Steve and the Revolution

Steve (that tiny person in the background) uses his revolution to pick up a stuffed bear

This blog entry is dedicated to my friend who stays indoors and complains that nothing happens in his life.

It was one of those slow days where I found myself with an abundance of chores to do and no energy to do them. In other words I was bored. Chores? ugh. No, today I needed to do something else. After all, living the photographer's life is not all non-stop partying and fun, fun, fun. There's the reality of sifting through photos and doing the odd color correction, labelling, and renaming for delivery. That can be monotonous. Really monotonous.

I forced myself to get out of the house, go outside, go anywhere. The logic being that nothing really happens to you if you stay indoors. For me the highlight of staying indoors might be to watch a movie or TV show on DVD, socialize on facebook or get a flyer in the mail that's interesting. That's about it. Sure there's the whole cooking thing but sometimes you just need to be active not being active.

I ended up at the beach. There's one about a half hour walk from my apartment. Convenient to say the least. Nothing really interesting happened. That's the chance you take when you go outside. There were no beach parties, cute girls walking their dogs or rollerblading, large fires spewing from barbeques, birds attacking joggers, none of that. Then again maybe there was but I wasn't looking for anything specific. I wasn't looking for anything really at all other than to get outside and get some fresh air. I seem to remember seeing people being dragged across the water by large kites. They were on wake boards (like a skate board minus the wheels).

On my way back that I noticed a stuffed toy bear floating in the sky. It hovered slightly then came down to float in front of a baby carriage. Hey, something interesting that I wouldn't have noticed had I stayed at home indoors. It does happen from time to time, something interesting that is. The odds go up if I'm actually with other people or around other people.

The bear was hooked to a kite (see above). I looked over down the beach at the kite's owner and went over to talk to him. It turns out Steve, the kite flyer, had gotten off work early and came out to fly his kite (the revolution) just for the fun of it. He told me that it was painted by his wife. I took a second look and noticed the artwork. "Very nice", I said.

A plastic hook was attached to the bear so Steve could pick it off the ground with the kite by flying the kite just slightly over the bear's head and snapping it up with the kite string. He would then wait for kids to run by the board walk then dive bomb the bear in front of them. They would stop with wonder and stare at it, smiling, laughing.

Even adults would be entertained by this bear long enough to stop a few seconds before moving on. It's not something you see everyday after all.

After talking for about half an hour, I took some photos, promised to email Steve some of them and went home. That's it. Nothing crazy but in the end fun and different. No naked people, no crazy parties, nothing planned. It turned out to be a good day thanks to one guy, his kite and his bear.