Mikey D

I was doing my daily read of ESPN.com last night when Grace asked me what I was doing.

I lied, and told her I was blogging. Why? Well, "Lying is the most fun a girl can have with her clothes on...but it's better if they're off." A 'Closer' quote right there. Doesn't really fit because I'm a boy (shut up, Kevin), but whatever. Basically, I don't know why I lied, I just did.

She then asked me what I was blogging about...and I told her I was blogging about kites. Yes, kites. It was just the first thing that popped into my head. I mean, we can all honestly say that we think about kites at random times during our days, right?

Anywho, to make the lie more believable I actually started looking up kite stuff. At first I was completely uninterested in the different types of kites that were available to fly, but after delving further into the world of kites, I actually became interested. I had no idea how in-depth kites got. In my world a kite was something you bought from the grocery store toy aisle that had a funny picture of a cartoon character on it. Now I realize that I had been unaware of the world of kite flying for twenty-five years.

One trip to http://www.kitesrus.com/ (I randomly typed that into my URL bar and found the site...just good like that) showed me the many varieties of kites. They have everything from power kites to box kites to easy fliers. And none of them had a picture of Spongebob Squarepants on them. They were all classy and shit.

After more exploring I came across http://www.kitelife.com/. What an amazing site (and I say that with no sarcasm). I first checked out the pictures area and thought all the old guys flying kites were dorky and needed a real hobby, but after looking at the videos I completely changed my tune. In the videos section there were competition videos dating back to the 80's. And you know me, I'm a sucker for 80's kite videos, so I had just had to watch.

I was mesmerized. Watching these people do tricks with their kites was the coolest thing I've seen since watching one of my students get handcuffed and dragged out of his music class for throwing spitballs at the teacher. And this is going to sound gay, but the kite ballets were probably my favorites. The people could make their kites stop and go, go left to right, up and down with ease. They weren't just making it fly in the air, as I thought was the entire point with a kite. Put their tricks to music, and it was even cooler (even corny 80's music). I learned all about the differences between kites and the competitions. They even had team competitions! Those were kind of neat; watching people maneuver kites to music while not getting tangled in each others strings. Cool stuff.

So what started as an innocent lie turned into a true learning experience. And a blog about kites. Will I ever buy one of the fancy kites? Probably not. Will I ever watch another kite competition? I wouldn't mind. I now have an appreciation for kite flying, as well as a better understanding of how they work, which I didn't have before.

Perhaps I should lie more often. I could learn so much!

~Mikey D