IStock Photo 11756660 © Wojciech Gajda

“Let’s go fly a kite,

Up to the highest height.

Let’s go fly a kite and send it soaring…”

“Let’s Go Fly a Kite,” one of the most enduring songs from Disney’s 1964 classic Mary Poppins, has become a melodic homage to leisure and recreation. In the movie, set in London in 1910, Mr. Banks—a stodgy, no-frills banker—sings the song to his children, Jane and Michael, after discovering there is more to life than hoarding tuppence. The revelation compels the reformed Banks to collect his kids and head to the park, with his fist holding tight to the string of a kite.

As the song implies, kite flying used to be a commonplace leisure activity among families. However, like marbles and jacks, recreational kite flying—in the US, at least—is becoming a somewhat antiquated form of fun.

According to the United States Census Bureau’s statistics on leisure activities, kite flying has decreased dramatically in popularity. From 1998 to 2007, the number of people who flew kites recreationally at least once in a given year decreased 23%, from 7,154,000 to 5,219,000. Based on 2007 data, the odds an adult will fly a kite in a year are 1 in 42.58, about the same as the odds an adult has ever been diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (1 in 43.48) and just slightly better than the odds that, in a year, an adult will play backgammon (1 in 60.47).

Although recreational kite flying may be tailing off, kites remain very much a part of the American leisure landscape. They have been modified from a child’s windy-day diversion to power more extreme pursuits such as hang gliding, kite surfing, and kite buggying.

Kite buggying uses a power kite to pull a small, three-wheeled buggy across open land at speeds of more than 50 miles per hour. The buggy pilot has to simultaneously steer the kite and the buggy.

Although recreational kite buggying is a fairly recent contrivance, the basic idea goes back to the charvolant, a whimsical, wind-powered carriage patented by English inventor and schoolmaster George Pocock in 1826. The charvolant was a horseless, four-wheeled buggy drawn by two kites that connected to the cab with maneuverable strings (the reins).

According to Pocock’s “Treatise on the Aeropleustic Art, or Navigation in the Air,” the charvolant managed to reach speeds of more than 20 miles per hour despite the rutted roads of Bristol. And because the charvolant was horseless, Pocock did not have to pay road tolls, which, at the time, were charged based on the number of horses used to pull a carriage. “The Charvolant, then,” writes Pocock, “has the distinguished prerogative of conferring this Royal privilege; and those who travel by kite travel as Kings.”