Keeping It Up

Miss Terry left me home alone for two days while she went to a weaving seminar across the river in Astoria, Oregon so she decided to reward me with a couple of hours of fun yesterday. Unfortunately, keeping it up proved difficult and I was sore and worn out by the time we finally gave up.

Get your mind out of the gutter, we were flying my new Prism Snapshot 1.9 speed foil kite.

I bought the kite on Amazon a week ago, but the weather turned bad the day it arrived, so yesterday was the first opportunity we’ve had to try it out. We walked down to the beach to see what it could do. The wind was pretty light, four to six miles per hour, which is about minimal for the kite, although it picked up just for a moment now and then. When it did the flying was fun and I learned enough to be able to track it right and left across the sky and do some pretty good swoops down close to the ground and back up. But then the wind would just die and the kite would lose lift and drop out of the sky.

The 1.9 is a big kite, with a wingspan of 76 inches and 16.1 square feet of sail area. A smaller, lighter kite like the Prism Snapshot 1.2 would have probably done better in the lesser breeze, but I don’t think Terry will let me have one of those, too.

Terry got a lot of exercise chasing the kite when it came down repeatedly and getting it pointed the right way and lifting it off the ground so I could launch it. An experienced flier with decent wind can do it without an assistant, just by jerking the lines sharply to get it upright enough to fill the sail. I was able to do that just once.

I convinced her to try flying it for a while and she was starting to get the hang of it, but the wind just wouldn’t cooperate. She had a couple of good flights before the wind just died. I think my longest continual flight was about 20 minutes, which is a workout when you are steering the kite across the sky. It’s definitely a good upper body workout. By the time we stopped, my arms and back were letting me know about it.

Back at the motorhome, Terry made a delicious dinner of the last leftover chicken breast from the day before and some amazing fried rice for me, and a salad for her. Later on we went over to visit with Dan and Patty Chance in their motorhome, and Nancy Kissack came by to join the party. We had a good time swapping stories and talking about the amazing spectrum of people we have met as fulltime RVers.

Today is our last day in Long Beach, and we’ll probably all get together for dinner. Tomorrow we leave for Seaside, which means crossing the big bridge in the motorhome. I’ll be the fat sissy boy crying and sniveling in the back end of the Winnebago while Terry drives across.

Thought For The Day – If you don’t do stupid things while you’re young, you won’t have anything to laugh about when you’re old.

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