Fly a Kite! ...or Not

We have been getting interesting in kites. We had a cheap-cheap kite years ago in Louisville but it broke the first time we used it. We got another cheap-cheap kite in Tallahassee but it’s still holding up. It works great. We also have another kite. It’s called a flying star. The package says, “Flies like a pro!” But it doesn’t. We have yet to get it to fly at all. It’s small so it shouldn’t take much wind but it doesn’t seem to have any lift. Even “wind tunnel” tests with our fan produced no kite-like action. In late July we went to a near-by park to give the kite another go. There just wasn’t any wind at all.

Not to be foiled, we took our kites to Pismo Beach. The beach part of Pismo Beach. We had some wind there and got our cheap kite up in the air. The wind was very gusty though so just when you thought the kite was up and going well, the wind would give out and the kite would come down. Alas for these temperamental coastal breezes!

We gave up on kites and went home to get Asher. After all, even if your can’t fly a kite, you can always walk a rabbit. We thought he would like a bit of time in the park. There are several parks in our area of Pismo Beach. The largest is Dinosaur Caves Park. Matt was thinking of it as on the site of some fossil beds or maybe the coastal cliffs were reminiscent of sculpted dinosaurs or something. No. It turns out that in the ‘50s there was a guy who promoted his lapidary with a large concrete sauropod and tours of a sea cave. Both are now gone, but the memory of them gave the park its name. The sign at the park (picture above) is all the information we know about the place.

So, we went back to Dinosaur Caves Park with our rabbit in tow. He ran around a little bit. The park had bands of irrigated grass as well as bands of dry scrub. We though Asher might like digging in the dry dirt. He didn’t show much interest and headed back to the grassy area. He spends a lot of his time outside just grooming. He doesn’t seem to be that interested in looking good when he’s inside. We like to joke that he’s trying to get his fur all straight and clean in case he meets a doe-rabbit. You never know when a pretty girl will show up! When he wasn’t licking his back and feet he mostly sat in one of our shadows. “Walking” a rabbit is actually mostly standing around while the rabbit does its own thing.

The night before we had tried a wine called cabernet blanc. We have been trying a lot more white wines of late. The brand was Rock Rabbit. Inspired by this, Matt put Asher up on one of the rocks that line the edge of the park. He sat still long enough to get the picture but that face… that’s a rabbit scowl.

There are a lot of pelicans in the area. They drift along the coast hardly ever moving their wings. We have seen then passing over head in big V-shapes of at least 30 birds. Sometimes several of these huge formations pass by in rapid succession. Most often there are just one or two drifting through the sky. Maya says they look like pterodactyls. It’s an apt comparison. They do look like some nearly mythic thing as they slide through the æther seemingly impassive to the world. We’ll miss them when we move away. We’ll miss a lot about California when we move away.