I am used to. Everything is later in the day. The restaurants open at 7 PM which is very late for me. Lunch is usually around 1 or 2. Everything just seems to run later in the day. On the Friday after competitions we went to Paris. We only had about 5 hours or so in Paris, but we were able to see a number of things thanks to some instructions that Dave Hansen had given us. He was the official scorekeeper, from Virginia and him and his wife Ginni were some great people to get to know. Too bad they live so far away from us.....   Anyway, the trip to Paris was cool. Got to see a number of things that I have wanted to see, and to go up in the Eiffel Tower. Very cool. Ok, enough about that, now onto the kiting stuff. The first Saturday there we had a pilots meeting, and then went out to fly some demos. The wind was terrible, the crowd was huge and during our ballet all three of us on the team forgot where we were at in the song. Took us a bit to pull it back together, and to top it off we were flying vented kites and the wind had mellowed out which made for a very bad ballet.  The next day we had some demos again and it went a bit better. But toward the end of our routine a butterfly balloon flew over the field and my lines got wrapped up in it. I spun for a while until the balloon burst, then I crashed into Wayne and that was the end of that routine. So by the end of Sunday we hadn't finished a full ballet, and competitions started on Tuesday....... Monday we went out and practiced in the crappy wind. I was feeling ill so my energy level was way low so we only practiced for a couple hours. Tuesday comes around and it is time for the real thing. The wind again was crappy and strong, lighter in the morning and building throughout the day. We were on standard kites and 300# line in the morning for precision and vented kites in the afternoon for ballet. Both of them go without any major problems. No crashes or ticks. Not the greatest flying due to the wind, but an acceptable outing. With the crappy wind a number of teams had problems so we were happy to come out of it clean.  To give you an idea of how the wind was, we have a snap stall that we all come out of on different beats during our ballet, me coming out last. By the time I came out of it I had ran halfway to Scott and Wayne's kites and had to scramble in the soft sand to get back. I was very tired after that. Wednesday, the second day of comps. Once again the wind is crappy but again we held together and flew two clean routines. Again, not the best flying but we are happy that we had no major problems. If I remember correctly the wind was the worst on Wednesday as far as strength and gustiness. I would have to say that we were in the 20-30+ mph range at times, at we ended up flying our full vented Tramontana's with 500# line, wishing we had some breaks to add to them. Scorewise, Wednesday was our worst day we found out later, on Friday. Thursday comes and we are a bit more relaxed since they count the two best days and we were not in a do or die situation. If we bombed that day we would have still been happy with our other performances. In the morning the precision goes fine, come afternoon the wind is not as ballistic as it had been so where we have some 540's in our routine that we have not been doing, we decide to leave them in and go for it this time. The routine goes very well, with one crash at the 540 point with a quick recovery and we finish all three days with one minor problem. We are very happy with these results. It felt very good to have the comps over. I was pretty uptight about the whole thing and now could relax a bit. Between the crowd (which was much larger than we get at our comps) and the "pressure" of the World Championships, it was nice to have it over and be able to relax for a while. Friday was a nice get away to Paris and we got back just in time to make the Awards banquet. Going into the awards banquet my guess was that we were 7th or 8th. A couple of the judges asked me how I thought we finished and I told them 7th. When they started announcing the placings (in reverse order) I was glad that we weren't last, very happy when they got to 8th and hadn't called our name yet, surprised when we weren't 7th, very surprised when we weren't 6th and totally ecstatic when they called our name at 5th place. It was a great honor for us to fly amoungst some of the best teams in the world. The first pilots meeting was pretty subdued, none of us knew each other (at least we didn’t know anybody but Team Legend who we had met the day before). By the end of the comps we had gotten to know some of the teams and tried to get to know some others but the language barrier made it tough. We did get to know the British team Matrix Management and Team Legend from the US quite well. All great guys and great kite flyers. We tried to get to know the Team Element Air (they were staying at the same motel) but they didn’t speak much English, and Vice Versa on our French. They seemed like some very nice people though. All the teams seemed like great people and it was great to be able to get to know some of them at least a little bit. Overall the time in France was a great time and I have lots of very nice memories from there. It was a great experience and I thank Mike Gillard, David Gomberg, and Jim Barber for recommending/asking us to come there. It is the biggest highlight of my kite flying career. Bill Rogers April 2002