The Heavy

"A goal is just a dream with a deadline"

Whatever the rules say about using a Drake line as an inspiration for a blog post can stuff it.

relax, thats just the name of the artist ken is listening to right now. nothing too heavy about this.


Its a Monday afternoon and week two of the nfl has peyton vs. matt ryan on monday night football. Im staying in Austiin Texas for a few days with my buddy Ken before I head back to NEw Orleans to try and start a  new little life project for myself. It has been an intresting summer in Central Texas and after a trip back up north at the end of August to see as many family and friends as I could, I came back down to texas where I have packed all my stuff up, said goodbye to the animals and am heading back to new orleans.

The promise of sitting on Frenchman street and dancing to whoever might be playing on Royal street as i ride by. But i am getting ahead of myself. Having my own room, parking my car outside my new house, (the super bright orange one my friend pete and dennis used to live in), riding my bike anywhere I want! Verti Mart! all my homies! dirty hip hop and bounce on the radio! the best independent radio station wwoz when the bounce isnt cutting it. Getting there ahead of the curve again will be nice although theres still lots of people in the city, i have a feeling a ton more pedicabbers are going to be invading the city at nearly any moment...or maybe thats just wishful thinking.


 But regardless, Im sitting listening to new music on a pair of sweet bose headphones and im happy as a clam. Because if you didnt know, clams are real happy creatures.

Anyway, I havent been on here in a while but its fun to see these words show up on the screen as i press the buttons.

As American As Texas

So I haven’t posted anything in a while but it seems like now would be a good time to catch up. Since the last time I have wrote anything alot of stuff has happened I guess? time has went by and in that time i did lots of cool stuff, lots of ridiculous things, a few silly ideas have surfaced, and the list of things to do has only grown.

I am sitting in a library in Kerrville Texas right now. About an hour NW of San Antonio and next door to Ingram and Hunt it’s a beautiful new building. (sidenote: supposedly Hunt is where dr. Phil sends all the Hollywood addicts go to an expensive, middle of nowhere, recovery ranches. this information courtesy of the extremely elderly volunteer at the thrift shop I went to today... who also told me the only place i could buy jeans was at walmart) Anyway I digress. The library is called the Butt-Holdsworth Memorial Library and that’s a great name. J

I find myself in Ingram Texas at a ranch on Junction Highway run by a guy name Clint. I met Clint on previous adventure to Texas I took a few months back that started out as a pedicab ride. Anyway when i met Clint a few months back I told him how I was living and working in New Orleans but that what I really wanted to do was explore the Western part of the country and learn some new skills along the way. By the end of the weekend I had his number and was told that anytime I wanted to work on his ranch I could feel free to head on over. I loved the sound of this and ever since I returned from the trip have had this idea in my head of working on a ranch. Whatever I thought that might mean i really had not even the slightest clue.

Leaving New Orleans I drove to Dallas where I spent a night and day checking out what life outside one of the country’s biggest city’s was like. I stayed with someone I had given a pedicab ride to a few weeks earlier which was fantastic but the scenery was another.  It was not very awesome. Unless you love big box stores and commercialization on every corner Northern Dallas left a lot to be aspired for. I don’t think i saw a single individually owned shop or market or restaurant. I could have been in the wrong place but from what i saw i didnt like and couldn’t imagine living in. On my first Saturday night outside a major city in a while I went to see The Avengers and it was everything i wanted from a movie. action packed, huge explosions, over the top acting, menacing villains, and overpriced popcorn made it an awesome night. and my first 3-d experience too.

I kept West on my journey through Texas traveling on lots of 2-4 lane road ways through all kinds of cities. I elected to take these smaller roads because they did not charge a toll and the scenery was constantly changing and keeping my eyes bouncing. When i did sneak onto the highway for a bit i was lucky to have my cowboy hat on my passenger seat. Placed on top of a large backpack it looks shockingly similar to a human when you accidentally drive onto the HOV lane...

I arrived to Clint and his wife Amy's ranch around 7 pm, plenty before sunrise but still late in the day. I had wanted to get to this place since the moment i heard about it and i don’t think I was trully ready for it even when i did arrive. Zooming past his house on the first go round i knew i was passing it as the zebras were grazing in the front and the dogs were howling by the roadside. I did my u-turn and parked in front of the gate and began to soak in the place that I had stumbled upon. I could see huge cages all around, lots of wide open spacing’s and hear all sorts of noises, from dogs to cats, and donkeys to zebras it seemed like i was in for quite an adventure no matter how everything turned out.

The first thing Amy said as she saw me waiting by my car was to question  "Where all your hair went?!" While I had a helmet of Afro on the last time we met i had drastically cut my hair the day before. Kind of a big decision for me, as my hair, as you may know, was pretty damn large and certainly gave me alot of confidence walking around New Orleans. One of my buddies is always chiding me to "Never cut that shit man, you'll lose all your power!" but I think I needed to show him (myself) that Id be ok without my afro... It'll grow back… besides, you try finding a hat that fits ten pounds of afro thunder...

Im digressing like crazy and running out of library time here!

Anyway, by now I have spent four days on the ranch helping out the family with whatever they need done (which to this point has been mostly cutting down trees and turning them into woodchips for their huge driveway) and whatever i can be of assistance with or try and learn for the future. The family consists of Clint and Amy and their 15 year old daughter Ashley. Two family/relatives/friends forever  named Bill and Clif also live and work fulltime on the ranch.  If I were to put the characters into more recognizable reality television type stereotypes, Clint would be the big boss man. If Clint says something, it gets done. If you think it requires second thought, your a step behind him. He loves to talk and teach and tell wild stories, of which I couldnt even begin to get into at the moment. He drives big trucks, loves dangerous animals, and makes ridiculous things seem completely plausible. Move that mountain to get to get to the canyon on the other side? Sure! Wrestle that toy from the Lion without taking your sunglasses off? Go for it! Cut down a forest to pave a road with woodchips?! Its only small chunk of the 45,000 acres! But this is only a small batch of his ways. I have only been here for a short amount of time and most of it is spent with the rest of the crew/family/whatever you might call the unit.  Amy is the beautiful wife of the hunter and does all of the stereotypical things that the housewives might do but takes it to another level. When someone asks what’s for dinner in texas it doesnt mean whats in the refrigerator, but more like, how much work should i put into preparing it. Think along the lines of: Wow, that was grazing in the front yard a few minutes ago huh? She loves watching crappy television that woman love to watch but when you can be sentimental over Greys Anatomy and then go slaughter a pig and feed it to the big cats gain a lot of points in your bad ass standings.

Ashley is their daughter and may be one of the most intelligent people her age I have ever met. She is able to do any and everything on the ranch I have seen so far and has the responsibility’s of animals from donkeys and baby deer (-like species), to chicken and fish, and things in between like mountain goats or baby lions completely in her care. While I am learning about incubating eggs and feeding animals from bottles, she utilizes my extra hands and has more free time to play with the baby mountain lions they raise from kittens and do other ranch work I couldn’t even remotely wrap my head around at the moment. The part of the ranch I am working on will be shared by Ashley and her Mom and used for tourist like income while Clint and the other guys are off hunting or dealing with the larger part of the ranch during the off/on seasons.

Bill is a young guy who can best be described as a cowboy. I couldn’t tell you what that meant a week ago but i certainly could today. Bill can do everything. He shoots guns, uses his sharp ass knife for anything, doesn’t need to wear gloves for petty things, catches fish with his bare hands and can wrestle and catch a deer using a 3 foot rope and his bare hands. And I learned all that before the sun went down on day one. Bill is also the closest to my age although i am not sure exactly what that is.

Cliff is the older workhorse. The type that is weathered and worn and has seen it all but keeps on keeping on. I guess him and Clint were like brothers growing up and they have just been working together and living life ever since. I really enjoy the time with Cliff as he always calls me "pilgrim" and offers to teach me everything he can. My favorite lesson from Cliff is how to shoot his .22 out back. matt Davidson listen up, Guns are damn cool. You are right!

This is a short little entry that I will undoubtedly add to and update. I needed to get to a library and into a city but my slack time off the ranch has been longer than I would have liked. While I don’t need to go back for any sort of reason in particular I would rather be outside than in the library. So that’s what I am going to do.  I got this all typed out and it’s a good start so next time Ill post a ton of pictures and some other cool stuff. Ideally that will be soon. This weekend I will be going to my first rodeo so the odds of something interesting happening is pretty great.

Until then!

wibbilly wobilly wob wobble wobble

just to clarify. the bounce is here. and its coming to you soon. or its already therre and you gotta go find it.



filmed blocks from my house?! ok sure.