Russell Beattie

We went to Shoreline park today where they have a dedicated kite park. It was a perfect day, and Shoreline has to be the absolute best place to fly kites - it's a huge field with plenty of room for everyone, and perfectly steady wind. Alex and I have gone flying before, but never in such a big, open place and so much wind - so it was just relaxing and fun not having to worry about the wind, trees or other people. We were out there for at least two hours just messing with our kites and watching the other people's crazy stunt kites.

We have a couple delta kites, one which is easily 5 feet across at its base that I've had for at least 10 years now, and another one a little smaller than that that I got a few years ago. The bigger one took the wind perfectly and just went straight up without a fuss. It flew so steadily, I ended up hooking the bottom of the string to a sprinkler head and let it fly by itself.

The other one, however, was insane - it'd catch the wind, rise up a bit, then dive bomb out of control. It took me a bit to realize that it had gotten a bit worn at a couple spots, so I pushed the rods back into place, and adjusted the cross bar with some paper, and got it into a semi steady state. But actually, that's *a lot* more fun when you have to manage the kite. Alex took it and had a great time managing it in the wind making sure it didn't come crashing to earth, ending with a fun loopty-loop once in a while.

I laid flat in the grass and took a couple great pictures with the iPhone where you can see Alex and the kite in the sky. I included the first one at the top, here's the other one. It was just past noon, so the sun was straight above us, which made it hard to see at times, but made for some cool pictures.

When it came time to go, I started reeling in the big kite and it took forever! It was absolutely *stuck* in the sky because the wind was so steady. I pulled and tugged, but couldn't bring it down without just slowly winding the string back on the roll. Nothing - including Alex winding his kite's string around it at one point - would bring it down. Pretty awesome.

:-)

-Russ