Travelling With A Kite

I'm off to Edmonton this weekend. The next 3 long weekends will be spent visiting Emily and her family there. Now that I've rediscovered kites, I figured it would be good to bring my new kite there. They have nice winds this weekend...

Unfortunately, the kite is around 90cm long when packed. That's too large for all of my suitcases. At the same time, the kite can't travel alone as checked baggage - it's too fragile for that.

So, time to disassemble part of my desk, and use the metal beams as strengthening struts of my kite bag. I pity the luggage that tries to wrestle with my kite now, protected by rigid metal poles... and a few pair of socks. :)

My Fellow Kite Fliers

Last weekend I went down to Vanier Park to fly my kite. It's a popular kite-flying site, getting great westerly winds off the ocean. Looking around I was suffering a bit of kite-envy, and so asked around for recommendations on a new kite. Eventually, I went and bought myself a brand new Prism Quantum stunt kite identical to that shown below.

It's an amazing kite to fly - incredibly stable, smooth and responsive. I can land it on the ground like the lunar module on the Moon. It has a wider turning circle than I'm used to, but that can be adjusted. It can fly in low wind or high wind depending on various bridle settings. It's a real step up from what I had.

But what I'm really enjoying is being able to get out and meet other people. There's a wide variety of people at Vanier Park who fly kites:

• Alex. About 10-15 years old. Flies a blue dual-string Prism Nexus. New to the sport and is starting off well. Determined to learn how to do everything properly. Comes down with his mother Jane. I enjoyed helping him get his kite up and hope to see them around again.
• Darcy. About 20-30 years old. Flies a green dual-string Prism Nexus. New to the sport. Just met him today.
• Jason and his dog Sidney. About 25-30 years old. Flies a red and black quad-string Revolution, amongst others. Started flying this summer, and has really gotten into the sport. Full of tips. Sidney is very friendly, loves to bark, and wanders all over the park. :)
• Sue. About 40-50 years old. Flies a unique red/black dual-string kite with a curvy yellow motif, and a blue dual-string 'ultralight' kite. Has been flying kites for 12 years and even flies through the winter. Every other kite can be down for lack of wind, but she manages to keep hers up there somehow. I have a lot to learn from her. Always listening to her CDs when she flies. :)
• Gerald. About 40-60 years old. Normally flies at another beach down near Richmond. Has kites large enough to pull him across the sand, and runs a business renting kites.

Then there's the couples, all around my age and trying out their first stunt kite. And even more people walking past who are interested in your kite. I love giving them a go of my kite.

In the end, any time there's wind, there's a bunch of people turning up on bicycles to fly their kites. They're a great group of individuals, and I'm enjoying just make contact with them. I'm hoping to spend more time down there after work. I just have to keep watching the Jericho Wind page... :)

More Eclipse Photos

Not long after showing the photos I took of the eclipse, I received more photos from people in Australia. Both sets of photos put me to shame. The first set was sent by a special friend of mine in Australia, whose brother and sister took photos from her balcony. The time lapse sequence in particular looked awesome. They're the kind of photos to make you howl at the moon.

The second set of photos was from my Dad. One of his photos was taken after he "pointed his camera in the general direction of the moon", and was much better than anything I took. Show-off. :P :) But yeah, this is the best single photo of the eclipse I've seen.

Lunar Eclipse

Yep, I got up at 2am and walked down to English Bay to see the red moon. I was actually surprised at how few other people were out to see it. I guess a lot of people in the city could actually see it from their balconies. Or were just too warm and cosy in bed. :) In any case, I got to see it clearly from the beach, and snapped some photos as it happened.

Shooting a lunar eclipse gives you plenty of practise in low-light photography. The middle one is a 4 second exposure, maximum zoom, f8.0 aperture, ISO50 film. Those settings were chosen to maximise image quality (the moon was a tiny little blurred speck even when at maximum zoom).

Fire

This is my 250th blog, and I'll commemorate this with a story about that greatest human achievement: fire.

As I mentioned, Emily and I went camping recently. We arrived at the campsite around 10pm, not long after it had rained. With a firepit in our campsite, it seemed only logical that we light a campfire. Since we're not made of very stern stuff, we opted to buy firewood from the campground manager for $5.

Having the firewood was not enough though. You have two Computer Science students, in a damp campsite, trying to light a fire. I mean, we're both perfectly capable of setting off fire alarms just by trying to cook. But intentionally starting a controlled fire?

First, we realise that we need paper. Let's hear three cheers for tourist brochures and magazines! They burn a little funny, perhaps because they're glossy paper, but otherwise they work just fine.

Next, we need the optimal fire structure. Something that will protect the fire, focus the heat, etc. A pyramid or tee-pee structure perhaps? We tried, and tried, and failed. In the end, just throwing the logs one over the other, with tinder underneath and paper jammed between was our solution. This "lazy" approach seemed suitably Australian to me. :)

We got to watch that fire burn itself out as we lay in the tent. In the morning, Emily arose first (surprise!), and got the fire going again. She was very proud of her handiwork, as you can see in this picture.

Of course, all good things must come to an end. Emily's fire was actually burning more fiercely than the previous night's, and we needed to put it out quickly. Plastic shopping bags filled with water served in place of the usual buckets. We managed to fill the air with smoke and steam before we drove out. Very nice. :)