Kites On The Beach

Yesterday on my weekend bike ride I made it down to the Marina Del Rey area and saw a beautiful display of flying kites. This was the halfway point on my ride so it also made for a good excuse to take a few minutes off from my ride and to enjoy the scenery. This was at the point where the beach, coming down from Santa Monica and Venice, meets the Marina. On the water are numerous sail boats, too many to count, and at least yesterday on the beach there were a wide variety of kites being flown.

Since the pictures offer little in the way of perspective I'll try to describe them to you. The big "spinner ring" in the center of the pictures, take a look at the video, was 10 foot in diameter. The large "hang glider" kite above the spinner was 12 feet tall and had a wing span of 18 feet. Many of these kites were enormous.

On the beach three people were flying close to 15 kites. When I stopped off and talked to them they were beginning to pack it in for the day and had already taken down a couple of the kites. My favorites were the spinner, the bat (top right hand of picture that doesn't have the sun), and a set of 5 objects strung together that all you could say about them was they were "Dr. Seuss" like.

I told Jacki I may have to go check out some kites. I think the last time I flew a kite was some 25 years ago at the YMCA close to our house in Houston. I remember having numerous Gayla Bat kites back then. My Dad and I would attach little pieces of paper to the string and watch them fly up to the kite. Once the kite string broke, and I tried to chase it on my bike until it was no longer in sight. I even had a box kite when I was a kid. No telling if I'll get back into kites or not, but hanging out on the beach sure brought back some fun memories.

Click here to see video