Wow. What is the first thing I remember? I have no idea. I have to think about that. When I was like three we moved to a house up in the West Lake Hills on a road called Canyon View, and when I was six we moved to Boulder. I don't remember anything about our house in the city a couple blocks from Lake Travis on a road called Rockmore. I remember a lot about the West Lake Hills house and Lampenlighter school and the other huge school I went to after that.

The Canyon View house was in a beautiful setting on the side of a hill overlooking the city. We had land down the woods a little bit to a stream. About halfway to the stream we had a tent deck. We had a pool in the back and a green house behind glass windows in the basement. I rememeber seeing trails on the land around our tent deck where we went camping from time to time and my mother telling me they were dear trails.

My parents bought me an army jeep four wheel pedal sit down quadracycle and a batmobile one for my brother. Then they bought me a new BMX bike with training wheels. I really wanted to learn to ride the bike without training wheels but it was difficult because the road in front of our house was dirt and had pot holes all over. Every weekend my father would take the training wheels off and help me try to ride without them. Finally after a few months I could do it. I remember I was four when that happened. After that I would always ride my bike down to the end of the dead end road to a lookout to the city center. I went back there in 2000 and to my surprise that neighborhood was exactly the same as when we lived there. There were no new houses and the road was still dirt. The road leading up to canyon view was paved though and it was dirt before. We had a pool in the back and I could swim to the other side of it by myself since as far back as I remember. We always would be back there swimming. My mom didn't have a job when we lived in Texas so she had a lot of time to drive us around and be with us at home and stuff.

We had a cat named Louise and a Dog named Bisquit. Louise was older than me and was with my dad before he met my mother. The cat jumped into his back yard and he threw his over and he jumped back so he decided to keep him. He was just a kitten then. Then when we were in the Canyon View house Bisquit showed up as a stray and we kept him. He would always run after the car for the longest time every time we would drive away. One time he ran away and some Buddhist friends of my parents found him at the gas station in town and drove him back. One time some Buddhist friends of my parents took us to school and got pulled over by the cops on the way there. We had some neighbors to our South who had four kids and one of them was a girl who was like a year older than me. We visited with them sometimes but I don't remember ever seeing any of the kids. There was another kid on the other side of the road who had a three wheeler and would pull his break and slide it on the driveway. Once our parents were talking ans asked him is he liked being the oldest sibling and he said yes. I think I said yes too when they asked me. There was another kid who lived down the road a ways who I would hang out with quite a bit. Once he had a birthday and we played pin the tail on the donkey. I got him a present that was a rubber band powered helocopter. I was really impressed with how well it flew. There were some other people who we knew who lived further down the coldesack where they lived. It was a really cool neighborhood because there was no threw traffic any where near and was really peacefull with woods all around.

One time I had a big birthday party and a little shy kid who I barely knew gave me a maze bood because they heard I liked mazes. I was excited about it and tried to do a maze there when I got it but it was too difficult and I got frustrated and screamed and threw it accross the room and he started crying and his parents took him home. I wasn't punished for freaking out like that though. One time we had secret santa at school and one girl gave me a coloring book. I didn't say anything there at class but when I came home I complained to my mother that a coloring book wasn't a toy and I wanted a toy, so she bought me a plastic plane that was powered by a baloon. I would have complained about that also but I remembered that a girl in my class received the same thing and she didn't complain so I decided to forget about it. I realized I had a pretty priveleged life anyway. I had my own sand pit next to the pool that was loaded with toys, and my own half geodesic dome jungle gym in our backyard that was fun. My parents told me that I liked to climb a six foot ladder that they had and use it to get up on the roof a lot. They said one time they left me alone with the ladder and when they came back I was hanging from the gutter screaming. I was only like one year old then so I don't remember that. I am afraid of heights though and maybe that's the reason. I'm also afraid of deep water but I haven't heard of any near death experiences with the pool though. Mike got freaked out in the pool once. He was just a few months old and my mom let him go from her arms and I remember seeing him swimming upside down under water like a supmarine with a look of absolute terror on his face, and when she picked him out he was screaming. I thought it was kind of funny but I can't remember if she did that on purpose or if it was an accident.

We did a lot of Yoga at the pool also. My mom was a Yoga instructor and I remember her teaching me moves, specifically the tree where you hold your leg and touch your toes. My parents were kind of hippies in those days and dressed me for the part. I always had to wear dark blue overalls with peace signs sown into them and sandles and stuff. All my classmates wore tight light blue jeans with high cowboy boots and I was always trying to get my mom to buy me tight light colored blue jeans with high boots. One time she got me some boots but they weren't high so I made her get me the high ones so I could look like a cowboy. She was also the only mother who would back lunches with rice cakes and chunky peanut butter and carrots and celery when all the other kids would have peanut butter and jelley sandwiches with white wonder bread and candy bars. I thought it was really cool that I was the only kid who ate healthy. It made me feel like it was why I was faster than the other kids. When we would run from our classroom accross the road and down the long driveway to the main building to where we would have recess and lunch we would always run and I was always the fastest kid in the class. I remember one time a kid from another class beat me who was running bowleggedly, so I tried to run bow leggedly but it didn't work so I stopped that. I only saw that kid once though.

The first school I remember was called lampenlighter and was a one room school way out in the woods. It was divided into two sections, the little kids and the big kids. My brother was on the little kids side and I was on the big kids side. I always wanted to play in the little kids section for break because their toys were better but I was never allowed to, so I would spend the time outside with my friends. One of my friends had a star wars RTD2 doll that I thought was cool. We had a pretty big area to run around and play in. There were no other buildings anywhere in sight. The place had a big round about driveway that my mother would always drive us around to turn the car around to go home. One time

12-29-08

I'm here at the airport talking about my recent time in Austin. I arrived there on August sixth. It was hell going down there because my car broke down twice. The first time it just stopped at like three in the morning so I coasted to the side and waited until the morning when it drove again. Then it started giving off oil pressure alarms and profusely leaking oil and so I kept filling it up. At one point I put too much in and it was smoking so I had to pull over for 45 minutes to let the engine to cool enough to drain the oil. When I did it was still scalding my hands but it was manageable. The car was only going 40 mph for most of the way down but the last day it had a second wind and cruised at 60. After I arrived in Austin I promptly drove it to the nearest VW shop called Underground Mystical VW repair. The guy Toby took a momth and a half to fix the car so Windham and I were riding our bikes everywhere for a bit when it was still warm. We had their loaner car for a couple days before my car was ready. I rode out to the farm to get it because I was beginning to think that it would be a long time before my car was ready.

The ride out to the farm was an oddessy. I had a bunch of animal based protein powder which made me sick. I had had a similar reaction to it a few weeks before when I got sick riding my bike accross town after buying my work out mats. The first time I thought it was just from undereating and bonking. But this time I realized that my lethargy on the way to the farm was from this protein power. I felt toxic. I had no energy and felt completely dehydrated even though I had been drinking water. I pulled into a gas station and pucked six times behind it's dumpster. Then bought a Gatorade which was the most deliciouse thing I have ever had. After that I felt a little better but I got two flats which held me up and... oh woops I just remembered I already wrote about this.