Sunday was breezy. While wondering out loud "What to do?", Aly responded with "Where's your kite?" I'd forgotten, but after a brief search we found it in the entryway closet. After unpacking it from itself (it's ribless and stores in its own tail) it was up in the air, happy. Aly was happy, but got frustrated having to walk all over the street to avoid all the kite-eaters growing on either side. We got it down and drove up to Eagle Park. It flew much better there owing to less air turbulence from the not so near houses. I mentioned ribless -- this attribute makes flying in strong or turbulent breezes, and crashes, a real bother. The canopy can collapse leaving a pile of rip-stop nylon on the ground. If this happens in the air, the kite does a pretty fair imitation of an injures spider as it falls. The canopy must be manually adjusted before flight can resume. Realistically there should be a two person team flying it, one to play the line, the other to recover a nonflying canopy. Anyway, we had fun that afternoon.
Yesterday I was again walking the creekside, this time after lunch. I was looking for a bird I'd seen and heard a couple times along one particular stretch of the creek -- it is mostly black and white and has a machine-gun like call as it flies. The closest match I've found in my Birds of Colorado book is a kingfisher. I desperately want to get a picture of the bird to be sure, but yesterday was not the day. Continuing beyond that bit of creek I saw my first deer in a week. They're all lying low with their fawns, and the grass is now so high that their heads no longer show above it. I snapped a couple pictures and continued on. I heard a rustle on the creek side of the track. There was another doe. I should mention that these animals have changed colors from their dead grass tan a couple months ago to a striking red-brown color. I took a picture of this one as it approached the path I'd already walked, then took a step to continue. Up went its tail as it bounded across the path. Figuring that was the end of the encounter, I walked off. I soon heard grass rustling behind me. turning to look, there was the deer a mere 15 feet behind me on the path. It appeared curious, but after reading this WV farmer post Dee found and linked to, I didn't want to allow it to get too close. A couple more pictures and I continued walking. I looked back just before every turn in the path where the view would be blocked by willows, and the deer was still there, walking on the path, never more than 30 feet back, sometimes stopping to nibble a willow top. When I finally got to the more formal path most people walk, the doe must have felt she'd scared me well enough or had found a particularly succulent willow patch and could no longer be seen.
Yesterday I was again walking the creekside, this time after lunch. I was looking for a bird I'd seen and heard a couple times along one particular stretch of the creek -- it is mostly black and white and has a machine-gun like call as it flies. The closest match I've found in my Birds of Colorado book is a kingfisher. I desperately want to get a picture of the bird to be sure, but yesterday was not the day. Continuing beyond that bit of creek I saw my first deer in a week. They're all lying low with their fawns, and the grass is now so high that their heads no longer show above it. I snapped a couple pictures and continued on. I heard a rustle on the creek side of the track. There was another doe. I should mention that these animals have changed colors from their dead grass tan a couple months ago to a striking red-brown color. I took a picture of this one as it approached the path I'd already walked, then took a step to continue. Up went its tail as it bounded across the path. Figuring that was the end of the encounter, I walked off. I soon heard grass rustling behind me. turning to look, there was the deer a mere 15 feet behind me on the path. It appeared curious, but after reading this WV farmer post Dee found and linked to, I didn't want to allow it to get too close. A couple more pictures and I continued walking. I looked back just before every turn in the path where the view would be blocked by willows, and the deer was still there, walking on the path, never more than 30 feet back, sometimes stopping to nibble a willow top. When I finally got to the more formal path most people walk, the doe must have felt she'd scared me well enough or had found a particularly succulent willow patch and could no longer be seen. 
2 comments:
I remember a kite I had while living on Third Ave. in San Bruno. It was a kit that you could build maybe 10 or 15 kites with. Its frame work was plastic square tubes and all sorts of connectors to make the various shapes. There were several different nylon cloth sails to fit the different configuration. The best one was a box kite with wings, because the wings would cause the kite to fly virtually overhead.
I would fly it at the school yard at the end of Third Ave. I could lie in the grass and watch it fly straight overhead, swaying back and forth in the wind eddies cause by the eucalyptus trees. I remember one night I had a thought of tying my arm band bike light to the kite and trying to fly it in the dark. I got it tied freely to the inside frame of the box and headed to the school yard, it was getting dark but still breezy. Once at the school yard I got behind an out build, which I think was a restroom for the playfields there, to get out of the wind myself.
I need to mention here that there was a little league game going on at the time. Well, I turned on the bike light, which had a clear lens on one side and red on the other, with a flashing amber light on the top. I walked down-wind far enough to get the kite to catch the wind and to my amazement it took off with all the weight of that lamp and its 2 D cells. It didn’t fly as vertical as it normally would but it was going up real well. As I let out the line I walked back to the out-building to shelter myself. After a bit it was up about 150’, it was then I heard a bunch of commotion at the ball diamond, some kid was yelling “look it’s a UFO”. The ball game stopped at that point and I heard everyone coming my way with more shout of UFO. I was busy letting out more string I think I had at least 300’ and I noticed the voices were heading toward the kites down-wind motion. I’m behind the outbuilding but no one noticed me for they were following the kite. I’m laughing hysterically. I’d bring the kite in as quickly as possible and then let it back out several times. I remember the light was just dim enough as not to really show off the kites shape, but with the flashing and the lamp swaying back and forth inside the kite showing red then white made for a great illusion. There was a point at which I decided to let the kite go, one so that it would build an even greater story that the kids, as well as the adults, would have to tell, and two so that I would get caught and thus ruining those stories. Well that kite had such great lift that it went on for quite a ways up and over the power transmission lines, maybe landing near SFO. I left there laughing so hard I could hardly see through my tears. And the next day as I told my friends they all wished that they could have been there.
I miss that kite. The end
Ps, we've got twin fawns in our yard, they just came out yesterday.
That's a great story. You should put it up in your blog. I would have liked seeing the incident.
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