Kite Festival!

We went to a kite festival in Berkeley today! It was at the Cesar E. Chavez park, which is at the Berkeley Marina. We got the doggy trailer out from my closet and managed to drag it down to the ground floor along with two bikes, both of us, and the doggy. We are getting better at bringing the whole load downstairs without too much of a problem, but today I failed miserably. I discovered that I am incapable of rolling both my bike and the doggy trailer at the same time, which is something Tim can do effortlessly. You have to be able to steer your bike while only holding onto the seat, and roll the doggyride with your other hand behind and to the left of the bike. If I try holding onto the seat of my bike, I can't steer my bike. If I hold onto the handlebars of my bike, I can't roll the doggy trailer because it smashes into the bike and gets tangled. I thought I could do it today, though, so Tim walks off with his bike and the dog and I spend the next 4 or 5 minutes trying to figure out how to roll both my bike and the doggy trailer without them getting tangled together. After laughing at me for a few minutes, Tim ended up relinquishing the dog to me, and rolling the doggy trailer behind his bike. The hitch for the doggy ride was on my bike, so we decided I would bike puppy to the festival, and then we'd switch and he would bike puppy home. We set off and bike to the festival along the bay trail, which follows the shoreline. It is fun to cart the dog around in her trailer for two reasons; she is very happy to go for a ride, and it reminds me of how hard biking across the country was at times, since you had all the extra weight on your bike. Navi is now 68 pounds, and the trailer must be 15-20 pounds, so all the little hills I bike her over remind me of mountains! We could see all the kites in the air from miles away! We stopped and took some photos, and then we finished the bike ride to the park. We biked around the park looking for a good spot to sit down, and we found a spot where the sun was on our backs and we could see the entire field of kites. There were some enormous kites. They had an "octopile" which was a group of lots of octopi kites. BIG octopi kites. It was pretty cool to see. They also had some little kite battles, which is where a bunch of 6 sided kites are all flying in a little field, and the people try to use their kite to knock other kites to the ground. It wasn't as impressive as I thought. I think I was expecting something exhilarating like the kite battles in the book "The Kite Runner" or something. Silly me. It was still fun to see, though. The festival wasn't following their program at all; we didn't get to see the biggest kite fly or a few other things I'd wanted to see, but it ended up being a nice ride and a fun thing to see. I'll add photographs of the kites later!

After the kite festival, we biked puppy home (on Tim's bike this time!) and then headed over to Matt Bier's to hang out for a while. Matt's girlfriend Britt just moved to Berkeley from San Diego. Since Gabe's girlfriend, Britt, also just moved out, everyone is getting confused since they have the same names. It's silly. I guess the gang is going to go out to the bars sometime, get the two Britt's really drunk, and figure out nicknames for the two of them. We'll see what happens! A bunch of our friends were just hanging out, and they were making homemade pizza. Yum. After a while, Tim and I got tired and just headed home for the night. Puppy was glad to see us! I love how happy she is every time we come home. When I'm home and I know Tim is coming home soon, I keep asking her, "where's Timmy?!" She will start searching the apartment frantically, and I will keep asking her, "where's Timmy?!" to get her all worked up. Then, when Tim does get home, she goes berserk with delight! It's really cute.