the benefit of growing up across the street from a dirt park full of weeds was the occasional danger factor presented by rogue tumbleweeds on a windy day. the school bus dropped my brother & i off a few blocks from home in the afternoon. if we were lucky the warm santa ana winds would cause the weeds uproot & roll down the street. if the moment you step off the bus & you saw dust clouds forming - it was pretty much a given tumbleweeds would be on the prowl.

it was muuuuch better to pretend they were actually chasing us than the other way around. i remember pretending one was eating my leg. maybe not the best idea in hindsight, but at the time it was preeetty epic.

when you are small the world seems so mysterious. life seemed so much like those fantasy movies in the 80s. srsly anything could happen. even david bowie could show up & steal your little brother. anyways, i felt like i was always learning something new about nature. the wind was so unpredictable & awesome. there is something awesome about running w/ the wind. i remember feeling unstoppable...or that i could quite possibly be the fastest person alive. maybe i was...

we flew kites for katie's birthday. battling the wind proved to be a task.
i had to macgyver some sort of a fix for my kite string which cause my kite to only fly in really fast circles. it was really scary - but definitely a fun afternoon.

the wind seemed really familiar. almost the same kind of wind i remember as a kid. On the most windy days we would test our fates leaning all of our weight against the wind to see if it would hold us. i was convinced if i held my umbrella at the right angle, it would lift me like a kite. all the while we dodged tumbleweeds rolling down the street and pretended we weren't in the middle of our track homes. instead of dodging the rolling tumbleweeds, i remember trying to jump over them. in theory this is great, but when you're really small you most likely won't clear a tumbleweed that's your height. that didn't really stop me from trying