Front
Street in Traverse City is a quaint strip of shops not far from Grand
Traverse Bay. Nestled among the other businesses catering to tourists,
Grand Bay Kite Co. advertises itself with bright windsocks swaying outside
its shop window. If you haven’t flown a kite since you were a kid,
you might think nostalgically of unrolling crinkly paper from around
lengths of balsa wood and then carefully stretching it over the crossed
sticks.
But
according to owner John Antaya (T’75), the hottest thing in kites
is something a bit less bucolic. Kite surfing is an “extreme”
sport in which surfers propel themselves across the water using large
foil-style kites with two, three or four control lines. It’s essentially
a cross between kite flying and windsurfing.
“A
big part of the appeal is launching off from waves,” Antaya says.
“In downhill skiing you think you’re way off the ground, when
in fact you’re only a few inches up. In wind surfing you think
you’re only a foot off the ground, when you’re really 12 feet
in the air!”
Antaya himself prefers to skim across frozen Grand Traverse Bay in the
wintertime on downhill skiis, pulled by a surf-kite. He has reached
speeds of up to 40 mph—a speed that water surfers also can reach.
Permanent
Vacation
The
idea of opening up a kite shop may be rooted as far back as Antaya’s
childhood, when he would lie on the roof of his family’s garage
and contemplate the sky. As an adult faced with relocation for the job
he held with a division of Dow Chemical, Antaya and his family were
vacationing in Myrtle Beach when his life took an unexpected turn.
“While
in Myrtle Beach I purchased my first two-line kite, and flying it just
felt so free and innocent, and even though there was hardly any wind
I didn’t even have to run to get it in the air,” Antaya recalls.
“I’ve always been a careful consumer, so I figured if I would
pay $50 for a kite, there must be a market for them. I’ve always
had the entrepreneurial spirit, so this became my family’s way
to stay in Traverse City.”
Today,
Antaya caters to thrill-seekers, as well as less-adventurous vacationers
who travel to the Traverse City area, which he describes as the “Caribbean
of the Midwest.” Grand Bay Kite Co. has more traditional diamond
kites, stunt kites, spinners, wind socks (one in crimson and gold with
“FSU” emblazoned on it), various pinwheel-style wind catchers—and
even a remote-controlled whoopee cushion displayed near the cash register
for the inner-adolescent.
It Takes
all Kinds
Another
part of Antaya’s business is specialty kite and flag design. Taking
a customer’s initial conception, Antaya helps put that idea into
a form that has the most impact and then arranges for the manufacture
of the product. Antaya has helped design kites in the shape of a Miracle
Whip jar and a Cheez Whiz jar, and has made specialty flags, banners
and windsocks to brighten the lives of patients at Mott Children’s
Hospital and other facilities.
Kites
also have taken Antaya into the special moments of people’s lives.
For a wedding at the Grand Traverse Resort he was part of a team (dressed
in swimming trunks and tuxedo jackets) that performed synchronized kite
flying.
Extreme
sports notwithstanding, Great Bay Kite Co. has kept Antaya’s feet
on the ground in Traverse City, where he lives with his wife Aurea (EHS’76)
who teaches middle-school science classes in the Traverse City School
District.
“We
met at Southland Pharmacy just across from the Ferris campus,”
Antaya recalls. “She was a clerk at the store when I came in one
morning and bought a Sunday newspaper. We started a conversation, went
out, one thing led to another and 25 years later we’re still together.”
Of his
two grown children, Michelle, his eldest, followed her father into the
retail trade, becoming a business analyst for Marshall Fields in Minneapolis,
Minn. Laine, his younger daughter is taking after her mother by completing
an undergraduate degree
in education.
Antaya
regularly receives letters from customers thanking him for helping them
to achieve that sense of peaceful timelessness kite aficionados call
“aoxomoxoa.” Some achieve that feeling watching a dragon kite
climb in the breeze, others reach it by catching air in near-gale conditions
off of Old Mission Point.
Specially
made or off the shelf, Antaya has everything needed to make time stand
still—except, of course, the wind.
