Beki and I spent some quality time flying kites this weekend. The annual kite festival was held at Overlook park. It was mostly families with young kids, but I would recommend it for all ages. Yesterday was our trial run. We took Owen the dog and bought a “stunt kite” and a regular kite. The regular kite looks like a bird with a long tail. It’s built such that the wings flap in the breeze. It’s easy to fly. The stunt kite looks more like a hang-glider and has two strings. It’s much harder to fly, but you can do crazy tricks with it. You can skim the ground and scare the bejeezus out of animals and small children.
As we approached the park the sky became a sea of kites. There were manufactured kites and homemade kites. The homemade kites were part of the festival. Made from weaved paper stuff with string attached they flew nicely. Owen wasn’t a huge fan of the kites, but he wasn’t as afraid of them as we expected. He eventually settled in with another family. They didn’t seem to mind, so we let him hang with him. There were kites all over the place, making it difficult to find room to figure out the stunt kite. We gave up after a while and took Owen for a walk.
This afternoon we went back with our game faces on. We found a mostly empty baseball field and set out to get a handle on the stunt kite. We also bought 500 feet of string for the bird kite. We set the bird kite out and let it go high. Then we worked on the stunt kite. After an hour or two we were pretty much expert with both kites. Maybe I’ll take up kite flying as a hobby.
If there’s open area near by, I highly recommend going out and getting a couple of kites. It’s a great way to spend the day. There’s something really nice about getting a feel for how the wind moves the kite. It’s almost like sailing. Your hands slowly learn what the tension on the strings means and you can keep your kite going all day.
