First, let me get the easy part of the trip out of the way. First two days........rain and lots of eating. That about sums up what we did for the first two days. While it wasn't anything terribly exciting, it's always more fun to eat and watch rain storms in Hawaii than other places. So I suppose we should count our blessings.
On the third day (this is beginning to sound like the book of Genesis), we went over to a beach in a nearby town. There are lots of the tourist-type shops in an open-air mall next to the beach. We had a family friend along on the trip who I'll call Lawyer (It's kind of like calling your new puppy 'Dog'). Lawyer decides that with the wind gusting pretty heavily, today would be an excellent day for kite flying. Thankfully, we found a toy store in the mall that had a large kite supply (evidently, Lawyer is not the first one to consider flying kites at the beach). After 10 minutes of kite selection, Lawyer picks out a shark kite (the ironic nature of a lawyer picking out a shark kite is not lost on me) and Mrs. Lime picks up a kite with a long rainbow tail and a frog on it (I'm guessing it was selected based on its cuteness factor).
We head out to the beach to see just how far our kite-flying skills have eroded over the past 10-15 years. First, the kites require minimal assembly. Lawyer's shark kite required a few pieces to be assembled. It took a few minutes, but the shark finally took form. Meanwhile, Mrs. Lime only needed to attach the string to the kite. She had tied several knots to make sure it was secure. She asked me if that was enough knots. I went ahead and added roughly 25,000 additional square knots to make sure it didn't come undone (I wasn't a Boy Scout, so the art of fancy knot tieing is not one of my strong points).
We headed down to the beach to see if these contraptions actually could fly. Mrs. Lime got off to a good early start. After a couple of bad attempts where the wind kept dying out, she caught a solid wind and kept her kite aloft for 10-15 minutes. The only main issue with the frog kite was that it was prone to wild dives at any given moment. Eventually, one of those wild dives ended up with the frog kite taking a head-first dive right into the ocean. Thankfully, there were plenty of kids swimming in the ocean that saw the dive and retrieved the kite for Mrs. Lime.
Lawyer was not having much luck with the shark. It appeared that the shark was a bit more stable than the frog (not many dives), but it needed more air to keep it aloft. After struggling with the kite for awhile (Lawyer was blaming part of his problems on the sub-par launching efforts of Mrs. Lime's sister), he finally got the kite airborne and had a long flight of 20 minutes or so. The sense of accomplishment was quite evident on Lawyer's face. If there's one thing I know from the lawyers that I've met, they don't like to fail in any way, shape, or form. The ride home would have been unbearable had that shark not taken flight.
After Mrs. Lime's long flight, I took a shot at piloting the flying frog. I had a few early failures. One time, the kite took a dive into the ocean. The kite string took a similar fall to the beach, landing right in front of the feet of a lady passing by on the beach. Rather than simply stepping over the string and continuing on, she shot me a glare like I had done something wrong. I guess she assumed that I intentionally piloted my kite head-first into the ocean in an attempt to trip here. I have compiled a list of things that were going through her head when she shot me that glare:
--"I wouldn't let my 12 year old kid fly a kite on the beach so why are you doing it?"
--"My ex-husband had the same goofy look you have when I got pissed off. Now I'm living in his house."
--"If you drop that kite string in front of me again, I'll wrap it around your neck..........three times."
--"You've officially reminded me why I'll never get married. Men are so immature."
--"Why that woman married you, I'll never know."
After I finished reading her mind, I quickly smiled and said 'sorry about that'. She moved on with a grumble and I went back to getting the kite airborne again. Unfortunately, it appeared that she put some sort of curse on my kite, as I wasn't able to get a good flight going over the final 45 minutes that we were at the beack. Curses of grumpy women are extremely hard to break evidently. After some sun and pictures, we headed back to our room.
