Today is my 37th birthday.

Life’s funny.

I have spent roughly the past 27 weeks of my life reflecting on why I am the way I am.

When Natalie told me she was pregnant, my mind started to immediately flip through the Rolodex of life memories.

I assume this isn’t a novel thing to me.

I think parenthood requires a preparation that can’t be anticipated.

So, I have reflected, thought about the decisions that “I” made, the people who were there along the way.

The strange thing is that I don’t feel that different than six year old Cash…

…or twelve year old Cash.

…or eighteen year old Cash.

…or twenty-seven year old Cash.

They all feel the same, but wildly different…

I’m so excited to be a father.

I think it presents the opportunity to leverage the core tenets of what has made me who I am: effort, sacrifice, and being a part of a team.

Natalie and I get to be that team.

And if the next 37 years are like the first 37, I will never complain.

In June, we said goodbye to Papa.

I had the honor to get to write and deliver his eulogy.

It was one of my favorite things that I have worked on in a long time.

I only had a few days to collect the stories, organize my thoughts, and put it in a legible speech while navigating a last minute journey back to Barnwell from London.

I’m very proud of how it turned out, so I thought it was worth memorializing on this page.

I think Papa would be proud.

Will C. Collins
June 5, 1931 - June 4, 2026

pt.1 - “Childhood”

pt.2 - “Service”

pt.3 - “Barnwell”

pt.4 - “Granny”

pt.5 - “Dad”

pt.6 - “Papa”

pt.7 - “Lawnmower”

pt.8 - “Community”

pt.9 - “Loves”

pt.10 - “Family”

Love ya, Papa.

🫶

ARCHIVE #2

This is one of the drawings from my college sketchbook that inspired me to start this page three years back.

I posted another one in my first ten posts, and I haven’t done another since.

So, it felt like the right time.

There aren’t many, but I could probably do a higher pace than two every three years.

This one is inspired by the famous St. Louis Cardinals “birds on the bat” logo.

I’ve replaced the bat with a Ticonderoga - the indisputable GOAT of pencils.

I’ve replaced the Cardinals with Carolina wrens - the state bird of S.C.

(This was still firmly in my South Carolina era. Spartanburg was the second town I called “home”.)

The wrens’ tails are shaped like baseball stirrups because I was obsessed with them in college.

My college era backwards Cash is also visible on the pencil.

I didn’t start doing that because I needed a logo for this page.

I’ve been practicing writing my name backwards since my middle school art teacher told me that Leonardo da Vinci wrote backwards because he was left-handed and didn’t want to smudge the ink.

To read it normally, you just hold the page up to a reflection. They call the technique “mirror writing”.

Probably the craziest coincidence about this doodle is that my pitching coach at Wofford at the time when I doodled this is now the pitching coach of the St. Louis Cardinals.

Shoutout Coach Blake.

To go one step further, I started a charity in college called the Stirrup Project to raise money for underserved Little League programs, and I emailed all 30 MLB teams.

The St. Louis Cardinals were the only one who responded that they were willing to help.

So, shoutout the St. Louis Cardinals.

Fun fact: the Cardinals jerseys still chain-stitch the logo - a uniform concept that is a relic of a bygone era.

They even still hand-stitch the player’s surname on the jersey.

I consider their home uniform one of the best examples of a proper baseball uniform.

(Just a reminder, I spent way too much of my youth arguing on Internet forums on the proper way to wear a baseball uniform.)

This is a continuation of making logos for my favorite bars.

This one is for my local pub in East London.

You always need a place to have a beer when you are out making a Tesco run…

…or a place to grab dinner when neither one of you have time or energy to cook.

…or a place to escape the heat and enjoy some A/C on a workday afternoon.

…or a place to sit in a garden and enjoy a long conversation with your loved one.

That is the European for us.

I chose a parakeet because they are not native to London. However, they are everywhere here.

Supposedly they were released by people who kept them as pets in the 1920’s when they were suspected of carrying a disease that was causing a widespread outbreak.

Funny enough, the climate of London is perfect for them.

They travel in groups, so when you see one, you always see more.

I love to see their bright green contrast against the foliage here.

The parakeet felt fitting with the European’s tongue-in-cheek European Union pub sign.

Sort of an anti-Brexit message of welcoming those not from here - parakeets and people alike.

On a different note, how great was the aesthetic of college mascots wearing sweaters?

Fun fact: This logo design style can be credited to a single man - Arthur “Art” Evans.

He owned a decal company in the mid-century that produced the logos to be sold on college campuses.

There was no licensing at the time, so colleges would repurpose his designs based on their mascots.

The three designs featured here were all unique Art Evans designs, and I think the three most classic examples of this era.

If I’m going to create a duck logo out of an Atlanta Hawks graphic, then I have to create one out of an Atlanta Falcons graphic.

To be honest, I think the original Atlanta Falcons logo is the most classic motif of any Atlanta sports team.

(Followed very closely by the Atlanta Braves script A.)

The simplicity of its form, paired with how modern it looked on the original Falcons helmets, is a chef’s kiss.

There probably isn’t a cooler-looking person in a uniform than Deion in a Falcons one.

I despise the new logo because the original is so great. You can ruin art!

That’s why my attempt at the “modern” duck is a throwaway, but I’ve always said I’ll post everything I doodle.

That one is relegated to the last slide.

I also had to do female and male versions because, despite the beauty of the mallard, the female deserves equal shine.

Also, I’ve mentioned it before, but Ray Ogden was a distant cousin of my dad’s.

He tracked down a bunch of copies of his only football card, a 1969 Topps, and sent them off to be graded.

I have a grade-8 version sitting above my desk.

He wouldn’t let me take any of the mint ones…

The World Cup is in full swing, and it felt appropriate to make a homage to our adopted country.

I’ve spent the entire month of June in the States, which has been nice. We have got extra time with family, and I didn’t have to stay up super late to watch the US group stages.

But back to England for us on Monday night.

I’ve missed “home” or probably more accurate - I’ve missed Soey and sleeping in a familiar bed.

So, in July, I will be swapping into England mode to cheer with the locals - I look forward to heading to the pub to see how the boys fare.

Who can hate yelling “IT’S COMING HOME!!” over a few pints?

Obviously, my heart will be with the US, and a deep run would be really amazing. I feel like I have been watching this team develop for years, and it has been really inspiring to see how they are playing.

For this post, I decided to pair our dogs with photos of famous English greats in their home whites: Bobby Moore with Carmen, Bryan Robson with Fancy, and David Beckham with Soey.

I got a chuckle scrolling through the stoic faces of the English players juxtaposed with the dogs. It really sets the tone for the post.

I love ducks.

When Logan first told me that a crew of Estoria people were planning to open a bar in West End, I was intrigued.

Then they opened and leaned into a duck motif.

I fell in love from afar.

I got to visit in January on a trip back to Atlanta. It was spectacular. No notes.

It is exactly the type of bar that makes me miss home.

So, I doodled this logo.

I thought it would be fun to lean into the bird sports teams we have in Atlanta.

I already have a Falcons one for a later date, but this Hawks logo has always stood out to me.

It was only briefly used by the team, which is crazy because there isn’t a better logo in the team’s history.

You know I briefly dipped my toes into trying to create my own duck decoys when I first got to London.

I found a workshop to use a bandsaw and carved several bodies.

But I stopped short once I figured out how much wood shavings were created when carving the heads.

One day I will have a studio for my art projects. One day.

Welp, Tadej didn’t win Paris-Roubaix.

But the result couldn’t have been any better.

Wout van Aert was such a deserving winner. For as long as I’ve been watching the sport, he has been the perennial runner-up.

He was the child phenom who got passed by his biggest adversaries.

That is not a shot at his career. WvA has a tremendous palmares, but I think he would admit it didn’t turn out exactly how he wished.

So seeing him pass us by with his finger pointed at the sky — it will be something forever etched in my memory.

What a race.

Being able to sit at the finish line with Natalie was an experience I didn’t really know we were signing up for.

Roubaix is a short train ride from London, and I bought tickets on short notice.

But there we were, on the finish line, in what I would consider cycling’s Super Bowl.

For not much money and all-you-can-drink beer and coffee.

I told Natalie mid-race that I think I chose the right sport to care about.

We will be back. I’m not going to miss seeing Tadej win Paris-Roubaix now that I know I can sit front row.

Original doodle posted on July 15, 2024.

Today is the Ronde van Vlaanderen or more easily known as the Tour of Flanders.

It is, by far, my favorite Spring classic. It is the second “Monument” of the year.

As someone who only recently fell in love with the sport of cycling, this race always stood out.

The cobbled climbs make for this stadium-like effect that is rarely captured in a sport that is usually played out on open roads.

These old cobbled roads are maintained for the sole purpose of hosting bike races.

I made Natalie take a detour during our honeymoon so I could take a spin around the iconic finishing circuit. My retelling of that day is covered in my original post.

Flemish races are defined by these short cobbled punches, and the Ronde is the ultimate test.

The last 50 kilometers are fought across narrow farm roads surrounding Oudenaarde where the riders tackle the most iconic cobbled hills - the Oude Kwaremont, the Paterberg, the Koppenberg.

There are plenty of others, but these three are the ones where the race is usually decided.

This year’s race has the added intrigue of the debut of Remco Evenepoel, the current best Belgian rider.

Despite him being the best Belgian rider for several years and being well suited for this type of race, he has never started the Ronde.

You see Belgium is the only nation in the world where cycling leads their national sports coverage.

Remco would be unrecognizable to almost every American, but he could easily be considered the most famous Belgian.

I know this is not an uncommon theme across lots of things with people and nations, but I just find it very interesting.

Anyways, the rainbow opossum doodle is a nod to Tadej Pogacar who will be wearing the rainbow bands in Flanders Fields today.

He is the heavy favorite, but here’s to hoping Remco and others can give him a good race.

Happy Opening Day!

This is an old doodle that I’ve decided to post without really finishing the thought.

I had this grand idea to create a fake baseball team based in Walthamstow and adapt their looks based on baseball trends throughout the decades.

I still don’t hate the idea, but this doodle sat in my drafts for months and never developed into anything more than a single thought.

Here is the fictional Walthamstow Dabblers (a British word for duck) styled like a 1952 baseball card.

It is fine. Definitely underdeveloped but I made it my mission to post all doodles.

So, I’m just going to slide it in as this year’s Opening Day post and not think much else about it.

Maybe one day, I will design a 1970’s Disco themed look for the Dabblers.

I’ve included a High School picture of myself for the giggles of looking back on being so young.

I don’t think I peaked in High School, but I can tell you that that look was as cool as I thought I could dress as a baseball player.

A grey and red Phiten necklace with a loose-fitting Under Armour mock turtleneck when everyone was wearing skin tight undershirts.

That was also the first year I found a way to order stirrups from Twin City Knitting, a time when they were only providing them to pro’s.

I learned very early on how to send professional emails to people to get your way.

Also, in my research, I found out Topps ran a special series in 1952 of world figures.

I’m going to have to have my dad chase down a Churchill and Henry VIII for my growing card collection of random things I find interesting.

On Saturday, the cycling season truly starts.

Milan-San Remo is the season’s first “monument.”

The “monuments” are cycling’s most prestigious one-day races. There are five in total, and I plan to cover each in detail this year.

If you know nothing about cycling, then MSR is the perfect race to start with.

It is the longest race during the calendar year. 300 kilometers along Italy’s Lingurian coast.

A day full of beautiful scenery brought to you by the helicopter shots.

But all-in-all, a very boring race where you really only need to tune in to the last hour to see all the action.

A perfect race for anyone interested in dipping their toe into the sport.

Historically, Milan-San Remo was the only monument setup for sprinters.

There are two type of riders in the pro peloton - ones who can go fast on the flat and ones who can go fast up hills.

Think beefy guys versus skinny boys.

And then I introduce to you the current best athlete in the world — Tadej Pogacar.

That isn’t hyperbole.

He is rewriting the history of the sport in the way Tiger Woods completely changed the sport of golf in the late 90’s.

How does that pertain to Milan-San Remo?

Well, Tadej has turned this traditional sprinter’s race into a race where climbers need to show up.

You see there are only two small climbs in this entire race - the Cipressa and the Poggio.

Last year, Tadej attempted a tactic not seen in 40 years when he launched on the Cipressa to split the peloton and carry just two riders in a breakaway to the Poggio.

Problem is for Tadej is that he does have a rival equal to him in certain races — Mathieu van der Poel.

MvdP followed Tadej up the Poggio and even countered him near the top.

Then, MvdP beat Tadej in the sprint to the line denying him one of the two monuments not yet on Tadej’s palmares.

That is what makes this race so special each year.

It is Tadej’s only chance to win a race he has never won.

Watch the last hour and you might get to witness some sports history.

Fun fact: the race is so long that Tadej started last year’s race in black bibs and took a pitstop to change into white bibs for the finish.

Original doodle posted on June 25, 2024.

Here is my first attempt at reposting past doodles.

I’ve decided to put the original caption in the post to see if people will actually read them.

I’ve been told no one reads captions, which is a shame. Because frankly, I spend more time on the caption than the doodle.

So, I’m hoping this format helps readership.

Also, I decided that the first tile has to still be a new, unique doodle. Even if it is just a slight variation or different angle on the original.

Lastly, I taught myself how to make fonts. The caption in the second post is a font of my handwriting.

I’m not sure I love it, so that approach might be adjusted.

I think it might be too hard to read. But I spent the tedious time doing it so it will be, at least, used this one time.

Feel free to let me know what you think.

I have decided to post my 2026 Content Plan, so that way I feel obligated to complete it.

I spent 2025 neglecting this page that brought me so much joy when I started it.

It was a nice retreat from building mathematical models and sending corporate emails. But in the end, it doesn’t pay the bills.

So yeah…

…that is what I had to focus on last year.

Moving to another country, establishing a business, and learning a whole new way to work was too much for me to also juggle the side hustle of doodling and writing.

I’m here to say this year (yes, I understand it is March) that I think I can go back to balancing both and re-establishing the joy.

That means I need a solidified plan!

I want to try and post weekly. The goal is each Thursday morning.

That will be a mix of new doodles and some adaptations of previous doodles.

(Someone told me I was crazy for not reposting my previous doodles. It never dawned on me to do that.)

I want to doodle about my interests (mainly, pro cycling but other topics so I can write about stuff without a lot of thought).

The family newsletter and my top songs of the year will be a December staple.

I’m sure I won’t succeed, but you have to try.

Also, I have paid for my first marketing event.

There will be a banner with my logo on it at my high school’s baseball field this season.

It will be the non-Japanese version of this doodle.

I hatched this plan while sitting at a local Barnwell watering hole with my sister, Calli. I already have the next local ad targeted for for a rotating tv billboard at Sombrero’s.

I had a chuckle thinking about plastering this fake brand alongside actual real businesses. It is exactly the style that I wanted this page to embody when I started it.

While I don’t use AI for any of my doodles or help with these captions, I did ask AI to study this page and quantify the time and effort put it for it to, ya know, possibly share with potential investors.

Thanks, Claude.

Laissez les bons temps rouler!

Early in my career, I was lucky enough to get to go to New Orleans multiple times during Mardi Gras.

IBM had a big office in Baton Rouge, and I had a boss who grew up in New Orleans’s Garden District.

So, we always made an excuse to make a detour to the Big Easy during the season.

The second photo was taken on a mid-2010 iPhone, so the quality doesn’t reveal the character.

But a Google search confirms that I did, in fact, see Quentin Tarantino at a parade.

There is nothing more dirty than a New Orleans street the morning after a krewe holds a parade.

I love the city.

I love Cajun culture.

I did all that before falling in love with Natalie Viator.

She taught me how to make gumbo.

It’s become our family’s delicacy.

I typically take the lead in cooking these days. I do well enough for her Cajun-self to allow that.

(Or it is good enough for her to let me do all the work.)

Fun fact: Louisiana has the largest alligator population in the U.S., with over 2 million wild alligators.

Do people still send out family newsletters?

Or was that just a really important tradition in our family?

I can vividly remember my family reading my mom’s draft each year and always jockeying for a better edit before it was sent out with the Christmas card photo.

I decided to bring that tradition to this page because if I had to choose a subset of people to send a traditional Christmas card to - it would be this group of friends.

So, a little behind the scenes, the format to the newsletter is split into several acts. First, a recap of the family’s shared accomplishments and, then, a spotlight for each individual. That is where the edit becomes important.

Anyways, swipe through to read our 2025 version.

And yes, Natalie did get final edit.

Merry Christmas y’all.

When my dad was my age, he taught himself how to build websites.

This wasn’t the current day and age where website builder type formats exist.

He taught himself how to write HTML code on the early frontier of the World Wide Web.

1996 was a long time ago when you come to think of it. I can still remember the computer room in our house with the desktop computer with the giant box next to it.

I can still hear the Internet dial tone.

The world was far simpler back then.

I have been posting quite infrequently these days. The why will have to come in an explanation post in the future.

However, this post is to announce something that I have been working on in the meantime.

I have taught myself how to build a website for Cash Doodles just like my dad in ‘96.

That’s right - I did not use a website template and decided to learn how to build a website where everything is positioned by hand on my phone.

Okay I get it - I did not learn how to code, but it felt more raw designing without the need to type and be computer-centric.

It is funny to me how differently I built my website than my dad.

I guess mine was far easier? But all the same, they are published on the same internet.

I was talking to my dad months back about his websites. He mentioned one that is still be used to this day by a guy selling custom knives.

It’s like a living artifact of the internet in a small town.

Go to the www.barnwellweb.com and see my dad’s masterpiece.

And then go to www.doodles.cash to check out my attempt.

Drop an email to get on my newsletter. It will be a BCC email like the old days.

Someone told me after I showed them my doodle page that I need to make sure whatever I put on a social media app needs to be saved somewhere else.

This is my solution.

Also, I was born in 1989 for anyone reading this who were trying to age my dad and I.

We’re still young.

Natalie planned a trip to Paris to watch the final stage of “le Tour” in December.

I appreciate her planning ahead and allowing us to see things while my day job feels like it spins around me.

I need the grounding. We have seen all of the cultural events here thanks to her.

Otherwise, I would have been holed up in my office working on things that really don’t matter in the grand scheme of life.

There seems to be a lot of sentiment floating around these days about what vocation means to people, especially in the sports realm.

Scottie Scheffler spoke poignantly about what his accomplishments actually meant to him at the Open Championship weeks ago.

Aka he just wants to know what is for dinner with his family after winning a tournaments he has dreamed of winning his entire life…

This Tour, Tadej Pogacar talked about his boredom because of the length of a Grand Tour - as it kept him from his family.

The idea that a profession - no matter how accomplished you are - will never bring the joy that your personal relationships will is something I sit with.

Anyways, I started this doodle when we were in Texas for Natalie’s brother’s wedding.

It was just weeks after we attended Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour in London.

It felt right because the consensus was that Tadej was set to win all three jerseys while wearing the World Championship jersey.

So the yellow, green, and polka dots are incorporated in the doodle with the rainbow hat hung over the top.

He only ended up winning two of the three jerseys because he was truly bored by the end of the Tour.

It was really cool to see the final stage, and I expect it will not be Natalie and I’s last visit.

Happy birthday, Natalie!

This is a drawing that got second billing to Natalie’s plant lady birthday doodle last year.

(Sorry Natalie for reusing, but all doodles must hit grid.)

However, the funny story I wanted to tell is about the two photos of us.

When I was searching my phone for what we call our “first” photo together, I found that blurry selfie.

What we have always called our “first” photo is one that we have framed and brought into every place we have called home.

After some investigation into both of the photos (thanks iPhone), the selfie is actually our “first” photo together.

It was hidden away in my phone for the past decade - taken six minutes before the photo we call our first.

I guess we decided to ask someone to take a photo of us after seeing our selfie attempt.

So, I’m using this post to correct the historical telling of Natalie and I’s first documented photo together.

I guess it is actually that blurry selfie.

I think it is a beautiful allegory to our relationship because we have never mastered the couple selfie…

…here’s to many more years of failed attempts and many more spins around the planet with each other.

I love you, Natalie.

@shes_so_pedestrian

I posted my college doodle of Mr. Moneybags on this day a year ago.

I said in that post that I planned to get around to reimagining this one in the future.

Truth is I had already started redoodling it when I posted the original.

This has been sitting in my drafts for the better part of the past year.

I just recently went back to update a few details like adding the new Cash Doodles logo and tweaking the shoes.

I guess I will have to post another archive doodle soon and make it an annual tradition.

The Internet is telling me that something made of iron is the traditional gift for a sixth wedding anniversary.

So, here is a quick doodle of wisteria covering an iron gate in honor of Natalie and I’s sixth anniversary.

I stole Natalie’s photo from her post because it was better than the one I picked out.

I wish I had more time to type a lengthy message about what the past six years meant to me, but unfortunately, I’m short on time.

Natalie has taught me so much, and I hope I have maybe done a shred of the same for her.

I will leave it at that.

To Natalie, I love you. Thanks for picking me.

@shes_so_pedestrian

Natalie summarized excellently what the past year has entailed for us.

Saying goodbye to Carmen allowed us to pursue some unique opportunities that presented themselves this year.

That doesn’t mean it has been easy not having her here with us.

Funny thing is that my relationship with Carmen spans my time knowing Natalie.

I can distinctively remember meeting her in Natalie’s first Atlanta apartment after one of our first dates.

She was a dog, at that time, would jump to kiss you on the face when you came into the room.

When Natalie was in grad school, Carmen spent a semester with her parents. That semester Natalie helped me search for my first condo in Atlanta - the place we would eventually call our first home.

When I moved in, I remember texting Natalie that the place needed a dog, and I wanted that dog to be Carmen.

I drove solo all the way to Texas when we were laying to rest Natalie’s grandmother.

We drove Carmen back from the funeral, and she never called anywhere other than Atlanta home.

She was Natalie’s dog, but she was my first responsibility as an adult.

We would take long walks along Atlanta’s linear parks that still feel like yesterday.

She was a great dog.

@shes_so_pedestrian

Who rebrands an Instagram page before 60 posts and absolutely-zero notoriety?

Me.

It is crazy to me that I posted my first doodle exactly a year ago.

I think time must move slower when you focus on creative endeavors.

I didn’t seek that out when I decided I would start drawing and writing, but man, it feels so apparent as I type this.

I’m working to re-establish doodle time in London. I think Natalie would appreciate that.

On a different note, everyone practiced their signature growing up right? Or was I just that narcissistic?

I would spend hours practicing in those dull times in school.

People complimented me on having a cool signature in the rare times we got to sign baseballs in college.

Unfortunately, my signature got relegated to only signing the occasional (frequent) bar tab.

Now, London has robbed me of that joy because everything is tap-to-pay.

My promise is that this page will never lose its pencil-against-paper feel.

Here’s to a year of doodling.

Thanks to my friends (if you got here in this post, that’s you), y’all make me want to do more each day.

Baseball season has officially started!

I have to admit since moving to London keeping up with sports, especially American ones, has been low on the priority list.

I have to also admit that ever since finishing my baseball career at Wofford - I completely fell out of love with baseball.

I tell myself that’s because I made my passion into a job.

Reality is that I never had the natural ability to be a Major Leaguer, but that didn’t stop me from thinking I could become one.

Anyways, I still look fondly on the game I loved.

Seeing the Wofford baseball program grow into something that is such quality compared to our times is actually quite inspiring.

I fell in love with the game because of my dad.

My fondest childhood memories are times spent with him - in the backyard batting cage, on the road listening to XM radio, practicing a craft that now makes my left elbow ache if I sleep on it wrong.

My dad has always collected baseball cards.

I mean - always.

He has pristine card collections from when he was a mere child.

A man so dedicated to collecting cards that he had the discipline to understand that keeping them in the upmost condition would lead to monetary value decades away.

I guess he probably didn’t understand the exact value then.

But still, collecting each baseball card in the late 60’s meant discipline on another level for a youngster.

My dad, in his retirement, has went back to his old hobby. I admire him for caring about something his whole life.

And seeing him revisit that childhood passion has made me contemplate falling back in love with baseball.

He has helped me start my own small collection.

A Pete Rose that inspired one of my original doodles, a Joe Morgan wearing the jersey that hangs in my closet, and a Joe Torre from the year the Braves moved to Atlanta.

They sit above my desk in London and remind me of home.

Last July, I sent Natalie a text while I was sitting in Hyde Park.

The message was something along the lines of “I’m seeing all the dogs running free in the park and I’m daydreaming of Soey being a London dog.”

Losing Carmen was still fresh, and it was a time where I was doing a lot of thinking about both her and Fancy.

I’m not sure I was even really considering moving to London.

I was just there on business, and it definitely wasn’t a conversation that Natalie and I had prior to the trip.

But that text just felt right in the moment.

I don’t even recall Natalie’s response. It would be days later when I returned to Atlanta that I would pose the question if she still wanted to move.

Maybe she took the text more literally than I intended.

But here we are, Soey is a London dog.

She has enjoyed a few moments off leash in parks, but she hasn’t earned full privileges.

When we were deciding on where to live in London, Natalie asked ChatGPT what neighborhood was closest to Kirkwood.

It said Walthamstow.

Natalie is quite embarrassed that I love telling that story to people who are shocked why two Americans are now in this quiet East End London neighborhood.

Of course, we didn’t just move here because ChatGPT said so.

It introduced us to this place we had never heard of, but after thoroughly researching it, the values of the area - small business and pedestrian/cycling infrastructure - are so aligned with our core beliefs.

The literal inventor of the modern bicycle was born a half of mile from our home!

I’m going to be quite annoying about Walthamstow. We derive a lot of our personal identity from the community we live in.

I think taking pride in your community should be a hallmark in everyone’s life. We shouldn’t lose sight of that in this digital age.

Fun fact: Walthamstow Stadium used to host Greyhound races. Some people say that it was the only reason to get on the Victoria Line and head to the last stop.

The dogs no longer run, instead, apartments have replaced the development.

The iconic sign still stands in all of its glory. I thought Soey in her harness was a good fit.

Walthamstow is the home of William Morris.

He isn’t a household name, but he has influenced so much of what we love.

Tolkien credited him for being the influence of his Lord of the Rings books. Morris’s fantasy novels are considered the first pass at that type of “world building.”

George Lucas used the model to create Star Wars.

Morris was also an artist.

He created beautiful tapestries that are still printed to this day.

This was my take on one of his famous designs.

Instead of strawberries and swallows, I used peaches and ducks.

That felt right for the moment.

I drew this while back in the States visiting the family at Barnwell State Park.

They thought I was napping, but instead, I finally had some time to draw.

Natalie approved of the design and plans to use it in our new place. That made me happy.

Fun fact: Morris’s family home has a lovely garden where I occasionally stroll and watch the ducks swim.

He was a socialist who spent time debating Marx and other scholars in dusty rooms in London in the late 1800’s.

Natalie and I were at a farmer’s market hosted outside his family home when we overheard a young man exiting the building say, “It’s easy to be a socialist when you grew up that wealthy.”

That’s a fair point.

2025 is here, and it brings a new year of doodles.

Moving to London has been an adjustment, but overall, it is going well. I’m already feeling more comfortable.

However, I forgot how much doodling reminded me of home. I’m excited to start back.

We moved into our long term place after two months in a short-term rental.

Natalie did a great job of finding a place that would replicate home.

We got very comfortable at having the ADU. It brought the separation for work and life. Also, it gave us space, which of course, you sacrifice here.

But we found a place arranged over three floors and two full bathrooms - a rarity in London.

The loft is going to be my workspace. You can slightly see central London from the window.

There is a grass yard for Soey and multiple locals that we can walk to nearby. We are excited.

The one takeaway from the move is that no one warned us about was the foxes! They are everywhere, and they look exactly like cartoons.

People have told us that they are menaces, but I get excited each morning when I see them.

However, I do scoop Soey up because I am not sure she is ready to defend herself. I vow to protect her.

I thought a fox would make a good first 2025 doodle.

Behind the Scenes!

When I started outlining the possible storylines for DOGlanta, I quickly penciled in Casino being the Brock figure in my Pokémon story.

It made me chuckle thinking about writing a buddy cop story with me and Casino.

It also just lines up well with the Atlanta rapper themes that I’m trying to weave through the story.

Casino is a Kirkwood legend. He’s Freebandz’s CEO, an Urban Pie regular, Future’s actual brother and my in-real life friend. Or more realistic, we just dap each other up when we pass each other in Kirkwood.

That makes him the perfect choice as the mentor for this comic. Cash and Casino tackle DOGlanta.

I even styled Casino’s fit to match the color scheme of Brock’s in the original cartoon.

The other details I enjoyed adding was Dart’s daggling cigarette. I came across a NextDoor post years ago and posted to Instagram because it had me cackling.

Also, the vibrant pink color on Dart’s eyes and mouth is a nod to Future’s insistent use of the color in album covers.

The most common conclusion on why Future continues to reference the color is his known use of the recreational drug, lean.

My rebuttal is that the real reason he uses the color is a nod to where Future’s career took off - Magic City.

It was said that if your music was not well received at Magic City, it was not good. You need to go back to the drawing board.

In the early 2010’s, Future’s iconic mumble rap supposedly stole the scene in Magic City.

I was humbly not in the Magic City scene at that time, but Future’s music definitely entered our college locker room.

It has been the music I go back to time and time again, and it has created in its wake the pipeline of Atlanta rap that has dominated the genre for the past decade.

So, I introduce to you, Casino and Dart.

Fun fact: Future released Mixtape Pluto five days after I published the first comic strip as a surprise drop. The cover being Rico Wade’s iconic “Dungeon” studio glowing purple. That felt very serendipitous.

Natalie and I were getting post-kid birthday beers on a random Saturday when I brought up a meme that I saw on the internet that was clearly targeted for grind-set people.

It went something like, “If you can’t Google your name and be the top result, you aren’t working hard enough.”

Well, lucky for me, my name is so odd that my SEO is strong.

I didn’t even have to grind for the top result; my parents just named me well.

The more interesting portion of that fun little bit was the discovery that a Marvel comic book character shares my name.

Or, at least, the internet has decided to name a cowboy from a 1948 Kid Colt comic - Cash Collins.

He was the leader of the six-gun syndicate. And I guess died in the comic?

I guess I will have to have my Dad’s baseball card contacts trace down my own copy, so I can see how it transpired.

eBay has a few listed.

<I’m running back a fun fact from my second post.>

Fun fact: that green blazer has now been worn at three family weddings. My father left his wedding in it, and I did the same at mine. I got to wear it to my cousin’s wedding last year. It was a black tie affair, so I was a little out of place.

Miz Blue was an artist, but she was also my mom’s mom’s grandmother.

Her painting of her house was hung next to Mammy and Pap’s front door for as long as I can remember.

Above that beautiful dresser that came out of her house in Fairmont.

Mammy used to take my sisters and I to see the house before each school year. It was obviously owned by others, but we would go and gawk at it each year.

It was beautiful.

We would swing by the Dollar General to buy fake flowers to put on the gravestones of Mammy’s family before heading back to stay at South of the Border.

That experience will have to be told in its own doodle.

I was going to doodle our actual house, but I pivoted to the ADU.

I felt like, in probably the same way Bessie did, the pride that I get in looking at the ADU would mean more to doodle.

Looking back on it, Natalie and I were crazy for even doing it. We didn’t know what we were doing, but we just went for it.

I think that is why Natalie and I work so well together. I just toss out some idea like “it would be cool if we built an ADU” or “we should move to London”, and then Natalie makes a plan for us to execute.

I’m a pretty good ideas guy, but a terrible planner.

Building the ADU was a tough but fun experience. I doubt our builder knew he would be dealing with two professional email senders.

Maybe like Miz Blue, Natalie and I will spend our last days in it.

Not to be grim.

I’m taking this page back to its original mission statement - a page simply for me to doodle logos.

Graphic design is not my trade, but I guess, at this point, you can call it my hobby.

So, I present to you a better Barnwell High School logo.

If you grew up in Barnwell, SC, then you have to decide between being a Tiger’s fan or a Chicken’s fan.

There are no alternatives in South Carolina.

Both have such wonderfully unique logos.

Clemson’s imperfect paw was created in 1970 after the designer requested from the Smithsonian an actual tiger paw imprint to draw inspiration.

The iconic imperfection on the bottom of the paw was actually a scar on the subject’s paw.

The University of South Carolina’s whimsical rooster portrays an animal that is moving forward towards its target in abstract-adjacent way.

The inconsistent layering of the feathers and chaos of the logo was so novel for its time.

I hate how sports logo design is so predominantly centered around symmetry or the need for clean angles.

I always found it cool to have grown up in a state where there was some clear thought given to the aesthetic of the sports teams.

So, here is my pitch to change the Barnwell High School sports logo from a pair of clip-art horseshoes to my hand-drawn irregular, unique horseshoe doodle.

I’ll pay for the helmet decals.

Also, for the record, I don’t know how to auto-fill color like I used to in Adobe.

Every doodle is made by me coloring in each area by hand.

I enjoy it, but also, it is why some of the times the coloring is outside the lines.

Well, the title of the doodle gives away the punchline.

Natalie and I are heading across the pond. We are officially moving to London.

A plan that was put in place five years ago is finally being executed.

It’s funny because if you would have asked me in January of this year where I would live at the end of 2024, it would have been Atlanta - 110%.

The idea of moving to London was this distant memory that was stored away because of COVID. It felt like this fever dream that we moved on from.

And we did.

In that span of time, we built an ADU to make our house in Kirkwood perfect. Natalie changed jobs (well, so did I, but that’s another story). We welcomed dogs and said goodbye to a few.

Natalie finally bought curtains. We put down roots in this little Kirkwood bungalow.

But when I came back from a business trip to London this summer, I asked Natalie what she thought about moving over.

I don’t know what I was expecting her to say, or even why I brought it up, but I think we both knew we wanted to do it.

Natalie jumped on the opportunity and has led all of the planning/execution.

Without her efforts, this would have just been another conversation over dinner.

To live in a city where walkability is a given and public transit is rampant, it’s both of our dreams.

London was the city that made me understand that I thrive on accessibility and freedom of movement, not constricted by a car.

Being in London with Natalie in April of this year, I think, subconsciously, made me realize that living there was meant to be.

Atlanta is home, and me telling people that will be my entire personality in London.

Despite all the work that is ahead of us, we can’t wait to get there to start a new adventure.

In all the adventures we are bound to have, I’m just hoping to find more time to write and not work too hard.

Natalie has accepted my formal offer to be my editor, so I think that makes her my boss now.

Sounds about right.

@flying_nat

This is just a random doodle of a frog I saw on a walk at Stag Island.

The tiny frogs are everywhere. Adley saw one on a walk and then demanded to see and take a photo of one on each subsequent jaunt.

Or at least, I think that is what Dani said. One of my prior posts, I found out, was just my retelling of the situation that I drew up in my head.

The details were pretty close, but also pretty funny how far off I was in my recollection.

Anyways, this doodle is not that special, but the significance of this one was I doodled it in front of Natalie.

I know that sounds odd, but I typically doodle in my alone time. Something about it makes me find some solace in the world.

I think in my mind it is about sharing something before it is done. Or maybe having to possibly explain where you are going that makes me shy about doing it in front of Natalie.

Funny thing is I don’t care about doing it in front of complete strangers. I love doodling in the airport and on planes.

So, I doodled this on the plane - sitting next to Natalie.

I think she was sleeping, so she probably doesn’t even think anything of it.

To celebrate my mom’s birthday, it only made sense to doodle the kindergarten teacher’s quintessential art project - the handprint animal.

And as we are in Clemson to celebrate as a family, a tiger with a birthday hat feels just right.

@theframefriend

I went to Wake Forest for business school after Wofford because I didn’t apply for any jobs my senior year because of baseball.

I got a job at IBM. My first day was this orientation with all the new hires. It was weird and felt like school.

The story starts when the instructor asked me why I was wearing what I was wearing - which was an orange plaid button down, khaki slacks, and penny loafers.

I didn’t have an answer.

He explained at IBM that there was an expectation of how to dress in front of clients, which consisted of always wearing dark slacks with modest white shirts and never wearing a visible logo.

All the low achieving Ivy leaguers had a chuckle at my expense.

That isn’t an insult because let’s be honest if we were high achieving, all of us would not be doing management consulting at a legacy hardware company.

I did find the IBM “dress code” was overblown and not adhered to during my time there. But I can tell you, I never wore khakis to work again.

The black and white pictures are photos of an IBM salesman named Varge Bray.

IBM hired a professional photographer to accompany him on a business trip to Africa in the 1950’s. This was to market the IBM “look”, aka, corporate propaganda.

Fun fact: my favorite graphic designer, Paul Rand, designed the iconic IBM logo. He said he chose the 8 bar look to prevent smearing when letterhead was printed. IBM tells some corporate jargon story about speed.

This doodle idea hit me while I was enjoying my
morning coffee on the dock at Stag Island.

It’s a pretty simple concept, but I thought it represented the weekend well.

Our Michigan friend from college invites the South Carolina boys up to this wonderful little spot sat between two countries. (thanks, JD!)

It is our yearly family retreat, and Natalie and I look forward to it every year. Debbie makes sure we put it on the calendar for next year before we leave.

Mac said it best this year - you come to Stag Island to contemplate your entire life each year.

Or maybe it is not that serious and we all just love seeing close friends.

@debbiesosborne

New project drop!

This may just be a single comic strip because the storyboarding, doodling, and writing copy was way more time invested than one of my normal posts.

Maybe I will make it a quarterly.

We were at Brick Store a few weeks back, and Natalie tried to convince me I should write a kid’s book where Fancy and I go on adventures.

I’m not at the point where I think I’m capable of being a full-blown author or illustrator.

But this is my attempt at dipping my toes into world building.

I mean I will admit it is a straight rip of Ash and Pikachu’s Adventures, so I get no credit for creating a new “aesthetic.”

I’m just running back my favorite cartoon.

I was a child in the peak of Pokémon fever in the US. From the game to the cards to the tv show, I couldn’t consume enough.

My dad even drove us to every McDonald’s and Burger King close to Barnwell (not an easy task) to collect the toys.

I imagined the world of DOGlanta on a walk around Kirkwood.

My best thinking comes when walking, and then I stop somewhere to do a stream of consciousness into my Notes app.

I then show it to Natalie later that day.

She is the best - because she humors me and definitely doesn’t think I’m crazy.

Anyways, the dogs in DOGlanta don’t fight like Pokémon, instead it is all about how big you can grow to demand respect to protect your guy or gal.

Or at least that is what I have wrote down.

Also, I wrote down that the bosses of DOGlanta’s gyms are Atlanta rappers and their gyms are Atlanta’s strip clubs, so we will see where that goes.

@dog.lanta

When we were at the Van Gogh museum, I was fascinated at the simplicity of the subjects of his art.

We are supposed to be in awe of the beauty of his paintings, but most of them are just whatever was in his eyesight.

So, I grabbed the bottle of wine we bought at Dom Beijos the night before and a lemon out of the fridge to take my crack at drawing what was in front of me.

Let’s be honest - I was low on creativity and just wanted to draw something because it had been a minute.

Dom Beijos is Kirkwood’s wine shop. Specializing in Portuguese wine because the owner’s family is from there.

Natalie and I have become good friends with Melissa and Justin over the years. There is nothing bad about having a wonderful wine shop at the bottom of our street.

I can’t say my palate has become super advanced, but I can say I have drank a lot of wines.

You can find us there most Fridays. It is the neighborhood gathering spot.

@dom_beijos

This was an attempt at something. I had an idea about a cool drawing of the dogs cresting a mountaintop with the sun setting.

I won’t say I love how it turned out. It could have been better. I promise to do a better iteration.

But as I stated when I started this endeavor, I will post everything that I draw. And I will not spend excess time trying to perfect stuff.

Anyways, I am very appreciative of Tim and his Sunrise ride. It is always some motivation to get out of bed and be productive for the day.

I look forward to my end-of-ride expresso and shot of soda water at Con Leche.

@sunriserideatl
@tplepage

Kirkwood has a lot of things. But the main topic of the Facebook page is if Cliff the Pig is roaming the neighborhood after opening his gate by snout.

Or if someone has excess honey they are trying to give away.

I’m not entirely sure where everyone is keeping these honey bees in our very cozy neighborhood, but I’m also not going to ask.

I don’t think Natalie and I want a pig for the house. But I’m not ruling out a couple chicken hens.

We have good tree cover to protect from the hawks, and my boss, who has a farm of animals, convinced me it wouldn’t be too difficult to maintain them.

Supposedly after one year of raising them, they lay an egg a day.

Also, they are supposedly extremely loyal to their owners.

I don’t hate the idea of having chicken hens running up to me each morning.

They also play well with dogs. Thinking about Soey interacting with them makes me laugh.

Anyways, this was about a pig. Love Cliff.

Clemson is playing Georgia in Atlanta to kick off the college football season.

We will probably get killed, but here is to hope.

I redrew one of Clemson’s old logos when it was an all boys school. A Clemson man needs no introduction, I guess.

Andre 3000 made wearing the road Braves jersey look cool.

Typical home baseball jerseys are white and have the team’s nickname on them, not the city’s name.

The road jerseys were always gray or a dark shade since in the old days you weren’t guaranteed a washer and dryer in the opposing locker room.

Clay stains show up less on gray.

Anyways, maybe 17-year-old 3 stacks was a big Chipper Jones fan, or most likely, he wanted to rep his city on the front of the jersey.

Fun fact: the sneakers on the Tiger were released in 2016 to celebrate Atlanta’s 20 year old anniversary of hosting the Olympics.

@clemsontigers

I often wonder how our generation will show how well read they are. In the past, you would have this vast room in your house with mahogany shelves of books covering every wall with one of those cool slidable ladders.

Now, the well read just read everything on a Kindle.

Will we lose our personal grand libraries?

No worries for Natalie and I because we have enough shelf space for the books we have read.

I had to manipulate this shelf to make it look like some of my books are on it. Natalie is more read.

I don’t read a lot of books, but I spend lots of time reading essays about various topics that peak my interest. It is my one concession towards the argument that our generation has a short attention span.

I need written content concise and to the point, so that I can focus on reading other arguments from experts on the same point.

I don’t have time to read 300 pages on a single topic from a single author. I trust enough that they are well read and need more opinions.

End rant.

This week Natalie and I get the pleasure of seeing some of my oldest friends. We have made a tradition of going to Stag Island the same weekend each year.

Stag Island is a place where there are no cars. Maybe I was radicalized in college when JD invited us up to see this magical place.

A place void of cars is something that doesn’t really exist in the world. It is crazy to think most people will never see this type of place.

Anyways, Mac and I took that young photo of us together at a bar in San Francisco. Two lads working our first jobs and just trying to figure out life.

If my memory serves me correctly, we sent that photo to Dani right when they had started dating. I hadn’t even met Natalie yet.

We retook the other photo when I visited Mac in Kansas City a few years back. We sent it to our now wives and laughed about how age progresses us.

I don’t feel any older, but it’s funny how time works.

We have made the commitment to continue to retake this photo in the future, hence the old men doodle.

Here’s to getting older with great friends.

@undaniable_xo
@flying_nat
instagram-less mac

Fun fact: Both Babe Ruth and Elvis Presley died on August 16th.

I was born on it.

I don’t think there is any significance to that, but I always found it amusing.

I was told that when I was introduced as a baby, the pastor exclaimed, “With a name like Cash Collins, he will be either a sports star or an entertainer!”

Joke’s on that guy, I’m just an IT consultant.

Happy birthday to me.

@cash.collins

Encore! Encore! Encore!

I felt like this doodle deserved its place on the grid. It was buried in my Midweek Roll appreciation doodle.

I drew this because of a fan request.

Logan asked me to recreate the Batman meme with 97 Estoria awhile back. And it stuck with me.

So, this was my attempt.

I swapped Batman out with John Wick because they have a Keanu cardboard cutout as soon as you walk in.

I know it is a Point Break bar, but for obvious reasons, I prefer the John Wick Keanu.

It is a little choppy-looking. I tried to keep the white background aesthetic, but that made the spotlight look quite…bad.

I tried several ways, but this is what came out under the time allotted.

@97estoria

I can almost pinpoint my first Midweek Roll to the day.

It may have something to do with the fact that each day my work computer tells me how many days have passed since I last backed it up.

There is a whole story around that, but this post is about my appreciation for Midweek Roll.

Jen and Logan have become dear friends to Natalie and I over the past three years.

I remember the first ride that Natalie brought me to in September of 2021. We were still launching from Midway, and the group was probably about 15 or so.

I bought my road bike the day before the ride. Natalie and I had recently went down to a single car, and we replaced having two cars with some Edison e-bikes.

I fell in love with riding a bike through the city.

Natalie had purchased herself a road bike during the pandemic, so when she joined a Midweek Roll during Atlanta Cycling Fest, she convinced me to buy one and join the fun.

Little did she know what she was creating…

Here is the thing about Logan - he doesn’t forget your name. As someone who struggles with remembering names, I am always amazed.

So, when I showed back up to another Midweek Roll without Natalie a few weeks after the first, Logan immediately asked me how I was - by name.

I felt at home.

The community Jen and Logan have built stretches way farther than just Atlanta cycling. Natalie and I are proud to be a small part in it.

@mwratl
@outwejumped
@drivelikejehn

I always wanted a glove like Cal Ripken. Being left-handed, it doesn’t present you many opportunities to play middle infield. A single post web was not practical for a pitcher.

When I had the need to buy a glove for neighborhood softball, I went over the top with a custom glove modeled after Cal’s iconic style.

As an aside, I bought a custom Rawlings glove in college. I found out through a glove enthusiast’s website (yeah, I know) that there was a way to get the old Rawlings logo on a custom Heart of the Hide.

The modern Rawlings logo is oval-shaped compared to the beautiful, classic circle one.

The original Rawlings glove maker in St. Louis still had a workshop, and he covered the custom orders for a single distributor, Eastbay.

They were the only custom Rawlings gloves still made in the USA.

Anyways after placing the order on Eastbay through their website, I had to exchange several emails with the glove maker who fulfilled the orders.

I can remember them all being in lowercase with no signatures, and I, 100%, thought I was being scammed.

But nope - six weeks later - the glove showed up and it was perfect.

I asked my mom to dig up some photos from college with it. She sent me that picture of me pitching for the Madison Mallards. It brought up a memory that I might as well write down.

That summer was definitely the peak of my baseball career. I can distinctively remember my first bullpen session when I got to Wisconsin.

Our pitching coach was some ex-pro who didn’t say much, other than calling out the next pitch you were supposed to throw. That day he had a couple scouts standing with him.

It was a short session. Pitch after pitch - I threw exactly what and where the coach requested. It was a rhythm that I still think about to today.

On my 28th of 30 pitches, I missed a changeup down and away.

One of the scouts chuckled and said “I guess he doesn’t only throw strikes.”

My baseball career was all downhill from there.

@madison_mallards

EDIT: I had to amend this post because when I was in Cleveland, Natalie sent me pictures of Soey playing with Mike and Gareth’s dogs. So, there is hope she will eventually be everyone’s future friend. Back to the original post:

We obviously don’t have a kid, but I am fully aware of Bluey.

I love the aesthetic of the show even if I have no clue of the plot lines.

Maybe it is because I am the child of a kindergarten teacher or that I think I always secretly wanted to be an illustrator.

The only time that Natalie and I went to the High museum was to see an Eric Carle exhibit. It was awesome and also a shame we have only been to the High one time.

Also, let’s be clear - the dogs depicted are just our friends’ dogs and not really Soey’s. We are building up to introducing her to other dogs.

She is funny.

Hope everyone is cool with my interpretation of their dog.

I don’t like venturing into drawing others because I have seen some bad depictions. You can ask my mom about that.

@flying_nat
@tplepage
@tinsleymartincurry
@stewart_curry
@allisonarso
@mleearso5
@mike.k.perry

Sometimes you just need to doodle something nonsensical. That is what this is.

I was reading a very interesting article about Nick Cage for who knows what reason, so I thought I would draw something.

Deadspin used to be a very funny sports blog that was very irreverent when I was in college. Whatever you think about the blog - good or bad - the illustrator, Sam Woolley, was incredible.

He was able to turn out custom graphics for the articles almost in realtime. I was always fascinated by what his process must have been like.

The internet was just better when people were making dumb drawings.

thewoolley.com

Natalie asked me to draw Soey as Pig-Pen. My attempt didn’t turn out that well, but it, at least, gives off Peanuts vibes.

It is funny having a dog that plays fetch. Carmen and Fancy never had any interest in toys, much less fetch.

But Soey will fetch the ball and return it until she can’t stand up anymore.

I never thought I would ever be a small dog person, but now owning a small dog who plays fetch like a retriever, maybe it is the best of both worlds.

@flying_nat

I have this little dog that my grandfather carved that sits on my desk. I thought it would be a good doodle.

Our family always had cocker spaniels growing up - you would have to ask my parents why, but as long as I can remember, we had one in the house.

Hershey was not ours but rather my uncle’s, who was a puppy of a litter of ours, I think? He was obviously around before I had a ton of consciousness.

But Pap’s carving was dated 1994, so I assume he took inspiration from Hershey because of the cropped tail.

I was always inspired by Pap’s woodwork, but he also doodled. He had this style of quick brush strokes with a pencil; always repeating the same elements - like dogs or ducks.

I thought it was quite ironic that the dog carving and the wooden bench in the ADU made by Pap were done in 1994 and then 2014.

So, here is a doodle dedicated to 2024. Fours must be good years for some creativity.

@pap.foster

I drew these before going to Edisto for family beach week.

I showed them to Natalie at dinner before I left.

She told me that she really liked the whimbrel, but that I should take the sandpiper back to the drawing board.

I told her that I prefer the rendering of the sandpiper and really don’t like the whimbrel.

So, I took neither back to the drawing board and am posting both in their original form. I posted Natalie’s preference first because she is probably right.

The original Falcons logo is such a good design. In 1966 when the team played its inaugural season, they added a gold stripe on the helmet to not alienate the Georgia Tech fans for pulling for a team with Georgia’s red and black color scheme.

I have always loved that fact because it is funny thinking about how you introduce a professional football team to an area so rabid about their college affiliations.

Also, it is kind of why the south doesn’t care about the NFL. They were here second.

Fun fact: My grandmother’s cousin played for the Falcons in 1969. Ray Ogden caught passes from Joe Namath at Alabama before catching some in the NFL. Dad has hunted down his 1969 Topps card.

I doodled this on my flight home from London.

I had to fly there very last minute because my boss can’t schedule ahead. On top of that, it was Wimbledon’s final weekend, so hotels were very expensive and we had to stay out by Tower Bridge.

That added an hour or so to our commute to the suburbs. Fun stuff.

Anyways, we were also there to see England’s attempt to win their first major tournament since 1966.

The nation that birthed “soccer” has been woefully bad at winning anything.

We went to a nearby pub to get the full experience. It was crowded and loud, but there was a real sense of optimism.

When Spain took the lead in the 81st minute, the air was sucked out of the building in an instant.

But the crowd slowly started to believe an equalizer was coming.

In the 89th minute, off of a corner, there was a series of headers that pinged around enough to get the Spanish keeper out of place.

The last one was destined for the back of the net - when lo and behold - Dani Olmo was on the line to clear it.

The groan of the pub was palpable. One single glass was shattered by someone in the corner.

I told my boss that we should exit out of the side door and watch the rest of stoppage time in our rooms.

There is a popular Brazilian saying that goes, “Football is simple, 11 versus 11, and the team with the least Englishmen wins.”

Does everyone remember that horrifying Super Bowl commercial where Planters killed off Mr. Peanut and gave birth to Baby Nut?

No - just me?

Baby Nut doesn’t haunt my dreams but he owns a small corner of my brain, so as I debated on what to doodle for my favorite bar, he surfaced.

Bob & Harriet’s Home Bar in Kirkwood is Natalie and I’s third space in the neighborhood. A great place for us to blow off cooking at the end of a long work day.

I order a Hamm’s and an Old Forester as my doodle depicts.

Natalie sometimes orders a perfect gin martini.

She is the responsible one.

Ted will make you a cocktail. Order a slice of Sarah’s chocolate cake.

@homebaratl

I’m not sure why it felt appropriate to depict an opossum ascending the Oude Kwaremont, but the idea came to me.

I had the pleasure of getting to ride up the Belgian cobbled climb this past spring on Natalie and I’s long-awaited honeymoon.

I convinced Natalie to let me spend a single day riding in the Flander fields.

Problem was it was 40 degrees and hailing.

But when you plan to ride a bike somewhere six months in advance, you just suck it up and do it.

There was a World Tour bike race happening about 50 kilometers away, and 90% of the peloton quit mid-race due to the conditions.

It was not easy, and I didn’t go remotely as far as I had planned. But I did get to ride the Oude Kwaremont.

As I approached the base of the climb, the rain stopped and the sun peaked out for a bit. It was lovely.

The ride to the top not so much. It is only 1.5 miles long but the gradients are 10% in most sections.

The cobbles when wet are unforgiving. They take your tires wherever they want. I ran out of gears almost instantly.

I can still hear myself gasping for air in the quiet afternoon.

Because that is the other thing about the cobbled roads in Flanders. They solely exist for cyclists.

Roads that have been protected for their historical context to cycling. It is quite beautiful.

Natalie spent the day exploring the quaint town of Oudenaarde; she loved it. I, too, loved my day there.

Maybe we will spend more time there in the future. Hell, maybe we retire there.

The Ole Miss logo has definitely said slurs, but the logo design is clean so I’m repurposing.

Early this year, I told Natalie I wanted to write a book; she told me I should read more.

She is probably right.

I have become fascinated with researching the origin of Savannah River Site. A facility that has provided two generations of my family employment and the reason why we are from Barnwell, SC.

Living in a place that helped mass produce nuclear weapons is something when you step back and think about it.

I probably have a books-worth of thoughts on it, but to Natalie’s point, I do need to read more.

The sign in the doodle is from Ellenton. One of the towns that was eradicated and moved when the federal government decided that Barnwell County would be the home for the production of tritium and plutonium.

This sign’s message resonated with me. I didn’t know about it until a couple months ago. Spent my whole life next to New Ellenton, I never knew about this sign.

I’m biased but there is something special about Barnwell County.

I love the sign’s message.

@srs_museum

I was doodling this at an airport bar in Philadelphia when the lady next to me asked if what I was doodling was based on an Auburn Tiger.

When I said yes, she immediately went into a long spill about growing up in Auburn and going to school there and now living there with her husband.

I was half paying attention the whole time.

She finished and then turned to me and asked when I graduated. I paused and debated trying to explain that I just like doodling random logos, but I decided it was better to not broach that topic.

After saying I didn’t attend Auburn and her looking puzzled as to what I was doing, I got miraculously bailed out by the guy to her right.

He piped in that he went to Auburn, and they had a long chat about it that I didn’t have to be a part of.

I got to doodle in peace before taking off.

Small world.

@auburnu

This was the very first thing I drew with my Apple pencil.

Which is barely nothing, I didn’t even how to change the size of the pen stroke.

I still don’t hate how it turned out. It is simple and to the point.

I have always loved baseball’s interlocking logos, and there is none more iconic than the Yankees’ NY.

Elmyriachi is a great local restaurant. I have always loved their color scheme, but the food is better. Get a burrito if you are coming through.

Fun fact: Tiffany & Co. designed the interlocking NY logo in 1877. You can get a Yankees cap in Tiffany blue at the MoMA.

@elmyriachi

Happy Grand Départ!

Le Tour launches today from Florence, my favorite Italian city (only been to two, so short list).

This will be the third year that I have actually watched and understood what is going on. Getting into cycling required me going into deep wormholes about the sport.

One of those wormholes was familiarizing myself with Greg Lemond - considered by most the greatest American road cyclist of all time.

For the first time in 35 years, this Tour de France will end in a time trial versus a traditional sprint stage.

Normally, the last stage is raced around the Champs-Élysées, but because of Paris hosting the Olympics, the Tour is finishing with a time trial in the south of France.

The last time it finished in a TT was 1989 - the year I was born.

Heading into that final stage, Greg Lemond was down to the Frenchman Laurent Fignon by 55 seconds.

That’s a large gap to make up in a single stage.

The story goes that Lemond refused to wear a radio in his ear, which means he couldn’t be relayed time checks to monitor his effort during the ride.

Instead, he opted to race against his body and push himself until he couldn’t go any further.

There is iconic footage of Lemond gasping for breath after finishing his ride, laid on his back on the Parisian avenue.

In the background, the coverage shows Fignon finishing a minute back of Lemond’s time.

That meant Greg Lemond had nabbed Fignon’s yellow jersey on the last day, crowning Lemond the champion.

It is the most closely contested Tour of all time.

I felt bad reading about Fignon. The French crushed him for losing such a lead on the last day.

You see the French did not take kindly to him losing to an American in their biggest sporting event.

Fun fact: Greg Lemond now lives in Knoxville and owns a company that manufactures electric road bikes.

@greg.lemond
@lemondbicycles
@letourdefrance

Growing up, I always heard about James Brown being born in Barnwell. He was born there but didn’t grow up there, but he would give money to the band for new uniforms each year.

My extent of feeling like James Brown was from Barnwell was through his accountant who went to our church.

Each year the accountant would give a speech about how it was essential that every churchgoer tithed.

Years after Brown’s death, that accountant was convicted of embezzling money from Brown’s estate. I think it was a big misunderstanding - he seemed like an honest man.

Anyways, I used to love watching Showtime at the Apollo on tv. I loved how brutal the crowd was to those who were mediocre, but when someone was good, the crowd was breathtaking.

James Brown, born in Barnwell, SC, performed more than 200 times at the Apollo theatre, more than any other performer.

The theatre located in Harlem, the epicenter of culture in New York City, was Brown’s playground.

I always thought that was cool. It felt like a motivational story that someone from my neck of the woods could make it to that important of a stage.

The brown thrasher is Georgia’s state bird.

Not brown thrashers but a couple of small wrens started to make a nest outside my office. I watch them daily bring things back and forth.

We now have multiple eggs laid in Natalie’s Spindle bag.

Fun fact: Howard Sims spent 50 years ushering the failed acts off of the Apollo stage. He didn’t invent using the hook, but the internet says he is forever associated with it.

It was the first thing that came to mind when I went to doodle this.

@apollotheater
@flying_nat
@thespindleatl

Shortly after Fancy passed, I found Carmen playing with a baby bunny in the backyard.

Playing is a very loose term - I should say the baby bunny was screaming while Carmen trotted around the yard with it in her mouth.

No fear - we rescued that bunny and set it free.

What developed was a constant sighting of the bunny in the yard.

We joked that Fancy was reincarnated and stuck around. We would text each other photos when we saw the bunny.

This year I hadn’t seen the bunny for a bit. I chalked it up to us no longer needing it.

During Carmen’s final days, Natalie asked if I thought we would see the bunny again. I told her to not get her hopes up because I hadn’t seen it this spring.

Natalie texted me the third photo the day after Carmen passed.

There was the bunny. Staring right at Natalie. She said it didn’t move for minutes.

Since then, we have seen the bunny a lot. I assume since the girls both passed in the spring - that the coincidence is more seasonal than magical.

But what is the fun in that.

@flying_nat

This is a very non-sensical doodle.

I have been reading about the Pullman company, and its role in the American worker’s history.

Natalie and I actually live in a house that was originally built for Pullman workers when the train facility was at its peak in our neighborhood in the 1930’s.

Our whole block is very old, identical brick 2/1’s that have, of course, been gentrified and expanded since they were built.

But I am still fascinated by their origin. And the fact that at one time - our neighborhood was briefly a company town.

When thinking about what animal logo to replace with the person, I immediately thought of the Red Bone Alley logo.

It’s a restaurant in Florence, SC, and it is something.

It is built in an old Belk store, but in the cavernous building, they have recreated the Charleston character with townhomes and even an ice cream truck.

I love it.

But yeah, this is a random combo.

@redbonealley

I can distinctively remember the day the bridge collapsed. It was an eery day seeing the smoke from the Highlands.

But we carried on like usual. Stew, Natalie, and I loaded up to head to trivia at Johnny’s on Cheshire Bridge that night.

Just to discover that, no shit, it was closed for the night because a man-made disaster happened mere feet away.

We ended up playing trivia that night at Diesel. RIP to a great bar.

I hope Marvin is doing well.

The bridge was rebuilt in 40 days. Funny how quickly things can be built when they relate to cars. MARTA ridership increased 25% during that window.

I do think the Atlanta Olympics design is one of the more iconic motifs of its time - a true classic with its color and appearance.

I highly recommend reading Atlanta History Center’s blog called: Designing ‘96. It is a great read on how everything came together.

Fun fact: the designer of the logo was named Michael Collins. No relation.

@atlantahistorycenter
@stewart_curry
@flying_nat
atlantahistorycenter.com/blog/designing-96/

Soey is figuring out how to be an only dog.

We are figuring out how to have only a small dog.

Soey is a funny dog. She is fiercely loyal to Natalie despite us both knowing her for the same amount of time. I laugh because I’m the one who gives Soey the affection, but she just wants to follow Natalie around.

One day, I will earn her trust the way she has blindly followed Natalie (I’m not bitter at all).

The funniest part of Soey is that she likes to put her big eye on you when you are talking to her.

Soey’s hat has her turtle on it. The turtle was Carmen’s, but Soey has decided to hate it. She uses it to thrash around. Supposedly, dogs of her size like the feel of dominating animals of their same size.

Fun fact: Oscar the Grouch was originally orange instead of green.

@flying_nat

On my flight to Toronto, I thought I would doodle something about the past weekend.

Nothing like not having water for multiple days in a major US city. Fun stuff.

This drawing was never meant to be all blue. I guess when I zoomed in to paint the cowboy in the boat - I accidentally turned the whole doodle to black.

I couldn’t revert history far enough back to rescue the original coloring, so I had to adjust the color and opacity to salvage something.

I guess this is my Picasso blue period.

Fun fact: the Walking Dead poster is an adjusted Jackson Street bridge view where the skyline and roads are slightly altered.

@cityofatlantaga
@atlwatershed

Happy birthday, Natalie.

All of the doodles that I have done between the period of my sketchbook and this account were on the cards I gave Natalie.

Maybe that is why I am having so much fun doing this because I knew Natalie loved those cards.

I haven’t doodled her a card in a few years. I mean it was so much work with designing the concept, drawing with colored pencils, and cutting the paper the right size.

Natalie, appropriately, has given me hell.

So, this is me trying to make up for it. Here is my first double feature.

Natalie and I were discussing potential birthday doodles over dinner, and this is what we came up with (sorta).

The inspiration is Natalie’s houseplants.

It is our home’s art.

Completely maintained by Natalie - I told her she can have as many as she wants and put them wherever, and I will never say a word.

She just can’t make me water them all.

They bring me joy. I probably have never told her that.

I love you, Natalie.

Fun fact: that picture on our shelf is the first picture we ever took together.

@flying_nat

Wofford baseball wins the Southern Conference!

I had randomly doodled this weeks ago and was planning to publish down the road. But a championship deserves a celebration.

Congrats, boys. Good luck in Chapel Hill.

This piece of graffiti was in the park where we took Carmen to swim. I thought simplicity leans well for a doodle.

@woffordbaseball
@woffordcollege

We miss our girls.

I drew this the day after Carmen passed. I had to fly to San Diego for a work conference, and she was heavy on my heart.

I doodled this on the flight, so the coloring and Fancy aren’t done perfectly. In reality, they were the exact same shade of color, but I was trying to get them slightly different. I didn’t do a very good job.

I will revisit that a future date. I try to keep the doodles to a couple of hours at most. At that point, I’m just obsessing on how to perfect, and that isn’t the point of this activity.

It’s more about finding some peace and chuckling at what could be done better.

Anyways, I sent this doodle to Natalie when I landed. She didn’t respond.

Your biggest haters are sometimes your closest people. My favorite quote growing up was from Reggie Jackson when he said, “Fans don’t boo nobodies.” That is what I thought Natalie was doing to me.

Instead, she completely missed it in her long work day - only responding to a later text I sent her.

At a dinner a few nights later, she asked if I could do a Fancy and Carmen doodle. When I told her I did and she ignored, she protested. We scrolled back in the texts to find the image there. She loved it - we both teared up.

I knew she was a fan. Our girls meant a lot to us.

#carmenthecur
#fancy
@flying_nat

If you grew up where I did (Barnwell, SC), you weren’t a proper household if you didn’t have a Jim Harrison painting.

He was a local artist who drew quaint countrysides with a distinct Coca-Cola advertisement in each. The use of that repeated element always stuck with me.

Also, he signed his paintings with his name in block letters instead of a signature. I thought that was cool.

I drew a bluebonnet field because of my wife. She is from Texas where they are prevalent. I thought combining the elements of where she is from and my childhood familiarity with an iconic Atlanta brand was fun.

I replaced the traditional ‘Drink’ in the advertisement with ‘Beba’ to give a nod to the Spanish ties to the bluebonnets.

I only had to draw four individual bluebonnets. I then flipped each horizontally to create 8 variations to make the bed. The joy of using computer software I could just duplicate them and then cluster them to create the full picture.

I tried to paint rust, but it didn’t really turn out.

Fun fact: for the longest time, it was thought to be impossible to breed a bluebonnet to be any color other than blue. It was what made them valuable despite really just being a weed. Modern science has now allowed for us to breed red ones.

jimharrison.com
@cocacola

For your fifth wedding anniversary, you are supposed to get your partner something made of wood.

Natalie and I aren’t doing gifts this year because we decided to spend a couple of weeks shopping in Europe.

So instead of an actual wood gift, I have drawn a cute girl as log lady.

For context, we have been watching Twins Peaks with our friends, and it felt like a perfect intersection for a doodle.

Five years has seen a lot of for us. Homes, jobs, dogs - everything changing, but a constant has been each other.

I got lucky.

Natalie somehow, some way showed up in the right spot at the right time and she actually liked me.

I love her dearly.

Here’s to five years, and to all the rest of our time on this spinning rock.

@flying_nat

I once wrote the byline - “Kirkwood. Zone 6. Catch me on Fridays debating policy with Casino” because it made me chuckle.

Not that I actually do that, but almost every Friday that we choose to pickup pizza for dinner, I find myself sitting across from Casino having a beer. I love the juxtaposition of me, lame IT consultant, and him, Atlanta rapper, at the local neighborhood watering hole.

We always exchange pleasantries and keep it moving. One of his guys outside called me John Wick, so there’s that.

He is a Kirkwood staple.

Fun fact: Future had to change his name to Cash; I was born with it.

@ casin0.fbg

(Not tagging Casino because he might not appreciate my rendering.)

I woke up this morning on my last day in San Diego. Nothing more boring than a work conference.

I cut on the 12th stage of the Giro d’Italia while I was picking up because 3pm in Europe is 7am on the west coast.

I hear the commentator say the Alaphilippe is attacking with 138km left. What a mad man.

In my very novice cycling viewing, Julian loves to jump and attack - usually leading to nothing. I assumed this was the same.

But today was different - he seemed committed on a different level. As I sat on the edge of the bed cheering, I was amazed he stayed away to win.

I wish I had loved cycling during Alaphilippe’s peak. A true sportsman and an entertainer at the top level.

Chapeau, Julian.

Fun fact: the leader’s jersey at the Giro is pink because that was the color of the paper that the original sponsor (a newspaper) was printed on.

@i_simp_alaphilippe

I can admit that this is a pretty lazy dual concept, but I wanted to draw a bike.

Single line drawings always intrigued me, but I was never talented enough to draw them. Now I see that you can draw them by connecting lots of vector lines via computer software.

Or at least, that is how I drew this one.

I picked up my bike exactly one year ago to this date after working with Earl for months to design.

Fun fact: the UCI stripes drawn in the helmet are awarded to the World Champion in each discipline in cycling - they follow the same colors as the Olympic rings.

@standertbicycles

Saying goodbye to a dog is never easy, and we have now had to do it in back to back years.

Carmen was a great dog. She will be forever missed.

Say hello to Fancy for us.

#carmenthecur
@flying_nat

While at the Van Gogh museum, I learned that Vincent painted himself so much because no one wanted to sit for him. He was meticulous, an asshole, and poor.

That is why we have so many self-portraits. He sorta invented the selfie. Great marketing.

I thought I should start with a self-portrait as well. And since I can’t really draw, I would just adapt one of my favorite retro logos.

Not sure why we pivoted away from the jovial logos of the past.

Also, I had to find the only photo in my phone where I was standing alone, so I didn’t have to crop anyone out.

Fun fact: that green blazer has now been worn at three family weddings. My father left his wedding in it, and I did the same at mine. I got to wear it to my cousin’s wedding last year. It was a black tie affair, so I was a little out of place.

@cash.collins