Oh, go fly a kite
All this spring-like weather has had us itching to get outside and enjoy the sunshine, so when we were in Parksville the other weekend, I immediately thought of kite flying down at the community beach. Apparently I was the only one because no one else was out there with a kite, despite the beautiful sunshine and great breeze. But you’re forgetting the breeze-chill factor, said George, as he sat in the car refusing to get out. It may be 10 degrees in the sun, he argued, but that breeze makes it feel like -30. At university George majored in exaggeration with a minor in overstatement.
It was the pleas of the girls that finally got him out of the car. Then, his face brightened as he pointed out that we didn’t bring our kite with us. No problem, I said, as I pulled two new ones out of the trunk (I had stopped by the dollar store). His face began to cloud and then went black when he realized they needed to be assembled.
George is not a typical guy – he wants to read instructions – but sadly these were dollar store instructions consisting of two bad drawings and some arrows pointing rather vaguely. We think – though it’s hard to certain – that kite #1 was assembled backwards. Whatever the case, it crashed and burned instantly. George wished it really had burned so he could warm his increasingly numb fingers. (Missing instruction – do not assemble in the midst of a late-winter ocean breeze).
The obvious next step was to assemble kite #2 the opposite way. Yes, that looks much more like a real kite. Grace and Ella, who were having plenty of fun watching daddy assemble, as well as running around in the sand in their bare feet, suddenly got back into kite mode. Grace wanted to fly the kite herself and instructed daddy to hold it up in the air, and then let it go after she got running. Off she went, taking up the slack in the string, then it became fully taut and George lifted the kite up into the sky and let it go!
As we drove away, the kites unceremoniously crumpled into a garbage pail, we went through our kite de-briefing. Grace reckoned that daddy hadn’t lifted kite#2 high enough in the air, Ella thought Grace could have run faster, I argued that the kite wasn’t assembled properly, and George claimed that the kite was too heavy because of all the lead in the paint used to decorate it.
Hi Kim–
Your bit on kite flying–sort of–at Parksville kind of got to me. Those of us who love kites know that Parksville Community Park is the best flying field on the Island. We also know that the little bits of junk that some stores pass off as kites do too much to convince kids, of any age, that kites are no fun at all. After all, what fun is a kite that will not fly?
Do two things for me, please: Check out our site listed above to see real kites–and yes, we make them ourselves. Come and see some of these, as well as great kites by other kiters, at the Parksville Lions International Kite Festivelle, July 18, 19.
See you there–I hope!
John Freeman
Thanks for that, John. Both for the kites link and the festival notice. Much nicer to be out in July!!