Word: kite
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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When scoffers tell Dave Kilbourne, a 31 year-old Californian, to go fly a kite, he is only too happy to oblige. He flies over them in a delta winged kite that looks like a large version of a child's paper dart. "My family all think I'm nuts," he admits, "but this kite flying, launching yourself off a cliff into a breeze, has got to be the most satisfying thing ever...
Kilbourne does, literally, jump off cliffs. His avocation, shared by about 50 adventurous spirits in the San Francisco area, is a new and considerably more dangerous version of the familiar takeoff on water skis. The water skier uses a flat kite, and must remain attached to a boat's towrope, but, theoretically at least, the delta-wing can go anywhere. Kilbourne first saw one being used three years ago by a touring Australian and built a copy of nylon and aluminum. Says Kilbourne: "One day I didn't have much else to do, so I decided to hike...
...around. When I set the hook, it felt like there was an anvil on the other end. Diving and circling the boat, the enormous thing finally came boiling out of the water. Then it tore off for a weed bed and snapped the 20-lb. test line like a kite string. That evening under the oaks I told of my adventure with a "lunker as big as a beer barrel in this special hole in the backwaters." "Where's the hole?" one fisherman asked. "Where?" I just smiled...
...year off before entering college. But the campus, atop a high meadow overlooking the Connecticut River valley, is hard to stay away from. The one dorm constructed so far is coed and co-genus: pets are permitted. Hiking trips substitute for intercollegiate athletics. The college inaugural convocation included a kite-flying festival-and a recent brochure spoofs the lack of campus history by putting photographs of the event in Victorian-style frames. Students are not labeled freshmen, sophomores, juniors or seniors. Instead, they can spend as long as five years taking courses in three "divisions"-the first stressing techniques...
...bill-through higher insurance rates. Changes in society, including the real or imagined decay of moral standards, have also exacted a toll. Insurance executives used to assume that loss claimants were honest; now the presumption is that many people cheat a bit. Greedy motorists and crooked repairmen conspire to kite repair bills and split the dividend. Noting that fire losses have climbed 15% so far this year, one Manhattan insurance broker says: "No one ever loses an old suit in a fire...