Go Fly a Kite

We went into the city on Saturday, something we don’t do all that often. Not because of Fear of the City (there are such people, I’ve met them). We used to live in the city, after all. Logistics is the real reason suburbanites, or at least those of us with small children, eschew the city. Eventually, the children get older, and the logistics aren’t that hard—we’re not quite there yet—but by that time, you’re out of the habit of visiting.

Still, “Mayor Daley’s Kids and Kites Festival” was over the weekend, and Yuriko suggested we go. Flying a kite on the grounds in front of the Museum of Science & Industry down in Hyde Park appealed to me as well. Luckily, I know the secret (and free) parking places near S&I, so that cut the logistics problem down considerably. Driving in, unfortunately, was the way to go, since the following the Metra schedule and switching trains with a fair walk between stations and then ending up a fair piece from S&I, all in the company of a three-year-old, would have been much more trouble than it’s worth. Metra, Chicagoland’s commuter rail, advertises “think of us as your second car,” but I don’t want a car that only starts every two hours on Saturday and Sunday, and then goes only approximately where I want to go.

Mayor Daley’s minions were giving away cheap paper kite kits with his name on it, which the kids colored and then assembled under some tents set up near S&I. The sky around S&I was alive with kites, lots of Mayor Daley’s simple white kites, plus kites of all colors and shapes. A good stiff wind, steady but not too strong off Lake Michigan, made the grounds a good place to fly them.

A number of people brought their own kites, including some enormous jobs that looked more like floats than kites. One was in the shape of SpongeBob (he’s everywhere, I tell you), others more traditional. A fellow standing near me claimed that one of the most elaborate kites, a blue complex way up in the sky, cost about $7000. I had no way to confirm that, but it’s plausible. Kite-flying wouldn’t be the only pastime formerly relegated to children that now supports an industry whose enthusiasts are willing to spend big for what’s still essentially a pastime.

I couldn’t remember the last time I flew a kite. Maybe at a beach, during college. But mainly I flew them when I was 10 to 12 or so, at the grounds of my elementary school, which had a very large field to go with it. I was pretty good at it. Some of the same sensations came back to me on Saturday, especially the pulling on the string, and its loosening, that are necessary to keep the thing airborne at lower levels and to nudge it up further. When it gets way, way up, the kite finds a perpetual wind zone, and you hardly need to manoeuvre the thing to keep it up. But at that phase of the game, you can feel the power of the wind pulling against you, like the kite is alive and wants to go somewhere away from you.

Lilly didn’t quite get her kite as high as mine, and eventually tangled its string with mine (there wasn’t a lot of room on the field). Ann dragged her kite and was happy when the wind puffed it a few feet away. Still, a good time was had, mostly. We all got something different from our kites.