LIFESTYLE: A WEEKLY LOOK AT STUDENT LIFE, Go Ride a Kite!

Fritz Gramkowski takes kites to the extreme Just after the sun began to disappear behind the bare trees, and K-Mart's lights fluttered across the highway from the New Jersey field, it happened. Fritz slanted his gaze up through his wire rimmed glasses, scratched one of his fuzzy sideburns and glowed. Although it wasn't dark yet, the sun had set enough to remove the serendipitous January warmth from last Friday's afternoon. Only the crisp coldness of the winter remained. But you could tell it wasn't the sting in the air was that was exhilarating Engineering junior Fritz Gramkowski -- it was the 10 square meters of kite that he was about to bring to life. "This is the big one," he said. Seconds later and 100 feet above the ground, wind filled the green, blue and yellow banana-shaped kite --"the big one." In the center of the field, Fritz, in his black biker helmet and windbreaker, was turning around and around to untwist the angel-hair-like kite lines. Holding two handles connected by a rope behind his back, Fritz used his whole body to control the kite -- pulling hard with the right side of his upper body to move the kite right and with his left side to move it left. His efforts could have appeared to be part of a battle, but when he quickly harnessed the wind's power, it was obvious that if this was a battle, it would be a slaughter. Then Fritz slid into his oversized, tricycle-like buggy and the kite powered him across the field at about 15 miles per hour. Francis "Fritz" Gramkowski is a material science major and a brother in Pi Lamda Phi fraternity. And he has also been internationally recognized in Buggy Newz, The Official Organ of The Buggy Pilots as one of the "hottest buggy pilots" in the United States. According to Corey Jensen, the creator, author and distributor of the newsletter, kite buggying is not yet officially a sport so it doesn't have a specific ranking system. "Right now it's only recreation," he said. "But [Fritz] is widely acknowledged by other pilots." Fritz and his buggies have appeared briefly on SportsChannel and in publications such as Eastern League News. Last year at a kite festival in Wildwood, New Jersey -- near Fritz's hometown of Haddonfield -- the Associated Press took his picture and newspapers across the world printed it. Receiving these clips from friends in Philadelphia, California and Ontario, Canada didn't shock Fritz. After all, he will appear on the Discovery Channel's Beyond 2000 in March. "I kind of realized I was better than the other guys," he said. "But when you see it in print, I realized I better go out and go buggying." But when the captions beneath his photo promoted more than kites, Fritz just had to laugh. Although his name was not beneath this buggying image, in Japan the picture was used as a sushi advertisement. According to the second edition of Peter Lynn's Buggies Boats and Peels, State-of-the-Art Kite Traction and Owner's Manual, Englishman George Pocock's 19th century carriage-pulling kites were the first example of kite-powered transportation. Throughout the past 200 years, ambitious kite flyers have undoubtedly tinkered with the idea of kite power. A kite entrepreneur and manufacturer, Lynn describes in his manual an early example of kite-powered transportation utilizing a bicycle on a playground. Lynn then sailed into the 1990 Thai International Kite Festival with his model of a kite buggy. Fran Gramkowski, Fritz's father and the owner of High Fly Kites, bought the prototype. And for Fritz, that is where it all began. Fritz grew up flying kites with his family. His father organized some of the first big stunt competitions, so Fritz started flying kites at four or five years old. But until his father brought home the kite buggy, Fritz chose to surf rather than fly kites, he said. "I started to loose interest and then my dad got me a kite buggy," he said. "You could do more than just pull it around. It's real low so it seems like your butt's only three inches from the ground. It's like sailing but you go a lot faster." Soon after he became involved buggying, Fritz's skill impressed Lynn. Since then, Lynn has provided him with the expensive kite buggying equipment, and Fritz has reciprocated by offering feedback on prototypes, ideas for equipment and promoting the sport. The three-wheeled buggy, which costs about $450, is a completely detachable stainless steel cart weighing about eight kilograms. The massive kites look like parachutes, but are made of rip-stop polyester fiber. The fiber is similar to sail material, but differs in its air-tight coating. "The fabric is expensive because the kites have to be sewn by hand," Fritz said. "The lines have to be within a quarter of an inch or the angle or the kite is not right." Kite lines, which are made of a high density polyethylene fiber called Spectra, can be anywhere from 75 to 250 feet long. Spectra, a type of plastic, has a low melting point. So if the line caught someone's arm, the contact heat would break the line, preventing serious burns. But don't assume that means the lines are weak. Although they look fragile, they can support up to 300 pounds of strain. Buggying has lured Fritz to Florida, Hawaii, Thailand, New Zealand, England and France -- just to name a few locales. His said his favorite moments, though, are more a result of the beauty and companionship than the miles travelled. "It was July in a dry lake in California and 10 of us just found each other," he said. "The desert is really beautiful because you have all the mountains and stuff. We were buggying around and we watched the sun set." Although the strong winds will let a buggy pilot cruise in a dry lake at up to 50 miles per hour, it's not the power of the wind that challenges his skill, but the friendly competition, Fritz said. "When you fly with someone else, you try to one-up them," he said. "You try to fly a bigger kite, go faster -- that's how you figure out new tricks. "Someone does something to you and you have to figure out something to do back," he added. "It's more fun to buggy with other guys." Fran Gramkowski, however, told another story about Fritz's buggying companions. "He brought a girl from Penn down to the shore," he said. "And he can put two buggy's together and can take one buggy to the end of the ocean. He whipped the girl into the ocean, he stayed dry the whole time and she would get all wet. "The little kids idolize him at the beach," Fritz's father added. "He takes them all for rides." While he is in Philadelphia, Fritz said he just buggies and studies. "It's pretty much what I do now," he said. "It's the most important thing to me now. "I don't know if I'm going to be an engineer or a kite flyer," he said. "Not just flying though, I'd have to start making them or selling them out of a store." Fritz's mother, Mary Gramkowski, who is a nurse at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, said if flying kites makes Fritz content, she will be happy to say her son was a kite buggier. "I think it would be great," she said. "I want my kids to he happy. If that's what he wants to do then that's great. He and his father, they'll get on the phone and talk about graphite spars. He has a good time. He'll talk your ear off about it, but he has a good time." After a some prodding, Fritz admitted that he does do something besides buggying. "I play Doom," he said, describing the interactive computer game. "Actually, I have most of the grad students and a few material science guys playing. Their productivity is about to go down. We hang around the lounge and that's what we're doing most of the time. [Professors] don't really like that. "I apologized to them after I showed them how to play," he added. But when it comes to kite flying, Fritz makes no apologies. Is "the big one" hard to control ? "No," he said, as the 10 meter kite forced him to leap over his buggy, like he was running in the air.

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