Had a great weekend

After having a very stressful week, I had a terrific time with my boy on Sunday. We started out by taking a trip to Seal Beach as I had read there would be members of a local kite club meeting for their monthly flying event. Sadly, there was just one gentlemen but he did have up several huge (125 sq. ft.) kites. That; however, did keep us from flying some of our kites and we had a great time. My boy spent much of the time digging in the sand while I chatted and watched the kites.

As the afternoon wore on, we decided to pack up our gear and pay a visit to the local kite shop – which, as to be expected, was a mistake. 🙂 We ended up buy two Stylus P.1 kites. These have 5 1/2 ft. wingspan parafoil (no frames) power kites. Of course, we went directly back to the beach in order to fly them. The were absolutely fantastic! To date, I haven’t had much luck with stunt kites (my boy spent New Year’s Day flying a delta stunt kite – I didn’t really get a chance 🙂  ) and these were the first parafoil stunt kites we had ever flown. I was amazed at how relatively simple they were to fly and was absolutely enthralled with the experience! We stayed until well after the sun went down and would have stayed longer but we could barely see the kites!

It was so much fun to fly these that I can’t wait to go back and fly some more. While I’ve been hooked on KAPing (Kite Aerial Photography), I can also see flying the parafoils as a great way to spend an afternoon – and getting some much needed exercise at the same time! I can also see this as a great way to get some much needed relief from stress – flying the Stylus P.1 takes full concentration but is also very relaxing in that I had complete control (well, almost complete control) of the kite as it danced around in the sky. I can also imagine booting up my iPod and making the kite “dance” to the music as the Stylus P.1 was very, very graceful and yet could really move. Heck, I may end up buy yet more kites (a bigger Stylus?). Kite flying as a kid was fun but even something as simple as kite technology has changed so much since then that it’s now just plain downright addicting! Who would have imagined, four decades ago (now, I’m not THAT old!) that one could spend an afternoon taking some really cool photographs while making kites dance in the sky with your boy! BTW, my KAP blog is located here.

I’ve got to admit that an afternoon simply can’t get much better than what I’ve just described but our day wasn’t yet complete – the fun only continued. After we packed up our gear, we went to the movies. As noted elsewhere, my boy has been doing some background acting and we went to see a movie in which he had a role it – Norbitt. While we’ve had limited success in seeing him on some of the other things he has done, we didn’t know what to expect with Norbitt. To our tremendous surprise and extraordinary delight, he appears in the first few minutes of the movie and his appearance is as plain as day! We were absolutely thrilled! As the movie was just released last Friday, it will be months before it is available on DVD. Once I am able to buy a copy, I’ll post his picture on this blog. I’m very proud of him.