Let's Go Fly a Kite

I can never think about kites without thinking about the song from Mary Poppins "Let's Go Fly a Kite." There is something about the (apparently) gravity defying kite that seems to speak to the very soul. Perhaps it is because the kite demonstrates the marvelous balance of God's creation. It is gravity that enables the kite to use the principle of lift to fly.

This is kind of like the relationship between the laws of God and the grace of God. Without the law we would not know that we had sin and needed God's grace to lift us out of sin (Romans 6-8).

Anyway, back to my story. The reason I have been thinking about kites is because our family decided to take a short family vacation this past weekend. We went to Ocean Shores (and stayed in the cheapest motel we could find near the ocean). By the way, the Huckleberry Motel/Inn was quite clean, and quite small. It looks to have 6 rentable units, with two being occupied by the daughter & family of the owner and two more occupied by us. We were the only guests during the weekend.

While there we spent some time flying kites. The ocean breeze (especially as the day goes on) gets stronger and stronger. It was fascinating to me to see the different attitudes of kite flyers. It is kind-of like dogs and their owners; they tend to reflect each other's characteristics.

My dad & sister bought kites at a local "Easy Kite" shop. The shop was opened up only the day before by a kite enthusiast who wanted a shop full of nothing but easy to use kites (he has another shop for more complicated ones). The most complicated of the kites in the store had only one rod that had to be put into place before flying the kite.

Dad went for ease, height and not too expensive. His was colorful and had 500 feet of string. My sister went for beauty. She bought a kite that has a colorful parrot design on it with 300 feet of string. Both of them wanted a kite that would soar up in the sky where they could lay on the beach and look at it away up there.

I didn't need a kite. I already had one. Many years ago I was introduced to controllable kites (two strings) by some friends we made during a conference. As a result of that casual friendship, I purchased a "Beetle" kite. It is controllable, but small enough to fly in fairly low winds. It is also very sturdy and can take the kind of punishment a beginner is likely to inflict upon it.

So our family set out for the beach. And here is what we did:
Dad flew his kite while laying on the beach.
Mom sat next to Dad reading a book.
My sister flew her kite while laying on the sand (with bare feet).
My brother sat next to my sister watching the kites.
I stood, flying my kite in circles, curves, trying to knock targets over on the ground, etc. the whole time. I even progressed to sky writing (sometimes more and sometimes less recognizable).

We all enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

Then we walked down the beach with our kites to see what other people were flying. There are lots of fun, pretty and interesting kites out there.

Some people fly kites like they fish (except their line goes up instead of down). Some people fly kites more like fly fishing; where it is an activity in itself.

This same scene was repeated the next day, minus the sister who decided that she wanted to take a nap.

All in all, we had a very relaxing weekend.