| Weekend, and a Kite Tale. |
[Apr. 24th, 2007|03:36 pm] |
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I had a good weekend. I went to a bar Friday night. Twas fun. On Saturday night I went on a walk in the rain. It was like walking through a snail minefield--I kept moving the little guys off the sidewalk so they wouldn't get squished. And then Sunday, ah, Sunday. Sunday I went kite flying.
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It all started smoothly enough. ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.2) kaigex and I went to the park with two brand new kites. We had lunch, took some photos, then assembled and launched the kites. The park is mostly field, lined on a few corners with some very tall trees *cough, cough, redwoods, actually. Small ones.* On Sunday, a portion of the field was being used by people playing some game or another, so we flew our kites a bit closer than may have been wise. See Fig. A.
Needless to say, it was only a matter of time before our kite strings crossed. Fortunately we untangled them in the air without incident.
Then, kaigex decided he wanted to take some pictures. So he anchored his kite to a tree and walked towards me with the camera pointed skyward.
That's when our kite strings crossed again. And this time I couldn't seem to get them to come apart. I frantically went left and right, trying to figure out if the strings had looped around one another. Finally, I handed kaigex my kite string and ran over to the tree where he had his kite anchored. I pulled his kite handle off the tree, and tried once again to get the lines untangled.
Then kaigex accidently let go of my kite. Suddenly, I was flying two attached kites. O_O;
I panicked and started reeling kaigex's kite string in. I fumbled and let go of the handle, which promptly pitched forward with the kites. Naturally, I ran after it. It was a few feet in front of me, and then a gust of wind carried both kites away... the handle lifted over my head and caught on the top of a tree. The tree was now flying BOTH kites. See Fig. B.
So, yeah. Now I was freaking out a little. I could already imagine the kite lines breaking eventually and cars in the parking lot getting bombarded by my pointy-nosed kite. It seemed to me that there was enough of a line that if they came down right they'd actually fall on the other side of a street. I was once in a car (I think with my father) when a kite swooped down and almost smacked into our windshield, so I'd like to think my concern was mildly warranted. But then, I also was having visions of the kites taking down low-orbiting satellites, so maybe not.
Another pressing matter weighed heavily in my mind. That was a brand new kite! And a nice one, at that. Made of nylon, as opposed to the cheap plastic kites and homemade paper kites I'm used to flying. I wanted it back!
Thus began the great kite retrieval mission. We couldn't shake the tree and loosen the kite handle, it was a large tree. And we couldn't climb the tree, either, the handle was literally stuck near the top where the branches were too thin to support much weight. So, after about half an hour of watching the kites fly on their own, we did the most sensible thing we could think of. We went to the grocery store.
The plan was to get another line over the kite line. So, the first thing we picked up at the grocery store was a nice little spool of string. We hunted around in the pet aisle for balls or something that we could tie the string to and throw. I figured that if we could toss a ball with string tied to it over the kite line, we could use the string to drag the line down to the ground. Then we would regain control of the kites, mwhahaha! Unfortunately there weren't any reasonably weighted balls. Hmm, what to use, what to use. That's when kaigex suggested an apple. I thought a potato would work better. Eventually, we decided that coconuts were the way to go. We'd put the coconuts in a grocery bag, tie the string to the handle, and throw the bag over the kite line. A foolproof plan, as long we didn't break each other's skulls with coconuts.
Our store bounties are shown in Fig C.
In figure D, The coconut in the bag is represented as a frictionless orange sphere. The purple dotted line represents the arch the coconut should travel in in order to pass over the kite line.
We got back, and sure enough, the tree was still doing a wonderful job at flying our kites. I was starting to envy the tree's skill. The kites had now been in the air for more than an hour flying themselves. We prepared operation-Coconut-Kite-Retrieval, made sure no one was too close, and kaigex threw the coconut.
The coconut didn't even come close to clearing the kite line. I guess the tree was taller than it looked. Furthermore, the coconut broke open as soon as it hit the ground, ensuring we only got 1-2 throws per coconut. We attempted a few more times until we ran out of coconuts, and then it was back to the drawing board.
We devised a few more plans. One involved a tiny remote-controlled helicopter that we'd seen at the store. This idea eventually fell through when we realized it was unlikely that the helicopter would even be able to support the weight of a light string. Hmmm. A helium balloon? It would require a ton of string to get the ballon high enough, and then we'd still have to bring it down somehow. The mission was beginning to look futile.
Aha! We could fly a third kite and tangle it's line to the other two lines. The perfect plan! And safer than throwing coconuts in the air. We immediately went and bought another kite. By this time, our kites had been in the air and flying themselves for nearly two hours.
Sadly, I cannot say whether our final plan would have worked or not. By the time we returned with the new kite, our flying kites had crashed. And as Murphy would have it, mine landed in one of the redwoods. It hangs there, partially swallowed by the tree, visible but too high up for me to reach. I still haven't even found kaigex's kite.
But one of these days, I'll retrieve my kite. You haven't won yet, universe. |
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sleepy