“Let’s Go Fly a Kite”

For some reason, getting a kite into the air has been on my mind for the last few weeks. Nostalgia? Too much free time? Avoiding working on my ADHD performance? Who knows?

Anyhow, I went shopping. They are not as easy to find as they used to be. I knew I wouldn’t find the old paper-and-balsa kites, but I didn’t expect them to all be $7.99 character ads. (How did I not expect this…?) 

Anyway, I found two of them on sale for $2.99 and bought them. Michelangelo and Sponge Bob.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles kite bit the dust yesterday when my over-ambitious brain told me I could both play fetch with the dog and get a kite into the air at the same time. Don’t try it. It won’t work.

Today, I took the other kite out and launched it. After several cycles of gust-and-calm, I finally got it into the air.

Here’s where it gets even more interesting. (I use that word a lot.)

The kite comes with about 3 feet of string. Well, maybe 100 or so, but clearly not enough. And, nobody in town seems to have kite string. K-mart and Toys R’Us sell kits but don’t have string. (What’s that all about?”

So I got the idea that I’d use some of my beading thread to extend it. A spool is good for a few hundred feet and it’s lightweight. What could go wrong?

Here’s a hint: 

 

The kite took off and sailed skyward in all its glory (as they say). I:spooled out the string (wearing leather gloves, I remembered those string burns) and let it climb and climb. And then, the inevitable. A simple turn, a swoop, and it buzzed the treeline. I tugged the string and watched it climb, clearing the treeline.

That worked the first three times. The fourth time was different. The wind shifted and the kite went into a nosedive. I started reeling it in, but it was too high and moving too fast. I wound as much of the thread in as I could and finally had to just close my eyes and snap what was left.

All in all, it was probably up for ten or fifteen minutes. That’s plenty. Besides, if it hadn’t crashed, I’d probably still be standing there, thinking “where else can I find more string?”

I’ll check the tree the next few days to see if it frees itself and I can give it a decent burial.