The first rule of Kite Club...

The first rule of Kite Club is...you tell everyone you know about Kite Club. Jeremy's roomate Lawrence became the newest member of the Brooklyn Flyers when he launched the Robot War Gayla yesterday. Congratulations to all of us.

Yesterday, Jeremy took a day off from teaching kids about science and we spent 7 and a half hours in Prospect Park, teaching ourselves a few things about a few things other than science. For instance, nerf footballs totally fly.
We also began honing our kite-fighting skills. Jeremy definitely dominated in this arena, and my brand new Gayla Trendsetter left the park with more than one strip of packing tape holding it together. Karl and Kyle came by after their respective days of work and we had a serious kite-fight followed by some serious knots. We decided to (literally) cut our losses.

Ye Olde Carriage Inn was crowded, and the MegaTouch was occupied, so we moved on to Karl's and drank our Guinness while we watched the History of Baseball. It went a little something like this:

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April Is A Good Month For Flying Kites

If we learned anything during this past month, and I'm not saying we did, but if we did learn something, it was probably that April is a good month for flying kites. At least this past one was. We were at the Long Meadow in Prospect Park every Saturday, and every Saturday our Gaylas were flying high. Whether it was the Sky Raider, the Baby Bat, the Sky Spy, Night Stalker, Terror Saurus, Dragon Wizard, Taz, Rainbow Unicorn or the Trend Setter, they were all up there being admired by the little ones with grabby hands. It totally ruled.

This past Saturday we even got in a few good rounds of catch. (not pictured)

Liz was designated knot-untangler.
As per usual, we ended our day in the sun in the cool retreat known as Ye Olde Carriage Inn, with the Guiness and the Erotic Photo Hunt. It took a team of six, but we finally achieved the high score on the machine. Unfortunately, the excitement was too much, and instead of entering our name as "BK FLYERS" our place in history is held by the name "BKK FL." I think they'll get the idea.

From Ye Olde Carriage Inn we moved on to Karl's for hot dogs and eventually a dance party of sorts. You'll can read about that here.

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The Littlest Kite-Flyer

Every Sunday in San Juan, the locals gather on the big lawn that stretches down the hill from the ponderous old fort, El Morro. They buy cheap Gayla plastic kites from vendors who set up booths on the street. When I was there, there were at least 100 kites in the air at once.

This little girl was much more interested in bouncing her kite along the ground than flying it.

Found this on Flickr. Let's go to San Juan.

You Can't Beat Perfect.

So it looks like we'll be returning to the usual spot in Prospect Park this Saturday around 10am. Bring your Gayla.

Onion rings, Guinness and Erotic Photo Hunt to follow.

The Joy of Unspooling

The Calm Before the Storm

As usual, the pessimists at weather.com were wrong and instead of rain we had beautiful sunny skies at Prospect Park on Saturday. Unfortunately, we didn't make it out to Coney Island as originally planned, but our largest gathering yet included me, Karl, Jeremy, Nas, Erin, Maggie, Matt, Nicole (sp?) and his girlfriend whose name I missed (sorry) and their dog Stella. It was great to see all those Gaylas up together. We flew the Dragon Wizard, 2 Sky Spies, and Taz in addition to Nicole's mini airfoil kite, a Nascar delta, and the stunt ghosts triple (which didn't make it up). A couple kites sustained some serious damage from midair collisions, but it was the first day that I didn't lose any kites.

Then it was off to Ye Olde Carriage in for Guinness and Erotic Photo Hunt. It doesn't get any better than this, folks.

The kite that flies.

DSCF0295, originally uploaded by Jeff P.

We've already had some great days at the park flying kites. I must say we're Gayla fans. "The kite that flies" is right. I lost 4 kites in three days. Jeremy and I tracked the line to one through the tree tops until the fence for the Botanical Gardens. We're pretty sure that Baby Bat landed on the other side of the garden-it was out on about 2000' of line-but I guess we'll never know. Jeremy and I were also out there at 9:30 am last friday amidst snow flurries. It was amazing.

I've got a Flickr Set up of our exploits, there's a bunch more photos there:
http://flickr.com/photos/jeffp/sets/72157600072591595/