We spent this past weekend in the Eastern Shore of Maryland. We met up with a coworker who spends a lot of time out there. He showed us around Ocean City, taking us to a beach midway up where the beach is narrower. The winds were fair, but space was limited, so I put up my only SLK: an ITW Mesa DC. I put on a Premier Popper and got a lot of attention. The colors work great between these two.
Observant folks will notice that, yes, the two tails are different shades. I ordered two red tails in the same purchase from ITW. Go figure.
Two separate life guards complimented my kite. They both actually said it was the coolest they'd seen. Maybe that was hyperbolic, maybe sincere. Maybe they're new, maybe they don't see many kites that far up the beach, so far away from the Kite Loft. At any rate, I attracted a few kids (and felt slightly creepy in doing so) who wanted to see how the popper worked. I let them send it up several times, and before long, they were playing roulette, guessing what color would be on top when it popped. Kids these days. At least they were only playing for fun.
We got chased off the beach by lightning (my coworker cursed us by bragging how he's never had to clear the beach before), and so there weren't any kites out flying at the Kite Loft. Nevertheless, a very cool store. I only recently bought a new $200 kite, so I was window shopping only. Man, so tempting. (I should have taken some photos of the interior. Oops.)
The next day, we went to Assateague Island. The wild horses got a little brazen, as you can see. (They will raid your food, even on a crowded beach. Still, they're not tame. The park gave us a flyer showing a number of horse bite wounds.) The wind was too strong for my latest UL purchase, so I had to fall back to my Quantum. I worked for a bit on side slides (got about halfway across the window), then starting improving my axels. The Quantum doesn't do them very flat. I'm still very new at tricks. I'd never gotten my kite into a fade...until I accidentally fractured an axel, and boom, instant fade. Pretty sweet. Managed to hold it for about 10 seconds, getting a feel for it. I'll have to do that intentionally again sometime.
(My wife was the trip photographer, and she didn't want to leave the canopy with our baby, so the pictures are from a distance.)
