License to Fly a Kite

Today was as crowded as we have seen it here in Lavallette. It started out as a perfect blue sky day and our mistake was not getting out onto the beach until after 11. It was also a high tide day when everyone had to fit on the reduced size beach until the tide went out at 3. A special treat of having to sit so close to many others from NJ was that there were lots of amusing conversations to listen in on. In particular was the guy who kept calling a voice activated sports line to check the scores of his favorite baseball teams. Him: "Sports"...."Baseball"..."American League"...."Yankees"...."Redsox".... he must have called that line about 2 dozen times while we sat there. We overheard him say he had $900 on the Redsox game. Mike and Jimmy moved their chairs to sit closer to the ocean (and away from the Sox fan) when tide went out.

The ocean was amazing today. Mostly calm but there were big enough waves to body surf successfully. My bathing suit was not really intended for body surfing, but I managed to hold it up while body surfing one-handed.

I never thought that flying a kite was that difficult. Kids do it all the time. And at the beach with the wind as strong as it usually is, anyone can do it. However, my opinion has changed. I think some people should be required to have a license to fly a kite. This woman in particular:

It turned out that many people stayed late on the beach just to watch this inept woman and her family attempt to fly a kite. She would hold the kite and have one of the kids hold the string. Then she would let go and yell for the string holder to run and attempt to launch the kite into the air. "We're not leaving the beach until we get this kite to fly" she said. She actually used expletives, but this is a family blog, so I have omitted them. There was one major obstacle to flying this kite. They had tied the string to the wrong side of the kite so the "rudder" was on top of the kite, instead of below, so the kite never had a chance. After we all had a good laugh, Jimmy walked over and showed them the correct way to attach the string. The crazy lady said 'Well, I am not an engineer" how was I supposed to know that?! So it soon became obvious though that having the kite string attached properly, didn't mean that they actually knew how to fly it. We were risking our lives sitting near them since as soon as they got the kite up in the air, it almost always came plummetting down at a tremendous speed. More than once someone had to yell "Watch out!!" People started to leave the beach out of fear (and maybe a little bit because of the biting flies).

Kites weren't the only entertainment on the beach this evening. We had surfers. And a particular Dad who was trying to learn for the first time to surf from his son. The whole family gathered to watch and cheer him on.

The weather forecast is for rain the next 2 days so we are going out to the beach early today. It shouldn't be as crowded since it is Monday.