This was an out of the ordinary year for us at Kites On Ice. The venue was at the University Of Wisconsin's Memorial Union and on Lake Mendota. It's a wonderful place for the event; however the weather did not cooperate. The lake had frozen very deep and we had well over a foot of ice. Hoping for more cold weather we took all our heavy clothes. But the cold did not stay and we had what were surely record high temperatures. We did not even wear coats most of the time! This meant the snow cover on the lake turned to slush and then water. The other unusual weather occurrence was the wind direction. Normally blowing across the lake, we had wind coming from the South -- off the buildings and hillside.  Bob was able to get the parasleds up very high to avoid the turbulence from the buildings but the wind was still variable both in speed and direction. We had a frustrating day of keeping the sleds flying plus dealing with the lower level wind coming off the building to push the line laundry down to the lake, getting soaking wet. That was Saturday. All the kitefliers struggled through the day, with fewer kites in the air as the ones folks did get up had to be closely tended. Normally we all like to stake down as many as possible, using ice screws and ice anchors. Flying just one or two kites is NOT what we like! The traction kiters were bemoaning the ice conditions as well. No super high jumps and big air times in the terrain park which was built especially for them. Saturday night's Fire and Ice display was wonderful although mighty wet! Sunday saw the same southerly  wind in the early morning and then it simply went away. And we had even warmer temperatures! The weatherman was predicting high 50's.  Bob and I gave up at noon, trundled back to the building to assemble our wet kites inside and left them to dry and be displayed. We had lunch, enjoyed the indoor flying and I listened to Olivier Reymond's seminar on his appliqué technique. Inside the Union things were hopping as you can imagine with so little going on outside. The indoor flying, indoor flying program, workshops and classes, and the exhibits as well as the night show carried this year's Kites On Ice. We are hoping for wind next year!!!