Tweedly Fingercize
As in, it's time for some, but don't expect much. I used up most of my ability to be interesting in the process of having a brainstorm about how, exactly, I'm going to mount the folding solar panels onto the Nomad's rack so that I can charge batteries while I ride. The scheme I was working on involved some sort of collapsible framework made from kite spars, but when the mental design work got increasingly complicated I went out to the garage and stared at the trailer until ping! it came to me: two simple gizmos made out of PVC pipe, attached to the rack, that will be sturdy, simple, and difficult to lose important bits of. I love PVC pipe. With PVC pipe and some epoxy you can build almost anything, as engineers in the old Soviet space program will attest.
Looking at all of the kite frame building materials reminded me of my first kite - a little sled kite I bought in Cape May seven or eight years ago. Eventually I gave it away to a small black child in Queens.
No, really - I was in Flushing Meadows park trying to get my recalcitrant rokaku into the air (a rokaku is a six-sided Chinese kite; mine was about 4' by 5'). I couldn't get the long bridle set up correctly, so the kite wouldn't angle into the wind and generate lift. Eventually I gave up and flew the sled kite, which I always carried with me. It folded up into itself, forming a pocket-sized package, and was a reliable flyer. This kid had been watching me struggle with the rokaku for awhile, just far enough away to avoid conversation, but not far enough to hide his interest. With no parents or siblings around, there was no one to hold him back when the sled kite went up - he came over and shyly asked, "Can I try that?" So I gave him the string and he took off running, to make it go as high as he could. I packed up the rokaku while he tore around the ball field, and when I was ready to leave I told him he could keep it. His eyes got all wide: "For real?" For real, I said, and showed him how the kite folded up. Then he unfolded it and ran off again.
I always wondered about what happened next...were his parents suspicious of the strange white guy who gave their kid a kite in the park? Or did they not notice, or care? He seemed a bit young to be in the park all on his own, so I always suspected the latter.
Some time later at Liberty State Park, across the water from downtown Manhattan, I was flying one of my parafoil stunt kites -- an older version of the Prism Stylus. It was a good windy day, and on a day like that the parafoil turned into a sixty-foot hammer, as I used the dual lines to whip it around in a broad arc just a few feet off the ground, leaning back on my heels to keep from getting pulled onto my face. There was yet another small black child there, with his mother this time, and he marched right up to me and said, "Let me try!" He looked like he might've weighed seventy pounds. So I told him no, sorry, but with these winds he wouldn't be able to control it, and might even get hurt.
His mother's response? "C'mon, let's go, he's prejudiced."
I was pretty irritated by this, but said nothing. Some ignorance you can't really combat. But, mostly, I felt bad for that kid: every time he didn't get what he wanted, he would think it was because he was black. Every failure would be someone else's fault.
The point being that nonsense like this is learned. It's even more apparent when you know that Rep. McKinney's father famously blamed her 2002 defeat in the Georgia primaries on "The Jews: J-E-W-S."
See how I did that? Kites and current events!
Now, if I had the energy, I would present my solution for solving America's racial problems with PVC pipe and epoxy, which would really wrap things up all nice and symmetrical-like.
But I don't, so good night and so on.
