Mark Marano

i was having a bit of difficulty getting the kite to launch as there wasn’t much of a breeze in the field at Anderson Park.. finally got it to launch and walked over towards a bench (not the one in the photo below) to tie down my kite so I could attach the picavet and camera to the line. on the way there, I saw this tree and a thought came to me about the kite crashing into the tree though I thought nothing of it. i walked the kite over and tied it down to the bench… after trying to untangle the picavet line for a minute or two, I saw the kite crashing into the tree. i walked closer to the tree, brought in some line, and tried to pull it down. no luck. i tied the line down to the closer bench, packed up my gear, and went to the park office but it was closed. i tried calling a couple of nearby home depot and lowe’s stores to locate a long extension pole though they didn’t seem to have them. i called my dad and he was able to bring over a shorter extension pole and ladder, though the pole wasn’t tall enough to reach the kite and the ladder was too heavy for us stand all the way up. the sun was setting and park was about to close, so i had to leave the kite behind until the morning…

i managed to locate a 23′ mr long arm extension pole at a local home depot online, and called the store (again) to have them verify it was there. this time they found it, so i headed over to pick it up before going home. the next morning i woke up before sunrise to get to the park when it opened. my dad came with me. this time we took a lighter ladder, the mr longarm pole, and the shorter 12′ pole, plus i grabbed a bunch of various items that might come in handy to jerry-rig both poles together and place at the end of the pole as to avoid ripping the kite.

we got there and the kite was still up in the tree. [wind was dying down overnight so no chance of it blowing out on its own] we set up the ladder and after a couple of attempts, figured out a way to climb the ladder and carefully push mister longarm up the tree with the shorter extension pole ‘clamped on’ to it [with a vise grip! - glad that was on tight and didn't fall!]. the first attempts didn’t work as the kite was just too high, even standing near the top of the ladder. i write this 11 days later so don’t remember exactly where, though i ended up somewhere in the middle (or middle to top?) of the ladder and was able to touch the kite with both extension poles pretty close to fully extended (if not fully extended). the top extension pole was pretty flimsy being barely clamped onto the top of mr longarm!

i tried reaching my arms as far as i could and pushing both poles up to try to push the kite up. unfortunately, even though i was able to touch the kite, it was barely pressing up against it, and it wasn’t budging. and my entire body was starting to shake violently as i was reaching high holding two extension poles (with a vise grip attached to them) and trying to balance the whole thing while standing on the ladder against the tree! we tried moving the ladder around the tree to different spots though they didn’t really hold the ladder too well. [i had to avoid a dead branch that was hanging up above my head (perhaps 10 feet or so) too!]

so i had to get to the point of practically giving up and accepting the fact that i may not get the kite back, or may have to cut the line, tie it to the tree, and wait for a strong breeze to come and knock it down, and ask the park rangers to pick it up for me and call me. [another idea one of the park rangers suggested was stacking pieces of pvc pipe together to knock it down]