kansas continues....

It hasn't been writer's block, but I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed on how to organize all my great KANSAS memories and photos.....I've put it off long enough, so I've decided to jump in and just get to it.... not being too careful about organization... I strive to make up for it in descriptive detail.....

Bianca and Bianca 15 years her junior

 I spent most of my nights sleeping in the van parked on the side street next to Bianca and Brodie's home in the College Hill area of Wichita, right on the expansive park that runs through that neighborhood. I spent most of my days hanging with Bianca and Zep.... Then Brodie would come home from work and we'd eat dinner together and get up to some sort of activity from there. They lovingly provided me with a key to the place and I had free reign to come and go as I needed. This was a centralized location from which I could ride my bike easily to my sister's place, the skate shop, donuts, the health food store, the post office and more. They live two blocks from Will's school so that made it super easy to join him for lunch and or some post lunch soccer.

Zep and Brodie built a fire pit while I was there.

  Typical post dinner activities included trips to the Orange Leaf for ice cream, lots of netflix movies...appropriate for the whole family, and some fireside chats by the fire pit. There was talk of getting to the DRIVE IN, but that never came to be.

I initiated Brodie to the game of disc golf.

Brodie loves playing real golf.

Zep and I walked the real golf course while Brodie and his workmate played 18 holes. A few days later, I had Brodie out on the disc golf course. And a few days after that, Zep's home school PE class met for disc golf.


In addition, after getting Brodie some suitable shoes at ENDLESS, we got him back on his skateboard. Brodie and I have been skating together since 1987, but in the last 10 years his talents have been lying dormant. A child, a wife, 2 dogs, a new love of flyfishing, and just not having any of your old buddies around to skate with anymore can sap your enthusiasm to ride.  After paying a visit to our oldest mutual skate buddy, Jeremy Sturgell, we popped over to EDGEMOOR to skate the newer prefab skatepark that sits atop the old banks that we used to skate in the 80's. Here we have BRODIE laying into his 1st back smith grind in 10 years.    And here we have me doing the same tricks I've been doing for years on the same slippery metal mini ramp.

The Derby Skatepark

Brodie and I also got to check out the suburban Derby skatepark. I personally had the most fun here than at the other 3 Wichita skateparks. Brodie started getting familiar with corner grinds again.

the GREEK special of the day @ D'Sozo's

 I took Phil, my 1st boss to D'sozo's. And we went to D'sozo's for Mother's Day Brunch, but I also shared many meals with Brodie and Zep here as well as meals out by myself. They have limited hours, but always a special of the day that is worth checking out. OHHHH and their vegan pizza's are phenomenal. I don't even need to say vegan pizza, because the whole place is all VEGAN. It's truly an exceptional find in the middle of Kansas.

gluten free pizza at D'sozo's

Max is the other cat that lives at Brodie and Bianca's.

BIKE CAVE staff

I very randomly stumbled onto the BIKE CAVE a community/cooperative bike shop. After just learning about it on the web, I was at Panera on the wifi and chatted up some dude on a bike and turns out he was on his way over to the BIKE CAVE so he showed me where it was and ended up giving me the mini tour.

HK played a show at the DONUT WHOLE

 I had to jump through some hoops but was able to set up a show at the DONUT WHOLE. Up top is the homemade flyer to help promote the show....Down below is the lion with all my vegan donuts in his mouth.

Week #2 of vegan donuts.

Speaking of music... performing... and heavy metal music...... I ended up having two epic band practice sessions late night in the parking lot of what used to be GESSLER's drug store. It's now Watermark Books, but when I was a child and lived 10 blocks away, it was Gessler's drug store and I used to spend time in the basement looking at Hot Wheel cars and up on the main floor perusing their massive candy aisle. I firmly believe that the nostalgia and childhood memories of that place and parking lot added to my overall glowing band experience there. I'm sure my performance bummed out the outdoor patrons of the wine bar a block away. But at the same time, many passing cars and a few late night pedestrians got a rare look into what an HK show can be like. joyous.....


UP NEXT - the julie thompson experience!