get on your [irish] bikes and ride

a while ago i participated in the annual wichita st. patricks day parade. i can't remember the last time i was actually in a parade, somehow i just never found the time in college. perhaps if the college of architecture, planning and design, would have had a float i would have signed up. can you imagine that, a flatbed trailer hauling a bunch of kids, dressed in all black, asleep on drafting tables.

i digress.

on saturday, the vintage bike club, rode in the parade. i woke up early and peddled my way past downtown and into delano, in my best green shirt, which was covered up by my non-green coat, it was freezing out. i met up with about 30-40 other riders, and chatted it up before the parade. when it was our turn, we rode through the streets of the delano district with horns and sirens blazing while waiving at the crowd, the parade route was short but never the less, enjoyable. it was very cool, very americana. upon leaving the boundaries of the route, we all continued down to the "shamrock", our normal starting point for thursday night rides, and enjoyed half price green beer.

although it was a great time, i couldn't help but think that day, as much fun as it is to be in a parade, you end up missing the whole show.....

i'm not exactly sure what that means, but i sounds slightly prolific...doesn't it?


enjoy the pictures.

[me] and the old man

well i did it.

i read a book in one sitting.

i know that i shouldn't be particularly thrilled about making that statement, but i am. i'm just not a "book" guy. the trait that triggers one to pick up and read a book for fun, bypassed me. it's embarrassing to count the books i've read from beginning to end. now i'm not talking about the required reading i had to do in school, that was forced upon me. i didn't want to do it, i would have been perfectly fine in the dark room enlarging photos. i'm also not counting architecture books, that's just not fair...mostly pictures. i'm talking about books for leisure, cover to cover. the total is weak....i am however working on changing that.

while at the library, checking out dvd's, i decided to venture into unknown territory, the fiction section. i walked up and down the isle's, wondering aimlessly among the authors, lost in the lot of literature. i made it to the "h's". i stopped and picked up a copy of "the old man and the sea" by hemingway. i had heard the title and author before, so i figured, if i knew of it, it must be somewhat famous, and if it was famous, it must be good. not knowing anything more than that, i checked it out.

alright, honesty, it was 93 pages and had pictures. .....baby steps...

i took it home, but didn't read it right away. a few days passed, and then about 11:30 one night i was bored, picked it up and started reading. it took a while, but slowly i was taken from wichita to the shores of cuba. i continued. as i read, i got more into the story. as it turns out, it's about an old man and the sea! who knew!

without turning this into a book report, it's about an old man on a fishing trip. but not just any fishing trip, an epic fishing trip. an old fisherman, ventures far out into sea one day, and snags a huge fish, the fish of a lifetime. knowing what he's caught, he holds on, keeping the perfect balance on the line. the old man spends most of the book in this position. possibly a boring plot, but hemingway uses this situation to bring forth thoughts and feelings that reveal the character of the old man.


halfway into the book, i started getting sleepy, but i couldn't leave this old man out in a boat in the middle of nowhere holding this monster of a fish! it might have been my tiredness, but when the thought of closing the book crossed my mind, the old man would look and me and say "hey, where you going? don't leave me out here all alone with this fish!" so unlike howard roark who i've left at the drafting table or sal paradise who i've left on the side of the road, i kept reading. i had to know the outcome!

i don't want to give anything away.....in case there might be someone out there that hasn't read it, but the themes of the book are timeless. who knew a fishing trip could relate so well to countless situations in life.....


classic.

illustrations from the book, by c.f. tunnicliffe and raymond sheppard

ar34[winter]

click here for a pdf version of the magazine. click the pictures to enlarge the images of the cover, and the next call for entries.

hope you all enjoy!

lord of the [fleas]

last weekend i made a trip out to the wichita flea market. partly to see if i could find any treasures...partly because it seemed like a nice sunday activity...but mostly to take pictures. a flea market is an interesting event in our society to say the least. booths filled with items, knick-knacks, utensils, furniture, and appliances, that were trashed and forgotten some time ago, for reasons we may never know, but now hold some value to someone out there. i walked around, snapped a few pictures, occasionally stopping when any mid century piece caught my eye.
sometimes i would ponder how cool it would be to have a huge bin of used billiards balls in my apartment, which were only 50 cents each...but then i'd realize that i really don't need anymore useless stuff in my tiny apartment....

i left empty handed from my search, but did manage to snap a few photos, which in my case, is actually a better treasure.


o.k. so honestly it's not the most interesting story, but i thought of the title while taking pictures, and just had to use it.

[sketch]artist

a few weeks ago my friends and i gathered at "the anchor", a local downtown restaurant/bar after work one night. we talked, ate, and enjoyed good conversation. mostly focusing on frustrations at work, and then laughed and joked as we made light of them.

when, from a few tables down, a young man came up to us, pardoned himself for interrupting, and proceeded to hand each each one of us a napkin. we took the napkins and to our surprise, found sketches of ourselves on the napkins. of course this killed the conversation we were having, but it started a new one as we asked him if he was an artist.

he said that he wasn't, but just enjoyed sketching people, and "the anchor" provided more than enough characters to sketch. he spoke of his goal to sketch as many faces as he could, and how he would love to quite his job and all the hassles with it, pack up his bags, and move to the desert so he could sketch full time. when we asked what he did for a living, he said,

"he was an architect...."


hmmmmmm...



on a side note: is this why people think i'm homeless?