Kites in Ubatuba

Paulo Costa (Liz's dad) grew up in Sao Paulo, Brazil. As a kid he would ride a bus 6 hours along with some friends to the resort town of Ubatuba. In the center square of the town there was a jail with about 5-6 cells. Paulo and his friends would bring paper and bamboo for the inmates who already had the knives and other tools necessary for the job. The next day, on returning, the inmates would present the children with the beautiful kites they created from the supplies, and the children would fly the kites from the beach for the rest of the day.

This Saturday, CONEY ISLAND!

Hey. Coney Island this Saturday.
If I can fix Jeremy's bike we're gonna cruise out there down Ocean Parkway.
Bring all your kite line. We're letting it all hang out.
See you there. Exactly where on the beach will be determined by crowds and who gets there first and we'll organize the rest as it happens by cellular phone.

Another Bright Idea, or How I learned to stop worrying and tape lights to my kite.

Night-kiting.
No date yet, but Prospect Park is open until 1am.
Right now I'm looking up the cheapest, easiest, brightest way to light up our kites, and I welcome any suggestions. So far I've found little LEDs and lithium ion batteries that we can tape together, and would cost about 50 cents each. They're really bright too.
What I'd really love to have is a kite material that could be illuminated by lights around the edges, so the entire delta would glow. That sounds expensive though.

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:

more photos

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.

more photos

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/

Brooklyn Flyers head to Coney Island

This saturday we're planning on heading out to Coney Island to fly some kites by the sea. It should be awesome. Check back for more details later.