"Let's Go Fly A Kite..."

So on one of my Saturday treks into Fremont I finally appeased my curiosity and went into this kite shoppe. I have to wonder, same as Andy, if they picked the location by chance, cuz Gasworks Park has some pretty fancy kite-flying winds going on ALL THE TIME. To the point where a picnic might not be too grand an idea at the top of the hill near the sundial, oh no. Not if you want to keep your hat.

Anyhow, the place is super-cool fun if you like the bright colors and cool wind-toy creations. And other stuff that I haven't played with since my Ren.Faire daze...namey Devil Stix. But I did not walk out the door with a set, oh no. Instead I fell hard for, of all things, a keychain kite:

Seriously? I was the kid with a keychain collection. I don't know why I gave it up, short of the fact that I realized I would never have so many keys as to necessitate the collection I was stockpiling. So, slowly but surely, I've used, abused, lost, and broken all but a few of them. And lately the keychains I do buy have GOT to amuse me. Like my Badtz Maru keychain, or my all-in-one compass-thermometer-whistle-magnifying-glass thingie. Or, a keychain kite. Specifically the lady bug keychain kite as stolen pictured above.

I will not lie to you, like most "combination" objects, it does a very poor job of being either a kite, or a keychain. But I would not let that keep me from flying my kite!

The first and possibly only kite I ever had was this wretched black plastic thing that I think was supposed to be a bat with big "fierce" eye stickers. Not only did the cross bar/dowel SNAP, as there was just no give the the plastic monstrosity, but I lost that puppy in a huge gust because no one ever told me I had to tie off the kite string to the end of the reel.

Yes, I cried.

Nope, never wanted anything more to do with evil plastic flying things with big sticker eyes.

But that was 2 dozen or so years ago (yipe). We grow, we change, we find cool key chains that carry kites in them.

Andy and I took that little bugger out last week? Week before last? The cloudy, sad, scary, windy days all seem to run together... As I said before, the ladybugs were not wont to take off in the bad poopy, yet WINDY weather. Andy had many words about my not-to-spectacular (yet super cool, it's a keychain!) kite.

So after my allergy medication took hold (yey spring), we took a walk yesterday afternoon to the kite shop so he could have a gander at the toyz...just to look, mind...and he walked out with this:And the sun was out, and the clouds parted, and yey, let's go to the park and use your big-person kite!

Except now that it's stopped raining for a few hours...the wind has died.

I just can't win.

ETA 6/17/08: All images swiped--to my hard drive, no hot-linking here, from B&C Creations site. You know, just in case you'd like a kite as well. I'd take a picture of Andy and mine, but "on the carpet" is just not as pretty, besides, as I write this...it is overcast and cold again...all summer in a day....