A Holiday Weekend Has Come And Gone

I hope everyone had a good Fourth of July weekend.  Our celebration was kind of low-key.  Mostly because the kids did not make it home this year.  We did attend the annual Neighborhood Cookout and were able to put faces to a lot of the names of people living on our road.  Still don’t know everyone but our reputation is growing.  We heard a lot of “Are you the people who fly the kites?”.  Several have seen us cleaning out the bags in the yard or loading up the car to go to a fly.  Most of them haven’t flown a kite since their childhood and fondly remember the paper diamond or box kite of their youth.  They have no idea of the kites available today.  Nor do they believe that we have so many kites for so many different kinds of wind.

Sunday was the regular weekly club fly.  It was all the more special because there were more kite friends there from out-of-town.  We got there earlier than usual but not as early as most.  We remain the “second shift” of the fliers.  The sky was filled with kites of all shapes and sizes.  I couldn’t begin to describe all that was there.  The kites ranged from the large Suttons with banner tails and mesh and flo-tail deltas to the flakes, dragons, smaller deltas and the most unusual kite of the day, the flap kite sun beam by HQ.  There were several dual-line stunt kites flying along with a couple of quad-line Revolution kites.

The sky was so full we only put up three kites ourselves, the Flo-tail Delta by Premier and two limited edition dragon kites by Go Fly A Kite, the Flying Tiger and the Jester.   After a while I flew the Vamp Devil.  I’m still having a bit of trouble getting the brake lines exactly right but each time it’s getting better.  I’m getting a better understanding as to how the four lines work together and how some changes make things better and some make things worse.  It’s all good.  The only bad thing about the Sunday fly was that I forgot my camera and my iPod died.  The sky was so beautiful that I was kicking myself for not being able to get some photos.  I am also trying to figure out a routine for the Vamp Devil for the kite festival in October.  And I was really inspired to listen to some music while I was flying.  I guess I’m going to have to work things out on paper first and then add the music.  Thank goodness I have a few months and the option of backing out at the last-minute.  After four hours on the beach, we went home and nursed our sunburn.

Monday, being the official holiday, was crazy at the beach.  Many people came to the beach for the day, many people came to the beach for the weekend and were trying to go home and many people were staying for the week.  It all added up to a lot of traffic and a lot of people on the beach.  Parking was hard to find.  We didn’t fly but did hang out at the kite shop for a while.  What holiday flying we did was done today.  A good friend had to come down to work in the area and made it a “busman’s holiday”.  For those of you who don’t know it, a “busman’s holiday” is when you combine a workday with some sort of non-work recreation.  In this case, flying a couple of kites for a couple of hours on the beach before returning home.  For him, it was a long day of driving.  But we met on the beach and had a nice visit and a good couple of hours flying.

For those who are following my kite building progress, I finishing the replacement bottom panel late Saturday night.  I looks so much better than the first one.  I changed the way the pieces were assembled and stitched.  Now I’m not afraid to have anyone see what I have done.  And I’ve learned a lot.  About appliqué and about my perfectionism.  So the kite was not finished in time for the holiday.  In fact, I have not sewn a thing in the past two days.  The pieces are laying on the table waiting for me.  I will probably finish this week and try to fly it at our next club fly.  Just a week late.  But better late than never.  And I will not let this project reach the never stage.  So, until the next time we fly…

Fair Winds All.