GANEIDA'S KNOT.

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Quaker by conviction, mother by default, Celticst through love, Christ follower because I once was lost but now am found...

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Come fly with me...

Christ is our Passover! And we will keep the feast With the new leaven, The bread of heaven: All welcome, even the least! - Dr. A.R. Thompson

We celebrated Easter with my mother. Ditz was madly enthralled to be informed she was on a 6am boat on Good Friday! I'm always up by then but the girls were much less impressed. Liddy was prone to be ratty because Theo had borrowed her car & we stood in the early morning chill being buffeted by a nippy little breeze awaiting his arrival so we could claim Liddy's car & hand over the island car keys. Nothing is ever simple around here.

Liddy is usually a good driver & as nearly all her recorded hours are for long distances she has done plenty of highway driving, which she likes because she can travel fast & Liddy dearly likes fast. I am happy so long as she leaves plenty of distance between her & the next vehicle. Tailgating is one of my all time pet hates. It is only when the traffic, which has been travelling at speed for some time, bottlenecks & slows to a crawl that Liddy has trouble. Ditz & I had one moment when we thought we were going to land amongst the bikes strapped to the rear of the car in front. Liddy's guardian angel gets worked overtime on occasions! Thank God she realised the car wasn't moving forward as she'd thought & she managed to brake in time. Ditz & I were both a little wild eyed.

We are in the midst of our autumn. The weather has cooled off considerably & as always at Easter is prone to showers. This year was no exception. We got a little rain as we drove up the coast but not as much as we were expecting though the clouds continued to gather ominously. However neither we nor anyone else caused any holdups on the highway & the traffic travelled really smoothly all the way. We arrived at mum's just on 9am & in plenty of time for a late breakfast.

My mother has a very nice self contained villa in a retirement village where she can still garden her own bit of earth ~ & does~ with water views over the canal & beach front a 5 minute walk away. We don't always walk to the beach because we prefer to walk along the beach ~ miles & miles & miles of it.

Hamish [remember our cyclone?] trashed the beach. The northern end is all exposed black rock flowing lava like towards the sea yet again. The surf was pretty choppy too but ma does know that if the girls don't get their walk in the park [so to speak] they are both pretty impossible to live with. In anticipation of the odd fine hour of sunshine & horrible swimming conditions she had bought a *Sports Kite*. It looks pretty much like any other kite to me.


Liddy spent a profitable twenty minutes putting it together then we vacated for the beach. It is pretty hard to tell from the pictures [we are having massive camera issues] but the wing span is actually arced allowing the air to get under & lift the kite ~ or at least that's the theory. We had plenty of wind ~ in gusts. The kite was going up all right ~ & plunging straight back down again!


It is also dual controlled. Yes, we had plenty of tangled lines until the girls got the knack of it. Ditz did better at first. Liddy wanted to do tricks & figure out what happened when you pulled the lines. Ditz was just happy to get the kite in the air.

Then they decided I should try. I'm a bit of a klutz ~ at least until I figure out what I'm doing & multi tasking at this level gets me in a tangle. While the kite was whirring & fizzing about me uncontrollably making a noise like a bomb coming in Liddy yelled instructions. At the height of her diatribe the kite zoomed towards her head, she took a precautionary step backwards & disappeared suddenly down the other side of the dune with the kite plunging after her.


By the 2nd day the girls were getting pretty good but as you can see from the pictures the weather was pretty miserable & uncertain, though not really cold. I was the only silly sausage all wrapped up in a jacket.

Look & envy ~ yep, they call us the Sunshine State!



4 comments:

Molytail said...

I haven't flown a kite in a dog's age - and oh my, I miss the ocean. You've got lovely waves!!

A. said...

Kite flying! Wow! I haven't done that forever. Come to think of it, I can't even remember the last time I saw anyone flying a kite in the park.

My mother gave all three of her children a little reminder to "never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly" clip that secured to the window visor. I'm an extremely cautious driver - never been pulled over! - but my brother is no longer welcome in two states due to excessive speeding and unpaid fines. Never saw the point in driving fast.

Allison

Britwife said...

That looks like so much fun! Mr. Britwife always has the kids out kite flying (especially in the spring). Ours always get stuck in trees though - we don't have the lovely ocean here in the Midwest! :)

Diane Shiffer said...

love the beach pictures... your girls are just beautiful♥

i so miss being by the ocean.. i was raised in new england (which is the most north eastern-ish bit of the us, in case you didn't know) and we had beach, beach and more beach. now i have none... if i drive for 30 minutes i can get to a lake, but of course it's just not the same thing at all.