anotherben said at 9:20 AM 03-20-2002: did you see it last year? it was pretty spectacular simply due to the insane number of kites flying at the same time. there were some wacky kites out too. apparently if the president is coming or going from the white house in his helicopter all the kites have to come down.
Bendependent [email] said at 5:22 PM 03-20-2002: I didn't go to it last year. Actually I hadn't even heard of it until you posted about it. I'm terrified that it's going to rain all day on Saturday. It's been rainy all week and they predict it will be for the next two weeks...
Nathan said at 1:49 AM 03-20-2002: When I went to Sao Paulo and was in the neighborhoods in the hills, there were twenty kids flying kites on every street. There were also fourty unorganized power and telephone lines making weird nets per street. The kids were somehow avoiding the lines, but it looked like they were fishing for death in the sky. (And it looked like fun.)
anotherben said at 11:19 AM 03-20-2002: how much juice can a kite string really carry? carry. what a weird word. hmm. maybe its not weird..but it looks strange to me today. sometimes i have a real hard time spelling sandwich. i always want to spell it sandwhich. one time when i was in jr high we were going around the room each reading a paragraph from one of those typical jr high readers and while my friend burke was reading the principal made an announcement over the intercom...so burke stopped reading...and when he looked back at the page he couldnt find where he left off. the next word was apparently "the" and several fellow students started trying to help him by sounding it out for him - there was an eruption of whispered "t-h-e"s aimed at him.. there were at least 20 "the"s on the page so the whole event made me and burke laugh...which only exacerbated the pause to the teacher. she got angry and asked what the problem was.. to which burke responded that he knew how to read, was familiar with the word "the" and had simply lost his place in the mindless plotless mind-fodder we were trudging thru in the oh-so-painful round-robin method that she had for whatever reason decided would be educational to all..but not so colorfully. he just said "i finished my paragraph" which the teacher (apparently not paying as close attention as the the whisperers) bought and immediately turned her icy gaze to the next desk containing none other than a panic stricken the whisperer expecting her to begin reading. the the whisperer in a clear attempt to shine as a good student started at the lost the. this jarred the teacher into paying attention, resulting in a confrontation between the whisperers and people who were happy to have leapt toward the end of this excercise..even if only a half paragraph about wether or not burke had indeed finished his paragraph. later that day i won a 5lb chocolate bar for selling enough crap for a band fund-raiser to get my name in a hat.
NuckleheadEd [ url ] said at 12:55 PM 03-20-2002: Man, what an evocative line - "fishing for death in the sky". As a lover of the English language, I salute you for your turning of a phrase. Excellent!
caleb said at 5:59 AM 03-20-2002: i recall seeing something on tv a couple years back about the brazil and how one of the big problems was people tapping into the power grid illegally. apparently, many people die every year trying to do it (mostly w/stolen, stripped copper). the pic's i saw wouldn't leave much room through the wire mess for kite flyin'. scary. yet, yeah, exciting in an odd sorta way.
i may just have to take my parafoil kite out to the beach this weekend.
caleb said at 6:57 AM 03-21-2002: wow...no mine's not near so impressive. it's a simple little 3-cell i got at a toy store in savannah. quite nice for afternoons at the beach.
loren [email] said at 3:06 PM 03-21-2002: How do you like that WindDancer? I've been thinking about getting one of those for a while, but all my $ got diverted into buggy crap.
loren [email] said at 2:09 PM 03-20-2002: Those winddancers are cool. Fast little fuckers. I've got some huge parafoils i use for buggying and jumping.
here's some shots of me buggying the first time.
here's some of James flying one of my tiny stunt kites.
I've got the XM and shortly the XS versions of the Quadrifoil Comp series.
I'm going to the Spring Break Buggy Blast on the Dry Lake beds in Nevada in two weeks.
... and a bunch of other kites that i don't feel like listing... like you guys care anyhow. =] So yeah, i dig kites... a LOT. I need to get some shots of me jumping 10 feet in the air... that's a kick ass time.
anotherben said at 8:23 PM 03-20-2002: that looks pretty fun...does the buggy get moving fast? im not sure i fully understand, but then..maybe i havent really lived in a very windy place.
loren [email] said at 10:04 PM 03-20-2002: Yeah, it gets going extremely fast... frighteningly so. The land speed record in one of those things is like 68mph. It's scary because there's no brakes... but i usually do it in grass or dirt, and i usually don't use a kite that will get me going that fast... yet. It's pretty simple... it's like sailing sorta. You have to tack and jib and stuff to keep going with the wind. I'm still learnin', so i get stuck downwind a lot.