About the kite flying

I had the greatest time flying that little stunt kite. My wife bought it for me 10 years ago. We went out once then and gave it a shot. As it turned out, I was not going to be entering any kite festivals. That is unless there was a non-flying kite category. We put it back in its bag and it sat in the back of the closet for 10 years.

Last weekend we made plans to go to the beach and the first failure was apparently stuck enough in my wee brain that I was compelled to dig it out and take it along. So, we get to the beach and Dylan and I head out into the surf. It was the only thing he wanted to do. Play in the ocean. He loves those waves. Anyhow, it started pulling at me. I lasted about 45 minutes playing in the water. Then I made my move. First, I pulled out this little pocket kite. A kite that is also it's own pouch for stowing. Ingenious! But it only has one string. I gave it a half-assed effort. It didn't fly. I had the other kite pulling at me and it wouldn't let go. I declared the pocket kite a failure and moved on.

Hello, my old nemesis. This time I am determined to conquer you. You WILL bend to my will. I lovingly put it back together. I staged the kite...laid out the string...took the spools in my hands. Red spool in the right hand. Black spool in the left. I gave the strings a tug and.... the kite lifted about five feet off the ground and nose dived to the right. This felt very familiar. I re-staged the kite and tried again. Same result. Over the next hour I kept trying with various and increasing degrees of success. Everytime it crashed I ran to put it right for another attempt. And it was fun. I was giggling and having a good old time.

Finally, a little more than an hour into my trial I managed to get the kite aloft and keep it there for what seemed like a very long time but in actuality was probably more along the lines of 45 seconds. Now I started making big strides in my kite flying ability and for the next three hours I honed my skills and tried to develop new ones. I arrived at the point that I was purposely putting the kite into a dive just so I could pull it back up again. When it started spiraling and tangling the two strings I learned how to make it spiral the other way.

In the meanwhile, my son finally got tired of the water and mosied over. "Dad, I wanna use your kite." "Not now, son." My wife got the pocket kite out for him and within 5 minutes he had that thing aloft and stretching to the end of its string. For quite a while we had a great time flying kites together. A few times I dove my kite around his string. The first couple of times I crashed because I was trying to take care not to take his kite completely out of the air. Once I satisfied myself that his kite was gonna fly even with my kite pulling on his string, I dove my kite over his string then pulled my kite back the other way. We both had a blast.

Finally, I managed to relinquish control of my kite and let him have a few whacks at it. I would hold the kite, he would tell me he was ready and I would toss it into the air. Good fun.

On the way home, my wife remarked that she felt like she was at the beach with three sons, which is appropriate because the whole time I felt like a kid.