Hackrifice: Erik Chan

2010-09-10T18:04:00.005-05:00

I've been playing semi-regularly lately, but with nothing of real notability. Today was different. Today felt good. I didn't feel rusty in my warm-up, I felt fresh, and energetic, and excited to play footbag. I'm not sure if it's a physical barrier that I've finally overcome after my most recent year-long injury, or if it's inspiration from a bit of fun I began to realize last session, or if it was the excitement of the continuation of my Fourkast video project -- the hiatus of which has lasted far too long -- and the insane Penske video goodness therein viewed (and resultant verbal outbursts of amazement!)

Anyhoo, I had fun, and I felt significantly less physically hindered. It was fun, and the extended 50% session length really proved that. I warmed up pretty fast (though was having trouble with flip osis all session, which was frustrating), and went straight into spinning and ducking tricks (legovers, mirages, and pickups) which I discovered randomly last session are fun to out of hit drifter.

-toe-set reverse whirling swirl > hand catch [repeat] (first time for the trick (my swirls REALLY suck))
I footed flip blurry rev whirling swirl a few times. It's that stupid flip swirl. I also footed pixie reverse whirling swirl both sides. I also footed spinning osis > pdx blender BSOS a few times.

I really focused on runs this session, and that actually came really naturally initially. I'm starting to get my energy back. I've been really lacking, and still am, but it's getting there. The slant in the driveway I've been playing on really screws with my spins sometimes (particularly noticeable in runs, where by the end of the run I'm at the end of the driveway.. hahaha.)

A highlight also, was a group of high school kids calling out, "Play some hacky sack!" as I was going back into the house at the end of the session (they must have remembered me from some day I was playing, since I was just gathering my stuff as they walked by). I kind of just looked back and smiled and went inside. As soon as I went inside I wished I'd showed them something, even though I was super tired. The one guy'd called, "Just show us a trick!" Next time I will if I've got the energy. I look forward to my next non-solo session... whenever that may be. I wanna bust. And I feel so little energy and motivation to on my own.

-

-

-

2010-09-02T19:53:00.005-05:00

Had a fun session with Josh Lackey today. Josh has always been easily one of my favourite people with which to hack. He's got such a positive vibe about him -- always smiling and ENJOYING footbag. Also, he is my age, so it is nice to be able to relate in terms of where we are and where we can go in footbag, being of an older generation.

He came all the way out to Ajax where I live to hack one-on-one, which I really appreciated, as commuting to downtown Toronto gets really expensive, and for a couple of weeks there I was doing it almost every second day for various things. We drove out a bit to the Pickering beach, which I found on my waterfront trail bike rides, and is really gorgeous, with PERFECT temperature waters.

Anyway, whatever.
Overall it was really fun, even though I seem to be really adversed to attempting actual runs. I don't know why. I get distracted so easily. The weird thing is that my longer runs would either be basically bail-a-licious, or.. like really, extreme hardcore. No middle-ground. I feel like I'm boring myself.
Highlights:
-vortex > spinning reverse whirl BSOS (prolly never BSOSed this before. I don't know how vortex came to me so easily, suddenly. I seriously have trouble linking 2 drifters...)
-spinning ducking mirage > atomic reverse whirl
-20 ripwalks > blurriest attempt, first try, after "calling it" (as my final combo of the session)
-mobius > pdx blender again (feels sooo good!)

And we also set challenges for ourselves, like, 20 guiltless, 30 guiltless, etcetera. That was really fun. That was mostly since I was sucking so bad at actual runs. I'm loving vortex. No hip pain either.

Oh yeah, and then almost the best part was going for a brief swim in the lake after. That was refreshing! And then I showed him some stitching stuff and gave him some supplies to start his first bag. We traced some panels, which felt really weird since I haven't in... well, close to a year. I made a bag for Allan Haggett back in.. November-ish, and before then it had been about half a year..
Anyway, it was great to hang with Josh. Fun.

2010-08-31T19:08:00.003-05:00

I've been so sore since Sunday's F.A.T. session that it's been difficult to get out of bed. Needless to say, I'm still on "vacation". Despite my incredible soreness and resultant fatigue, I warmed up and had a fun, satisfying session today for an hour. It should also be mentioned that this week the Toronto area is under siege by a heat wave. My clothes are absolutely soaked right through. Like, I'm sure I could ring out my shirt and fill a cup. Yum!

Anyway, I had a few highlights:
-mobius > pdx blender [both sides]
-DLO > blender BSOS

K, so mobius > pdx blender? Best feeling combo ever! And surprisingly not too difficult -- very natural feeling. Man alive. Maybe I can start amassing some pdx-whirl-free 5s to put together some fearless combos. Some spinning ducking tricks will help, though even those I will need to relearn. I'd also never really done toe blender before.. like.. ever? I've hit pixie blender both sides, but I'd never schooled blender before. I kind of have been a bit lately, as much as I'm physically able. It's definitely my favourite trick to hit. Not so much regular, but pdx fo sho!

I worked the most on atomic today, as I've really lost my pixie sets, I want to kind of mix it up if I can. Nothing really of note there, but progress..

2010-08-29T22:18:00.002-05:00

Today we had our Happy Birthday Alex Venis jam in downtown Toronto (actually at Buskerfest, where Jorden usually performs). Attendance was something like:
-Adam Greenwood
-Andrew Langstaff
-Jay Boychuk (from Hamilton)
-Cassy Taylor (from Oshawa)
-Alex Venis (studying in Vancouver)

And I finally met this mystery Pole of whom I've heard spoken on Modified of late. I didn't even catch his name, but it sounded like, "Vasek"... I dunno. There's something about Polish footbag players and not smiling. I'm sure he's a nice enough guy, but it just really rubs me the wrong way. I felt super awkward around the Poles at Steve's house in San Francisco too (speaking of which, I HAVE started a write-up.. I just need to get around to continuing). They are just too confident and cool... to smile? I found that very different with players like Michal B, and Damian, and Olaf -- nice quieter, smiley guys. Anyhooo.. I don't know this guy's name, but he's good. Toronto is lucky, and I'm not sure they know it?? He was laying whirring swirls both sides, blurry whirling swirl both sides, ripsteins BSOS like nothing. Lots of spenders and food processors and bedwetters and such. Cool stuff.

Jay is like the new Jorden. He is just a pleasure to watch, as everything is fresh, tight, and hardcore. Vortex swirl like nothing. Alpine Smoke both sides for the first time (Derek actually invented this, and named it "Pot". I was there (don't let Honza tell you otherwise :p)) What CAN'T Jay do? It always seems that he has handfuls of his own inventions to show off.

I did some neat things, but overall I had a really crap session. I think I only played really bad in the circle with the Polish guy and Jay, though. As soon as I stepped into a circle with Cassy and Adam I was ripping. I had trouble getting past 5 contacts, like, all afternoon... Though when I did it was pretty good for me. I BSOSed Bling Blang for the first time to open a nice run. It was probably spinning reverse whirl > PS rev whirl BSOS.. I don't know. I had a run with vortex BSOS and then the same spinning rev > ps rev later on too. I was very happy to find vortex not too difficult, which is another cool low-impact trick I can add to a new repertoire I must rebuild (I'm thinking of eliminating pixie sets from my arsenal...) I ended the session with some solo stuff on the side in my frustration. Spender on one side (the other was being sucky?), scorpion's tail both sides.. and other stuff.

All-in-all it was fun. I hope we have a jam in Oshawa soon.

2010-08-20T17:47:00.002-05:00

Whew.
Ugh.

I just finished a session. I haven't played in a couple days. I played a bit of freestyle soccer on Wednesday, though that made my legs really sore, really fast. Which is weird, since it's usually the other way around -- footbag tires me and I could play soccer all day if I wanted. I guess that goes to show how out of shape I am. Then on Thursday I had my first long bike ride since moving to Ajax. The bike paths here are gorgeous. They span from Oshawa (about an hour East of me), to Toronto, and then to Niagara Falls. And it's all completely beautifully manicured the whole way. Amazing. Lots of beach and boardwalk and nice stuff. There was a cool windmill and nuclear plant that I passed also. Here's a crappy website for the trails, Waterfront Trail

Anyway.
I had some cool highlights today, and I'm getting back slowly, though I still can't really SHRED.
-Vortex BSOS
-Blurriest and Spinning reverse whirl both BSOS
-Gyro reverse whirl and Spinning reverse whirl both BSOS

I can also kind of regular swirl now. Before I could only kind of more or less fluke symple swirls, and I could do regular reverse swirls.. I dunno. My sets are the weakest. I can't really.. do any of them anymore. Stepping, Pixie, Atomic... Pixie is the worst, since I need to relearn toe stalls (had a wicked conversation about this with Nathan Pipenberg at Worlds..)

MIGHT shred with FAT in downtown tomorrow, last minute.

2010-08-13T09:49:00.003-05:00

Whoa, it's Friday already?
I just got back from Worlds -- my first time in California -- on Monday morning. It seems a lot more recent, like 2 days ago. It was really fun. I posted 100~ pictures on Facebook. I think the coolest part about Worlds in the San Francisco area is that many footbag legends made it out, because they live in that area. I don't foresee this happening in the next couple of years, as I hear rumours of Helsinki, Montreal, and New York. There were many legends' faces that I saw for the first time, thanks to MC Irish for pointing them out in the crowd. Dimitri was one that stood out.

Anyway, I'm not meaning to do a write-up now. Maybe I will, though I'm not sure I have much to write. I played really crap on account of being sooo out of shape. My highlight was 20 spinning clippers first try both sides. I think for the time being I will stick with spinning and ducking to work back to stamina and slowly work in other components that my body has forgotten and maybe school individual components with dedicated sessions.

Yesterday was also my first F.A.T. session since 2006. Western Correspondent represent! It was grueling, but I played much better than at Worlds. I'm surprised that my body isn't COMPLETE toast at the moment. My highlight of that session was scorpion's tail BSOS. That was really out of the blue. I just kept feeding off of my friends' combos and tricks. So, Adam Greenwood was trying scorpion's tails. It was just Adam, myself, and Josh Lackey, whom I'm very stoked to see back in the game! They were pushing my game a lot. Another highlight was ending the session on a decent 30-some contact run. Mostly spinning. Adam and Josh ended on similarly lengthy runs. I think our next session is next week, though it costs me $13 return trip just to go out to downtown Toronto.. which is rough on the pocket.

I'll think about doing a write-up. I would like to.
Until next time..

2010-07-23T20:03:00.002-05:00

I just moved to the Toronto area this week with my woman. Wicked.

I still haven't really played in a year due to back pain. I've had a few here and there, but I won't count anything. At my last Hackrifice session, a week ago this past Monday, Andrew gave me a few tips for my back pain with all of his athletic therapy knowledge, and just the one tip of tilting my pelvis up instead of letting it tilt forward, has really been helping!

Today I had my third session in a row, pain-free (aside from the kinks from having not played for so long, and getting out of shape in general!) at my new address. I worked on some basic tiltless drills, and then getting my downtime components and basic sets back to snuff. It's been really exciting, though surely not to anyone but myself. Here were some highlights (note: each thing is just, single trick to hand catch.. nothing special at all):
-5 smears (both sides)
-5 legbeaters (both sides)
-5 stepping same clippers (both sides)

-5 paradons (both sides)
-5 reverse swirls (both sides)
-5 drifters (both sides)
-3 eggbeaters (both sides) <-- didn't wanna aggravate my back, and it felt like I might've if I'd pushed

I stopped the session on that note.
Though I did decide to start doing One-Shots to gauge my progress. I'll upload some.. time. Probably by the time I do the next one. I'm going to take the weekend off to let my poor, out-of-shape body rest.

I was averaging pretty good run length, which was nice. Though I can't yet throw anything of note. The highlight of my session was DEFINITELY 3 separate occurrences of large groups of high school kids walking by and being crazy impressed. It really boosted my non-existent self esteem. The first group was the biggest, maybe 7-10 kids, some on bikes, and they yelled amongst themselves, "No way! That's so sick! Awesome" kinda stuff. Then the second was, like, 2 black kids in their hip gear, and they called out, "You're awesome at hacky sack!" and I said thanks in the middle of a.. 50-some-contact run? Then a small group of girls, and one guy?, "I wish I could do that! I spend all day playing basketball, but look at this!!" :D

That was long.
That's what she said.
There is a reignited flame!
California in t-minus 7 days! I hope I can get in some semblance of shape by then.
Wish me luck (in the absence of back pain)!

2010-04-10T19:08:00.002-05:00

Hacky sack makes a cameo in Red Cliff :D
(Either at the end of the first movie, or the beginning of the second. I can't remember.)

2010-03-11T02:24:00.005-06:00

Had a decent session tonight. I'm still not producing strings. But I had a run out of the blue where I hit, first try, spinning rev whirl BSOS, gyro rev whirl BSOS, and dropped on rev tomahawk BSOS. That was epic for out of the blue.

I had a few new tricks last session too, some of which I got on video on the main page:
-bling blang (flip is new)
-blaze (flip is new)
-diving gyro mirage [both sides]
-footed blazing far rev whirl like cake

Close to flip stepping blender today. That's a hard one on flip >____<
Also, I finally got a new DVD burner and burned a couple copies of my HALF A DECADE OF ERIK CHAN DVD. First copy goes to Luis Monhollon. He sent me a copy of his DVD a while back, which was super cool. And second copy goes to me. And that's about that :D Haha. No, my girlfriend will prolly want one too.

DVD info:
117 minutes, 39 seconds
About 35 videos/chapters
All footbag videos of myself made by myself from 2005 to 2009.

2010-02-28T21:13:00.002-06:00

I've been trying to play lately. An hour here and an hour there. It's taking a lot to get back where I was. Holy. Like 20 contacts of anything is good right now. A couple shuffle contacts is good. A single big move is good. It's rough.

But I did randomly foot two cool flipside moves lately. Just now I footed flip whirr on second try. It hurt my knee a bit so I didn't try again, but...wow. I didn't think I'd ever be anywhere close to that @____@ I've hit regular once.. it was half a year ago in Montreal -- that was also pretty random. Also I footed flip blurry rev whirling swirl on second try a couple days ago. Cool. That one shouldn't be very tough.

I stayed up all night last night making my Erik Chan DVD from scatch. I'm so excited. Though I think I had a nightmare while I slept today that the quality was terrible. Haha. I think my DVD-burner is broked :( So tomorrow I think I'm gonna go buy another and get this done. Yeah!!!

A couple videos too.
A video that Ken made, immitating my style a while back.. like maybe a couple years already? We had this great plan at Worlds '08 for him to wear my braces and my clothes and do this better, but it seems like everyone saw through it pretty fast anyway. I didn't see another real opportunity to do this better in the near future, so decided to post it. Actually we were gonna do this at Worlds '07 too I think? Also at NYJ '09. Fail, fail, fail:

And the latest video from my original favourite player and ultimate idol in footbag, who hasn't really played in... many a moon. James "Defender of the Universe" Risden, laying it down:

2010-02-15T19:28:00.000-06:00

My girlfriend's friends/family are kind of awesome, and make music videos. When I move to Toronto again they are gonna film a footbag video of me.
Here's a sample of the stuff they do @______@

2009-12-15T17:11:00.003-06:00

I had a super fun session yesterday. I'm putting on some chub, so that means... time to play more footbag :p Back seems to be doing acceptably. I'm totally going for a Bevier-esque style. Today's Christmas Calendar vid by BrianBear is pretty cool and inspiring.

Some fun stuff I worked on yesterday:
-double calf bumping.
-hopovers (THAT IS ONE FUN TRICK!!!!) -- still yet to hit flip hopover swirl (BEST TRICK EVER???)
-inside-kick-set spinning and ducking
-knee bumping
-calf-bump-knee-bumping

Well, when I was playing it felt a lot more creative than my little list here looks. I did some combos like stepping sameside inside stall > hopover > far swirl. Calf bumping ducking clip > spin clip [repeat]. Double calf bumping rev whirl? I dunno. Stuff. It's a blast. I'd never done flip hopovers before, so that feels suuuuper fulfilling. Also, I played with Eclipses a bit. I find them hard to control.

I played in a little space with absolutely no freedom of movement, so hopefully if I can play today (knee hurts a bit, but feeling bad about the developing gut :( ) I'll have more room to do more spinning stuff. I wanna go back to lots of spinning and ducking like from when I played like this:

2009-11-09T16:31:00.003-06:00

My back pain is what's been preventing me from playing since my seize-up in the summer in Vancouver.

I've actually been playing pretty frequently [for me] -- like 2-3 times a week? Mind, for short periods like 20 minutes -- usually when my back pain tends to kick in debilitatingly. However, I've started a sort of regime for myself to follow in order to try to regain ability, stamina, and most importantly consistency. I decided on the number 20 somehow. And being able to consistently hit 20-contacts on command. So my main daily goal right now is a warm-up of 3 20-contact runs without drops. So, I catch after each 20 and go right into the next 20. If I drop I have to start over at the first set of 20. Osis is really inconsistent. I averaged about 6 :D

So, totally nothing of note, but to myself... ANYTHING is of note these days. Honestly. My back is fucked. Some things I did:
-ss mirage x5 > mirage x5 [repeat] (as a 20) > handcatch > pickups > handcatch > legovers
-osis x20 > handcatch > butterfly x20 > handcatch > pdx mirage > butterfly [repeat] x20 contacts
-[4 contact] mirage drill > pickup drill > legover drill > osis drill > butterfly drill > (pdx mirage > butterfly) drill
-5 rotations of spinning clipper > gyro clipper [repeat] drill (20 contacts)
-stepping clipper x3 > blurry clipper x3 [repeat]
-DLO > same butterfly [repeat] (11 contacts)
-drifter > same clipper [repeat] (11 contacts)

May have also done rev swirl in this way. Failed at the others -- hurt too much. I also did rev swirl > cloud kick > same rev whirl both sides. My record for cloud-kick-set op clipper is 9. I haven't tried that in a while, but it's super fun and something of which I'm gonna incorporate more.

2009-10-25T09:49:00.003-05:00

Been playing a little hack lately, like, not even tiltless, but tried this morning to do some tiltless and guiltless... man I'm out of shape @______@ Played with symple, which I've never touched before. That was weird. Tough! I hit symple mirage -- THAT was weird... thinking of doing more of that :D Wait... no... it was more like.. a mid-time clipper symp mirage set toe stall... like symposium with an extra plant. If I ever get good at hacky again I'll film it, so I can explain better?

My back has still been fucked since my last decent session in Vancouver in early September-ish? Trying to stretch it out. Gonna hopefully get serious about that. Any helps/tips would be really appreciated. I think I need to strengthen my abs so there is less tension in my back... does that make sense?

2009-10-07T19:10:00.002-05:00

Hey look it's me! :D
Fourkast[.com] Footbag Company

2009-09-29T02:21:00.002-05:00

The last couple days it's actually been autumn. That's not too conducive to hack. Well, it's okay, but it means winter is soon, which most certainly is not conducive.
I mean to start playing a couple times a week.
The last few sessions (I've only had a handful over the past couple months -- I think I've more or less posted about them here. Haha.) I've been frustrated by my inconsistency. This really hit home at Hackrifice: Snake Eyes on a Plane when I couldn't do a thing. I had lots of fun with foursquare, but I wanted to shred.
So I have this kind of plan that I will actually practice. NO!
Yeah.

I'm gonna start with basics and make sure than I can do, like, bail runs of 50 every attempt. There's some structure to it in my head that would be excessively arduous to explain. I just want consistency. That is the main thing that I have always lacked from my game. I'm one of those players who posts consistently fun stuff on video, but when it comes to shred, I'm 50% everything. It doesn't bother me a LOT in the long run since, honestly, the pleasure from hack that I derive is majorly from watching myself on video, more so than actually playing.

So, yeah, that's the plan.
I've taken a little sabbatical from the work life to concentrate on my passion for comics and drawing, and I'm working on a project that I'm enjoying. So in combination, my goal is to wake up and work out with hack every [second?] day and then spend a work day's worth on my artworks. It would be nice if I could focus my life on things that I care about rather than... making money. In a psuedo-hypocritical quote from Becky Cloonan, "Life ain't nothin but comics and money."

(I also really wanna make a hack video to a Turisas song. I have some footage from before my summer travels, so I wonder if that will be enough to put something together. I should check my tapes.)
It's my birthday soon, and what I'm most stoked for is to buy another bookshelf for the overabundance of graphic novels that is my heart of hearts. All I think about is how I will shuffle the contents of my room to make room for said behemoth.

2009-09-12T19:45:00.003-05:00

In Montreal for the End of Summer Jam.
It's my first time in the province. I'll try to recap some highlights:
-peeteration of back pain
-ducking symp mirage drill > paradon
-spinning rev whirl > blurriest > nice run
-whirr, first time (third try)
-superfly both sides (second time ever?)
-reverse mullet > stepping reverse whirl > handcatch > other side
-food > handcatch > food > handcatch (to end yesterday's light session)

..that all?
There are some good players here.
Johnny and Jay, Outsider, Ianek, Laroche, Mathieu[s], John Bagi, Greg Raymond... etc? I got some footage of Johnny and I'll make a mini special. He was... good. Was trying nuclear same whirl > symp whirling swirl [repeat]

2009-08-19T23:17:00.002-05:00

Just finished the big Wednesday jam with Sole Purpose. Lemme try to recap attendance:
Red Husted, Nick Landes, Scott Bevier, James Chance, Ben Schmaltz, Sam Colclough, Jared?. I'm totally forgetting people. Ben Schmaltz has a wiicckkeed game. He actually features in a video I made, like, 5 years ago from CSS4.

Okay, lemme try to remember some highlights. Ugh. My fingernails are really long from traveling with no nail clippers. It's kinda tricky to type :p Well not THAT long. But yeah. K, some highlights of my own. I think it was one of my best sessions in a long time, which in a way is frustrating, 'cause EVERY time I played with Flash the past three days I played crap. But as soon as I was in the other circles... bam. Frustrating. That's how my shred was with Penske too at Worlds 07, the last time I played with him. Anyhoo. Man. I don't even know. I played well. I asked Jenny to take inordinately more footage of me with her still camera than usual, so I look forward to that. Actually, before I hit the period on that sentence Jenn asked if I wanted the footage on my computer. Transferring now.

I will try to remember some highlights of others:
Bevier:
-flurry > dolomite [repeat] (dropped last trick)
-furious eclipse > same DLO > epic run

Ben Schmaltz:
-ridiculousness (seriously)

Red:
-blurry whirling swirl > hand catch > stepping whirling swirl

K, whatever.
These highlights do zero justice. Whatever. Ben was rippin.
Uhhh, gonna eat some food, get in the queue for a shower (man it was humid today... just imagine me more sweaty than usual. Erotic, no?) watch some Street Fighter 4, sleep and head off back to Canada. Busy times ahead.

2009-08-18T03:08:00.001-05:00

Just got into Portland today. Where footbag was born.
Jammed with Scott Bevier, Sam Colclough, James Jansen, Red Husted, and Nasty Nate Linscott. Scott was awesome as always. This one run with... everything? Red was pulling off some janiwalkers. Nick Landes has back pain but I think we will stick around until their next big shred session and hope that he's feeling it. They played some epic Street Fighter 4. Apparently Red owns. It makes me want to play because I never got into that game and it seems pretty classic. Anyway. I played okay. Oh, man, it was sick to finally meet Nate. I did a couple okay things. I ended a neat combo with blurry rev whirl > pdx blender > hand catch. I was, like, "No way". I did symp rev whirling butterfly first try (with a BSOS attempt). Also whirling swirl first try -- I was, like, hand catch yeah. I don't really have much left to say. Sam gave me and Jenn tarot cards or something. Haha. Wicked. Love that guy. We watched Dawn of the Shred. I'm in it. We were all three in it, actually, Bevier, Nate, and me. Cool. Gonna play every day. Hacky I mean. Shred house is fun.

2009-08-12T16:58:00.001-05:00

In Vancouver. Just had a warm-up session with Kevin Regamey. Hit locomotion for the first time. Almost flip, but only tried a couple times. Jorden's in town. Hoping to shred with him and Caro and Jeff and Alex soon.

2009-07-26T00:24:00.001-05:00

Losing interest in hacky, I think. Wel, mostly 'cause I'm out of shape and run out of energy sooo fast. I don't have energy to do the tricks and links that make me happy. Had a lame session with Manna. He is definitely far beyond me now. Just wow. I had a couple highlights, but nothing spectac:
-flip spender
-flip whirling swirl
-pdx blender BSOS
-almost food BSOS (first try)

Meh, not much to say. My girlfriend keeps making a million clips of me playing with her still camera, so I'm gonna put together something soon-ish. I also have lots of footage from before my trip. Anyhoo. Thought I'd minorly update.

2009-07-01T23:50:00.002-05:00

Well, Canada Day shred was okay. I've been so... out of shape-feeling lately. Like... I feel like I get sun stroke and nausea and cramps and stuff... it's really weird and I have to sit out. Also out of breath. I guess it will get better now that I will have more time to shred all summer.

Manna was off the hook. Just sick stuff laying down. Alpine food processor first try ever, and off the foot when I asked for flip. Lots of long runs, like, must have averaged 30-40 contacts. One must have been like 80. Oh healso hada run with like...8 5s or something? Blurry drifters, blurry whirls, tomahawks, etc.. I dunno.

I had some good shred, but kinda boring since I was sticking to with what I'm more comfortable on account of crowds and feeling crappy being shown up by Manna :p I'll try to recap a few:
-paradon > barfly [BSOS] + blurriest > spinning clipper [repeat]
-ps rev whirl > spinning clipper [repeat], and blurry rev whirl x2 > ps rev whirl x2 in a run.
-A run with gyro dlo and blurriest both BSOS I think.

I don't remember what else.
I'm mostly just posting for Ken :p Haha. Nothing too interesting footbag-wise for me lately.

2009-05-28T20:16:00.001-05:00

I had a super day today. Super.
So I was pretty pumped to play hack. Still bad stamina (where did that go?? Too much candy in my tummy??), but to work on that I tried to do, like, a few runs without a break and then short rest > repeat. Meh. Then I did 40 ripwalks inna row > hand catch first try. Which is probably my record. And ahead of time I was, like, "K, I'll try to get 40, then I'm good." And it was good. The 7th day.

2009-05-24T12:24:00.003-05:00

Uugghhhh.
I'm so out of shape. The last two times I've tried to hack I just had no energy to do anything :( It wasn't fun and I had to force myself to play. That's a crappy feeling, when footbag is my favourite thing.

In interesting news, my knee braces are finally falling apart irreparably, and I think I will buy new ones soon, like, this week some time. Should be a nice $160 investment... Ugh!

I had a straaange weekend. Ended up driving to the U.S.A. on a whim and getting stuck at the border for the day. Not a nice after-taste from my U.S.A. experience. Geez.

2009-05-02T18:19:00.002-05:00

Uhh, hit some stuff today, not a great session, but an okay one:
-gyro rev whirl > stepping rev whirl > gyro rev whirl > stepping...
-stepping rev whirl > rev mullet > stepping rev whirl > rev mullet (rolled off)
-gyro rev whirl > ps rev whirl > blurry rev whirl [repeat] (I think?)
-drifter > rev swirl [repeat] first try
-rev mullet x2
-rev mullet > bedwetter rolled off
-rubberman x2 first try?

And other stuff, maybe? My body is feeling pretty okay, considering. Oh, pixie paradon > rev mullet rolled off, and then other side attempt immediately after also rolled off. Oh yeah, also ended the session on a 126-contact run :)

2009-04-30T19:37:00.002-05:00

Oh, this is weird. I can't tell if my arms are tired or just cold.

So I just played around with a soccer ball a bit. Man, there is something magical about freestyle soccer. I feel like it is impossible to get tired. I mean it's like footbag basics, but even less effort, 'cause the ball bounces back up on its own. I mean, it's by no means easier, obviously, but the actual physical exertion... I can play this forever with no pain whatsoever :) I just strap some music onto my ears and go for hours. Here's some stuff I hit!:

-same mirage > same mirage
-atw-out > legover [bs] (BSOS, if you don't count the one little bounce that it touched the ground)
-atw-out x2 [bs]
-18 toe stalls
-mirage BSOS
-legover BSOS
-atw-out BSOS

Flip clipper is suuuper tough, but has given me some insight into my flip footbag form! Well.. not necessarily insight, but reason to seek insight. Fun stuff.

In non-hack news, life has been pretty bleeeehh, but apparently I start a new library job tomorrow, so that should pick up my spirits, albeit tucker me out. It will be nice to have some kind of purpose and or direction. Maybe it will give me to drive to finally work on my book? Or make me too tired to even consider it. Haha. In any case a couple months of work will be nice. And now I will hopefully be able to afford Montreal, though with the job it will severely handicap for how long I will be able to go :( I may have to go to USOpen with Manna instead. Or something.

Oh, I also modded my other pair of Climas (which took, like, 3 hours!!!!) So I'm stoked to try those out on Saturday (I tore through the sole finally on my black pair and subsequently my sock.. and toes). The Office! Woo!

2009-04-19T00:00:00.005-05:00

Had a pretty good session today with Manna and DEREK VANDALL for a bit. It was super cold (2 celcius). Well, starting out anyway, and on my hands. Later on it was a nice temperature minus the hand numbness (and the inability to stretch in such coldness).

Manna said it was an awesome session for him. For me it was good, but not awesome. Derek was playing okay, but he hasn't played in about half a year (he was just getting awesome again too!).

I'll try to recap some highlights:
-double diving clipper midstring by request (one of Manna's friends kept asking us to hit this, and it hit it, like, 20 contacts in when they were, like, "Double ducking!"
-double spinning clipper > ps rev whirl [both sides] (almost BSOS)
-spinning clipper > inspinning clipper [repeat] (not new)
-ddd > barfly [repeat] (hell yeah!)
-barfly > spinning rev whirl [repeat]
-fog > gyro mirage (dropped on the BSOS of the gyro mirage! (out of another fog of course!))
-pdx dlo > spinning clipper BSOS
-janiwalker! (second time ever, and first time on video! Can't wait to see!!)

Other okay stuff too. I should do more toe spinning and double spinning and inspinning. Apparently I am good at them. Also no pain!! Manna and I are gonna shred at 4/20 at the legislative building (Monday!)

Oh yeah! Also hit diving spinning clipper BSOS, like, second try. I've hit the trick before a couple times, but I was certainly surprised I pulled that off so easily. I wonder how clean they are though.

2009-04-11T20:18:00.004-05:00

Well, had outdoor session #2 today with Manna (we had a blizzard after last time and haven't been out since. It was the PERFECT temperature. I barely sweated at all. And I think we all know of my prowess as a sweat machine. Anyhoo...

I had a few highlights:
-Blurrier + blurriest both BSOS (prolly the first time BSOSing blurrier? Prolly the second time ever hitting blurrier? Haha.)
-barfly rake [both sides]
-spinning symple swirl [both sides] (first try for good side, and, like, second try for flip (and my flip is HORRID, so.. YEAH!))
-barfly > ddd BSOS
-mobius + gyro DLO both BSOS?
-10 unique spinning tricks inna row (spin clip > spin duck clip > spin butt > spin osis [repeat] > gyro clip > gyro clip
-some 50-ish contact runs (mostly boring)
-very little shin pain!!!

At our last session I sat out after, like, 20 minutes from shin pain. I gotta be 1) careful, and 2) doing some shin/calf strengthening/stretching. My knees are more or less fine, which is great news, but my bloody shins! Rah! I can never school, 'cause my shins only let me play once a week :( It's frustrating, because I know I could be so good, but I can't school those bigger tricks and components I'm not as good at. Anyway, outdoor shred should be nice. We saw Derek a bit and he plans to come out soon, so, hellz yeah! Can't wait for Andrew to get back and Ben Roscoe to come live here!! BAM!

Oh yeah, I also Windsored Manna on far rev whirling swirl first try (never hit it before) after he tried pdx whirling swirl :)

2009-04-03T20:37:00.003-05:00

Had a fun practice session with Manna today where we just fooled around and played HORSE and this other game we made up, kinda of like "combo numbers", I guess, if that makes sense without further explanation.

I owned in HORSE, which felt super great. Here are some combos I won with. You're allowed to switch direction of dexes if you can't do, so it could be reverse whirl for me instead of whirl or pixie instead of fairy, since I can't do fairy..
In second round, these first 4 were in a row without him hitting any (or something):
-sumo > pixie rev whirl
-blurry rev whirl > stepping rev whirl [repeat]
-fog > pixie whirl (?)
-blurriest > blurriest

-barfly > barfly
-ducking symp mirage > smog (I think?)
-blurriest > barfly
-diving symp mirage x2
-blurry ducking clipper > stepping rev whirl
-rev whirlygig x2

Maybe some more.
He also had a few combos that were tough for me that I was happy to hit!:
-pixie rev whirl > rev swirl > far swirl
-blazing legover > phoenix (we were both floored!)
-something > pdx torque..
-something > infinity swirl

We also started with Modified challenges, and here's what I posted in my thread there:
Had a challenge session with Manna and took some off the list:
-Spinning Osis > Rev Whirl > Gyro Diving Clip > Stepping SS Clip [repeat]
-Fog > Rev Whirl > Diving Clip > Spinning Butter [repeat]
-toe spinning ss mirage > diving mirage rpt
-toe diving spinning toe/mirage/pickup bs (Toe diving gyro mirage (footed other side a bunch))
-toe ss dlo>gyro mirage>rpt

Also was super close to a few others, I think a contact off for each:
-rev whirling rake>spin clip>rpt
-backside blur > backside smear > dimwalk [repeat]
-Ducking Far pickup > ss DLO > toe spinning clipper > diving pickup > rev whirl [repeat]
-Osis > Whale Tail > eggbeater [repeat]

And I hit "reverse whiz", but it was with a rev whirling set (I think I did it both sides?). I know that doesn't count, but we both tried downtime and it's gonna be an ankle-buster for sure... I hit regular whiz first try, which is about an infinite times easier.

Manna kept beating me in the numbers game, though.
We're gonna jam again tomorrow too. Should be fun.

2009-03-28T21:44:00.003-05:00

Had a session at the community club today with Manna.
Pretty rough for both of us, but I had some highlights (so did he):
-matador > ps rev whirl BSOS
-matador > ripwalk > matador
-5 barflies
-mantis BSOS
-far swirl > spinning clipper [repeat] (a combo I was really stoked for!)

Manna discovered that nuclear doesn't hurt his knees anymore, so he was pulling some out too. a run with matador BSOS and then a pdx tap, I think. He did some other BSOS stuff he was happy with, but I forget. He can post.

Spring Break!
We may live stream some time this week, since we will be jamming more than usual, on account of no school or work.

2009-03-12T22:08:00.002-05:00

I just felt a little discomfort and thought I might have an in-grown hair. But I thought of it in footbag lingo -- kind of like, "in-gyro" -- "I think I've got an in-hair." Then I chortled to myself.

It was much more funny in my head.

2009-03-08T00:26:00.003-06:00

Session with Manna was had.
It was a frustrating ALMOST GOOD jam. I couldn't make runs happen. But links were okay and big tricks were on. That's frustrating when you drop JUST as the run gets good.

I hit a milestone. I don't know if I've ever said that before, except when I started to be able to hit 20-contact runs on command (ha... ironic, today). I hit flip tapping DLO (in just a couple attempts) Man did that bloody feel good. There's a bit of story as to why it's a milestone for me.

I was first seriously injured in the spring of 2004. I had a sprained ankle before, but that was just for a month or 5 weeks or so. This injury in spring '04 was what I thought at the time to be a pulled groin. I even took off, like, a month from work because it hurt to walk. I went to, like, 5 different doctors, had accupunture, MRIs, xrays, athletic therapy, the works, and they never figured out what was wrong. I guess just pulled muscles? Torn muscles? Though nothing came up. So I stopped playing altogether for about half a year. I tried to play again in the winter, and started doing more spinning and ducking (hence my current style -- before this point I was more of a toe shuffle kind of player (and very one-sided)).

I avoided everything more or less. There are a couple of videos on the site (the double-angle sessions to Postal Service) that Andrew really likes that are from this time. I started pushing too hard and had to stop altogether again for another half-year or so. Repeat this right up until about this past summer where I seem to have been playing semi-consistantly where the pain is either bearable or bad, but not causing me to give up altogether.

So, the reason for that initial injury, or the cause rather, was trying to push my flipside of some bigger, hip-twisty tricks. Mostly a session where I was pushing flip tapping DLO and flip PS whirls (yes, regular whirls -- I did at one point do these...). I footed flip tapping DLO sooo many times that day, knowing it was a bad idea, but HAVING to hit it. I never did. Until now. That feels good. Bloody good.

I almost BSOSed it a couple times tonight, which will happen soon. Man, it totally just BARELY hurt! What else? I hit quantum rev whirl almost BSOS (both sides anyway). I don't think it's new, but certainly not common for me, but quantum and atomic are getting a comeback! Footed toe rev whirlygig for Kyle from Edmonton a couple times. Some epic eggbeaters runs (eggbeaters are finally almost owned! MAN eggbeaters feel good!) Torques still... elude(?) me like crazy, though... I gotta learn to hold the osis like Byrin. My crank sucks too, though. Umm, but back to eggbeaters. I can practically flip bedwetter on command. I don't have a flip wet dream (my new favourite trick, thanks to Aleksi!) Actually, in my Heartbeats video, my favourite clip is bedwetter > diving symp mirage BSOS, 'cause the second bedwetter > diving symp mirage is flip for both tricks!!! I love that. So this one epic run (not really epic, but for me, and eggbeater-wise) was something like bubbabeater > same egg > same egg > same egg, pdx egg BSOS (flip is almost harder than flip bed) and then ending on bedwetter > hand catch :D Felt goooood. Threw lots of same eggbeaters in runs too. It's seriously fun!

Well that was kinda a long one :)
Bubble tea and bath time!

PS: Oh, I also hit spinning rev > ps rev [repeat]. It wasn't the first time, but actually it was the first time I did it where I had to spin out of flip ps -- that felt super. I always thought I sucked at that. I guess not! I have loved the regular whirl version of this combo SO MUCH since Eli's section on Where The Ripwalk Ends. Man does he make that look immaculate. One of the first times I hit it was in a circle with just Nate Pipenberg, and I totally didn't get props :( Umm, I also did a bit of nuclear pain-free today. Some matadors, which are totally harder for me than sumos. I think I did both tricks BSOS (though not one run).

2009-03-05T20:35:00.003-06:00

Had a kinda frustrating solo session. I barely had any runs. I did some fun requests on UStream though. My favourite was zulu clipper > spinning mirage > tapdown [repeat]. My flip atomic makes that tapdown reeeaaal awkward, so it was cool to have to do that mid-combo.

I'll try to recap some higlights:
-Spikehammer > dimwalk [repeat]
-Mobius > ripwalk BSOS
-Scorpion's tail > handcatch [repeat]
-A long run with 3 gyro DLOs, blurry rev whirl, rev whirlygig, and spinning ducking clipper > little apple(?) (this one after my camcorder stopped recording :(

Wetdreams were ON, as were eggbeaters in general, but I couldn't seem to link runs, as I've already complained.

In other news, here's another blog I've started with my best friend to showcase our "art": we.hackrifice.com

2009-03-02T21:24:00.004-06:00

I had an okay solo tonight. About 2.5 hours.
Nothing really seemed off. Actually, yeah, nothing. It was wicked.
I did a bunch of torque drills for Jay, which felt goood (torque is definitely my weakest downtime component).
-Ducking clipper > torque > diving clipper > torque [repeat], ending on a mobius (I think, actually dropping the BSOS mobius)
-Torque > ripwalk [repeat] ending on the other mobius
-Torque > rev whirl > dyno [repeat]

I did some eggbeater stuff:
-Pdx egg > dimwalk [repeat] (first try)
-Bedwetter > dimwalk [repeat] (first try ever?) (dropped BSOSing fog)
-Pdx egg > ss egg BSOS
-Spinning egg (only one side, but it was there on the other)

What else did I do?
Some spinning stuff. Inspired by Ken's 7 unique spinning tricks, I wanted 10 inna row. Not so tough, but to make it interesting... maaan. So I did:
-spinning clipper > merkon > inspinning clipper [repeat] > gyro clip > spinning ducking clipper (8)

Wait.. that may be all. I thought I started one with. Naw, I dunno. Whatever.
Stepping ducking was there almost any time I tried. Especially ripped warriors midstring. And my fave -- blurry ducking legover. Whaaaat else? Ended on an okay 48-contact run? I was aiming for 100, but I guess I tried to do too few BOPs. Oh, I also warmed up with a rad tiltless run at the beginning of the session. Something like: Mirage x3 > same mirage x3 [repeat] > legover x3 > same legover x3 [repeat] > pickup x3 > same pickup x3 [repeat], osis > pdx mirage > osis > mirage [repeat] > osis > far legover > osis > legover [repeat] > osis > far pickup > osis > pickup > osis [repeat], osis > far osis [repeat], and some spinning and ducking clippers.

Fun times, but my back is sore like crazy (I kinda lathered up the Tiger Balm like butter beforehand.) Bath time for me!

2009-02-18T21:15:00.003-06:00

Oh lordy.
I am in so much pain.
I just had a wicked UStream session that I thankfully decided to film. I hit so much awesome stuff. I don't think I can even remember most of it. But let me try:
-Bedwetter > diving symp mirage [BSOS] (a request for bedwetter BSOS)
-Spinning ducking PS mirage BSOS (I think? And other stuff in there too?) (request for Spinning ducking PS mirage)
-Blurry drifter > ripwalk [repeat] > blurry rev whirl > stepping rev whirl > blurry rev whirl... or something? More tricks in there somewhere (request for blurry drifter BSOS)
-spikehammer > tripwalk (spikehammer is very elusive for me)
-blurry ducking clipper > spikehammer (other spikehammer)
-alpine sidewalk almost BSOS
-rev whirlygig x2 > handcatch > starting on other side (request for rev whirlygig) -- only done flip rev whirlygig x2 a couple times ever
-rev maelstrom BSOS, with rev whirlygig (request for rev tomahawk)
-Blurriest > blurry rev whirl > blurry rev whirl > blurries... [both sides]
-Mantis > handcatch > flip mantis (request for Mantis)

Lots of other stuff.
Wrecking mirage off my foot a ton. It doesn't seem hard at all. I even had double spinning mirage off my foot a few times. My good wrecking mirage is my flip double spinning... haha. Funny how much difference that 2-add makes. Overall I played really good and hit most of my requests which felt awesome. It's probably my best session since chicago for sure.

Oh, it's getting late, I gotta bathe.

2009-01-31T23:02:00.003-06:00

Had a fun session with Manna today on UStream. Not a huge turn-out, and the last half there was nobody, but that just made less pressure, which was great since I couldn't link for the life of me. Nothing too much of note, except:
PARADON SWIRL BOTH SIDES!!!!!!!!

I dunno.
I'm not too good at double downs and I've gotta be the worst footbagger alive at regular swirls. Felt pretty frikkin amazing. Super controlled too. The symple swirls are really coming along! The parado swirls were also super cool, 'cause Manna was trying and then asked if I wanted to race, and I was, like, "Are you crazy?" Since he is, like, a master of swirl tricks. But I hit both sides and he still hasn't hit it :P

2009-01-29T23:15:00.004-06:00

I had a fun solo session today on UStream.
I had some awesome viewers, like Ken, Lise, Reid Strellner, and my best friend who doesn't really know footbag. I didn't really do too much. I meant for it to be a practice session, but that's really hard when there are people watching. They gave me lots of requests, though, and that was super fun. They weren't very tough and I didn't hit most of them. Haha.

My far swirls are really coming along, and that feels wicked. I have always been incompetent at swirls. Like I can't even regular swirl. But I did far swirl BSOS a few times. Infinity swirl > handcatch to other side, first tries. Same with far rev swirl. Also same with rev whirling swirl. I think also same with rev swirl > far swirl both sides. And last session with Manna I footed far swirl > rev swirl both sides. Awesome feeling. I did quite a few double downs. For me. Also torques and eggbeaters, which is what I meant to practice anyway. My knees are a bit sore, so I should lay off bigger tricks and double downs next time. And the swirls. I meant to not do those this time actually.

What else? I dunno.
Tomorrow is my last day on the job, so that's a little sad, since I love it there so much and they love me. But I kinda look forward to working on the children's book I'm illustrating on Monday all day. I also bought a wireless network printer/scanner today for that, so hopefully lots of drawings to come. I'm gonna start a blog just for that.

K, that's all for now.
I look forward to Saturday shred.
Tune in on UStream for our live webcam session -- Manna and me.
Later!

EDIT: Also, here is the trailer for the video I should be getting soon-ish, from France:

2009-01-22T21:30:00.003-06:00

I bought some new non-slip hack mats on a whim today. They will stick on my hardwood floor (unlike the foam ones), and they should also work well outside. They are "indoor/outdoor mats", with that grippy "hair" stuff like for wiping your muddy boots. We'll see how they work on Saturday. Manna's Lavers are super slippery on my floor, so this might be nice for him. I was thinking more for my knees though when I saw them.

I also ordered that French DVD, finally. It has Vasek in Paris, which is, like, some of my favourite footage ever. It cost me, like, $60 or something though, with the Euro-to-Canadian exchange and the limited shipping option. Here's Vasek in Paris to whet our appetites:

Also, my brother and I are big into the Underworld movies. We are baffled by how everyone we know thinks they are terrible. For reals? We are gonna go see it on opening night tomorrow:

2009-01-12T22:47:00.002-06:00

I played for the first time since... Chicago I guess. Well, I tried to once before, but I was sick and it kinda hurt, and I was stiff and stuff. Today was a super laid-back session. It was really nice and just fun. I didn't really do any runs. The only one was when I decided to just do a long run more for exercise purposes than the usual "I wanna be awesome" or "feel good" footbag.

I mostly schooled torques. They're super weak for me. But I managed two neat things that I'm proud of:
-osis > torque X6 (although maybe 4? I'm not 100%
-torque > ripwalk [repeat]

Nothing great, and that was probably the ONLY uptime stuff I did. It was all downtime. I actually did most downtime stuff -- DLOs, eggbeaters, double downs, drifters... All mostly pain-free. It was fun.

Other than that, I had quite a good day overall. The weekend was ridiculously terrible, but my besty came and made it all better, and that was fantastic. Oh yeah, so I was gonna try to UStream tonight. It was super frustrating and I ended up completely reformatting with a new version of Windows... Ugh. It should be able to happen by next session. Saturday-ish, I guess, with Manna.

2008-12-30T15:34:00.006-06:00

Just got back from New Years Jam, 2008.
I'm so glad that I went. Crappy shit went down on Christmas Day and crying for about 12 hours straight had me seriously considering canceling my flight. It started out kinda slow and I felt too out of my element for comfort, but the last couple of days were just fantastic. I just got back from the airport about half an hour ago. I felt this amazing high on the plane like everything in life was perfect, and I just smiled to myself looking out the window with an empty seat beside me. Sitting down here at my computer the crappiness is creeping back in and I'm losing that high real quick, so let me recap while I'm still feeling it.

I flew out from Winnipeg at 9 AM on Friday, Boxing Day, to Montreal (connecting flight after a last-minute change from the following day (to achieve maximum NYJ goodness)). Everything was fine and on time. They sprayed the plane down with alcohol with a firetruck hose to prevent freezing, which I never remember before witnessing. I didn't have to wait long in Montreal. Not long enough to really go get a meal, which was fine, since not waiting is ideal. (Tangent: Blogger's autosave feature is really spectacular!) But then my connecting flight to Chicago was delayed about 4 hours or so. I was sitting beside and elderly woman who seemed nice at first, but then she started getting exasperated and critical about everything and was completely pessimistic, and I tried to ignore her.

I got into Chicago fine. I waited for my bag, glancing around to see if I recognized anybody. Finally saw Tom Kotsatkos (right spelling?) standing looking for me. I got my bag and he pointed to a few metres away where there was waiting Honza, Evan, Ben, and Alex from Stanford. We walked to Tom's car and he drove us to the hotel. It was crazy foggy and you couldn't see anything beyond, like, 100 metres in any direction. Wacky, and fun. We heard that Mathieu's flight was canceled and that he was stranded in some random city in the U.S.A.. We stopped at a grocery store and got some food. I ended up with granola bars, crackers, and bananas and apples, and apple juice. It was a perfect haul that kept me going until the last day (and beyond!) We went to the hotel and... I kinda got messed up on the elevators, but then ended up getting to the right floor and walking into a shred session. I saw Zac Miley. Saw some other people, and saw Dave, whom I was really surprised to see, since he wasn't listed as a confirmed attendee. Exciting! Also Scott Bevier, Henry... I completely forget what happened next... I think I just watched shred that night and felt really alienated, finally connected with my roommates, probably watched Eric's DVD and then... went to bed? Surely there was more. I don't remember, though. Oh yeah, right, then Dave was shredding later... alone I think? Maybe started with Zac and Matt Kemmer? Anyway, one combo that I remember Dave hitting was symp bubbabeater > dolomite > superfly [repeat] (to a big run with, like, blaze > reactor > food processor? somewhere in there). Oh, a couple other highlights from then: nemesis > blurriest swirl, pixie paradon swirl (non-symp) -- someone requested this on Matt's live webcam broadcast from a couple days later.

We (Eric Chang and Waylon? Yeah, just three of us at this point) woke up at 9-ish and went down to the event site (Holiday Sports Festival). Nobody but Scott Davidson was there. He didn't remember me. I kinda sat around for a while and people veerrry slowly filtered in. A circle began with, like, Danny Petrick, Grant Mooney, Frank Sinatra, and Waylon? Something like that. A wave of people came in at once: Emily, Mike Hansen, and Reid Strellner whom I was really excited to meet (and some others). I met Reid, and apparently it was awkward, though that's me in a nutshell, so I'm not surprised. I soon played in a circle of him, Scott Davidson and alternating Ken and Matt Cross, or something like that. I love Reid's game, and he seemed so super humble and nice, he was definitely perhaps my favourite to meet for the first time. Later on (maybe the next day) he revealed that he feels weird around me, I forget the exact words, but in the context I think he meant in the same kind of way that I would feel around, like, Jim. That was pretty cool, since I respect his game so much. I started out pretty slow, not expecting much from my preceding 2 months of crap shred, but then I started busting some harder combos and runs and got props from Scott Davidson almost every run. That was wicked. I also really dig Scott's game and really like watching him shred. One run I hit in that circle was something like spinning rev whirl > stepping rev whirl > blurry rev whirl > step rev whirl > blurry rev whirl > rev tomahawk x 2 > blurry rev whirl x2 > rev tomahawk > rev toma... I dunno. I started the first two tricks, had the rev whirl war 2 in there, rev tomahawk x2, and then dropped on the fourth rev tomahawk... so, basically, yeah. Something that me and the other Canadians noticed at the end of the day when we were kicked out of the festival (every day at 4... had no idea why we were being yelled at to leave...) was the high black population. Like, for reals, at least 90% of people I saw in Chicago were black. 99% as we were leaving the festival. I only noticed and mention it because where I'm from it's rare to see one black person, as multicultural as Winnipeg may be.

That was basically that day.
The next day, Sunday, Ianek asked me to judge circle finals. I sat and watched. It was cool. Zac Miley is super consistent. So is Jay Boychuk. For one run he dropped on three rotations of rubberman... Oh, just before competition started, Jay offered to give me a lesson on swirls (I'd asked him the other day if he could help me, I think? Which means that he, and Johnny, and Rishell showed up that day? Yeah, I think so. I was shredding on the far side of the area and saw them arrive and went to get my hugs.) It totally helped and I hit some nice far swirls really controlled. I also later hit rev whirling swirl a couple times first try, which felt super. Also, my knees didn't hurt, just like he said they shouldn't! That was really cool. It was kind of my first real time spent with anyone. Something I noticed was how I somehow repelled company. Like I would go sit by people and minutes later they would get up to go somewhere else, and invariably I felt like I was really alone, which I kind of embraced, since it's nothing different from my every day life (enter self pity here). So the time spent with some people I really like really, really made the weekend for me, starting with this little interaction with Jay, who is such a sweet guy.

Oh, I'm kind of mixing up days here, but the previous night was supposed to be Chicago-style deep-dish pizza night with CIC. I wasn't hungry and feeling the sort of travel sick that I get, so Tom let me and Waylon kind of "split" pizza. We each had a slice, I think. It was yummy and wished I'd paid the whole price so I could eat more. I was feeling especially isolated in the suite where this was happening, on account of my lack of socializing skills, and felt really, really crappy resultantly, so I got up and just left. I went down to the conference room which Steve rented for us for late night shred (I guess someone had shown me earlier where it was) to see if anything was happening, since I find it easier to socialize in a footbag atmosphere (as opposed to a party atmosphere which is the complete opposite of "my element"). I don't think much was happening? Oh yeah, there was a little circle. Then Johnny and Rishell showed up. Johnny played for, like, 10 minutes and I sat and talked with Rishell which was nice. Rob Creel was playing, and his friend was sitting with us too. She seemed nice. Then Tom Mosher came and started charming the pants off of us all. What a charismatic guy, that. It's so hard to not smile when he's about. Johnny hit nuclear diving gyro mirage. So anyway, after shred, Johnny and Rishell had missed the pizza, and were thinking of going to get their own. Chris Dean was gonna go with to get beer, and I said I wouldn't mind more pizza, since I wanted some anyway, so we 4 went off in search of these things. It took forever, but it was a nice little adventure, and I really liked spending time with Johnny and Rishell, as always. Johnny was charged, like, a bajillion dollars to leave the hotel parkade with Jay's car though... stupid. What a stupid expensive hotel.

So back to the Sunday. After the events and our being kicked out again, Jay and I decided to go get food. On our way out, Ianek met us and recommended Chinatown, from whence he and some other Montrealers had just returned. We walked the straight line to Chinatown and talked all about random stuff. I feel really comfortable with Jay. He's... I wouldn't say "laid back" (if you've ever watched him shred solo you know exactly what I mean), but I guess we are on similar wavelengths. We found a Chinese restaurant and ordered some food. We just grabbed it and walked back to the site to eat while watching shred. It was great, though I was full so fast. After eating half of my portion (we split two dishes), I ran upstairs to get my shred gear, 'cause I was stoked to play. Johnny was playing, and people were starting to realize this (needless to say is that excitement ensued). I came back and started playing with Mathieu and a couple others. I started a run with a couple clippers and maybe some other 2s, but went straight into infinities and then other shred in my first contact -- I usually take a while to warm up, and I probably should have, but I was soooo excited to be playing! Soon the other two players petered out and it was just Mathieu and I. He was playing very sub-par and I realized this and could see the frustration in his features, and felt really bad. I always feel a little awkward around Mathieu though, kind of like I'm not sure if he likes me or not, like maybe he doesn't? Like he'd rather talk to anybody else other than me. Maybe it's just my lack of confidence among other issues. I played really well this night. I can't remember what I hit, but lots of my bigger stuff in nice runs and stuff. A few moments later, it was just Johnny and Ianek in the circle next, and Johnny asked if we wanted to just make one. It was fun, but then Mathieu filtered out and Dave came in. It was super fun, and I was busting hard, and got lots of props, but then as EVERYONE stopped to watch this circle that I was in, I started to feel crazy self-conscious and unwelcome and I was running out of tricks and felt judged on account of only ever doing reverse whirl tricks, especially since players like Honza, and Evan, and Ben, and Flash were watching... Talk about pressure. I stuck with it though, 'cause like Ken told me later, "It's basically the best seat in the house." They all busted huge, though I didn't feel RIDICULOUSLY behind Ianek, so that was a bit reassuring. Then Johnny and Ianek both left and it was just Dave and me... fun, but... man. At that point I could FEEL how invisible I was. Then Evan and Ben stepped in and I was just, like, "No more embarrassment!" I don't remember any highlights from this circle, though there were a bunch from earlier on. At one point, like, every run I had was great, and that felt REALLY good in that circle with everyone watching! I left and played with Matt Kemmer, who is also super nice and super awesome at shred. The other day I saw him hit void > blurry torque with perfect form. He later told me that in this circle of just him and me for about 45 minutes, was his best shred all weekend. That was cool and I felt kinda honoured. He hit void > void and lots of tough, cool stuff, with great form. I hit some good stuff too, but I was COMPLETELY wiped by this point, and just pushing tougher tricks and combos, not caring about runs really. I hit alpine blurry rev whirl BSOS, spinning DLO > ducking symp mirage > pixie rev whirl BSOS, blurry torque > far rev swirl (just off my foot first try, was super cool, and so not what I usually do). I was sick of my rev whirls at this point and was trying more drifter stuff and stuff I never do, kinda inspired by Matt's drifter-heavy game. I did some barflies and paradons, since at one point he was, like, "I never see you do those." I did lots of stuff that I forget now.

Anyway, then there was request contest. Ken asked if I was competing, and maybe someone else asked too, and I said no, but then Ianek asked, and I was, like, "No", and he was, like, "Come on.", and so I was, like, "Yeah, okay." So I actually competed for once. I'm glad I did. It was really fun and laid-back. I was out as soon as the combo was challenging (I wish I'd tried the other combo, which I'm prolly better at), but I didn't care -- it was fun. I dropped trying blurry drifter > rev tomahawk (Ianek said I could replace whirls with rev), the easier combo was smog > torque... silly me. Oh yeah, one run I had in the epic circle was: blurry rev whirl x2 > reverse whirl war 2 > blurry rev whirl > rev whirlygig (flew off my foot). I kinda own those tricks, but... it's really the only "tough" stuff I can do consistently. Oh, I think the day earlier with Scott Davidson, I had a run where I did, like, blurry rev whirl > ps rev whirl > blurry rev whirl x2 > ps rev whirl > blurry rev whirl > other "tough" stuff?.

The next day, Monday (the last day), I was planning to save myself for night shred and not shred at all during the day. I was super sore, but had been stretching adequately, and felt good (if that makes sense...). The night before Ken had said a few times that he wanted me to go sightseeing with him and Adrienne. I thought that was super sweet. Like the first time he mentioned it, I was, like, "Oh, that's really nice, but it seems like just kinda something someone would say." And then he invited me a couple more times, and I just felt like, "Hey. This is an awesome weekend and there are people here that I really like a lot. And I wish every day was like this." But then I went upstairs for the night (Eric wanted to sleep and I had the key, and shred was dying down) and forgot to coordinate the next day (where to meet, etc) with him. So I called from Eric's phone and left a message. I didn't hear from him that night. Umm, before I went upstairs, Mike Hansen called me over saying that Manna wanted to say hi to me. I didn't really understand what was going on, but apparently Matt Cross had set up a live webcam broadcasting shred, probably of that epic circle. Maybe I was on the webcam? That would be kinda neat if any of my good shred was there. So I was, like, "No way! Cool! Manna!" And I went over and waved on the webcam and then saw that Windsen Pan also said hi to me. So neat. So yeah, then upstairs Eric and I decided to split the cost of the $10 internet. I just really needed to check an email that would determine the state of my fragile heartache, which I mentioned to Eric for some reason. I think we watched Eric' DVD again tonight before bed.

Then in the morning, I slept later, I was just ridiculously beat. I played my hardest for hours straight. Just so hard. Man. I ate a bunch of bananas to help my aching. Apparently that helps hacky cramps. So I woke up and everyone but Rob Creel had left for the site. We went down and Eric told me that Ken had calledand said to call him back. I did on Eric's phone, and we figured stuff out and that I was gonna meet him and Adrienne at the art institute. Eric was driving Honza to the airport and said he would drop me off on the way. Jay came along to keep Eric company, which was sweet of him. They dropped me off at the institute, and Eric, generous as he is, offered to lend me his phone to get in contact with Ken inside. I got inside and connected with them. We walked around and looked at some art. And then after a bit went and sat down for some lunch in the cafeteria, which was really nice. I liked to just hang with them. There's something about hanging with a couple that is so much nicer than just hanging with one person because it's kind of like saying you're absolutely not a third wheel, because we want to spend time with you. Like it's not just obligatory hang-out. We figured out some stuff and ended up walking to Millenium Park to check out the bean and stuff. We had a really nice walk and just chat about nothing in particular, though I didn't feel overly awkward, which is a feat in itself for me. I really enjoyed my time with them.

After that, we went back and everyone was going to Chinatown for dinner. I had just eaten with Ken and Adrienne, and wasn't hungry, so when I went up to the hotel room, there was Zac, Matt, and Jay shredding by the elevators (a shred scene you will see many times in videos soon to come!) I just hung with them and Eric filming. Zac and Matt soon stopped altogether and it was just Jay "The Machine" Boychuk solo shredding with us watching for, like, an hour, literally not stopping to take a breath. He is hilarious to watch shred solo. He just cursed non-stop, like... more swears than tricks hit. No doubt. Hahaha. Matt and I had many a laugh. He hit a couple requests of mine: far swirl > rev swirl [repeat], far rev swirl > swirl [repeat], ...and something else? At one point, too, Matt thought it would be funny to hold Jay's hand while Jay hit a janiwalker. I thought it was really funny. Then Zac held Jay's other hand, and they made a triangle while Jay hit janiwalker. Crazy kid. He shredded a bit more and then, more sweaty than me (possible???), dashed into an elevator and smeared his body all over the mirrored walls. It was hilariously disgusting. Zac and Matt were gonna go for food. I wasn't hungry, but Jay was gonna go for a swim, and I wasn't doing anything, and then thought it would be nice to spend some time with these guys too. So we ended up going to White Castle since I'd never been there before (not existing in Canada). I tried a teeny burger and fries, just to try it, and it was great. Really yummy! Zac gave me one of his. Apparently you buy these in, like, boxes of 10 and stuff... We sat outside and ate. It was kinda cold, but it was nice. Then we walked back and... oh yeah, a whole bunch of people ended up watching Eric's DVD again in our room. It was really neat. It was lots of people watching. I told Eric he should have filmed the reactions. Then after everyone went to sauna. After THAT, I was hoping for that last day shred that I had saved up for. It never happened, but Dave was gonna do 2-bag shred to show-up Anssi (in fun, of course). So no shred on the last night. Disappointing, but fun to watch Dave anyway. Here's some 2-bag stuff he hit:
blurry whirl x2
blurry whirling swirl (my request)
ripped warrior
montage
blurriest [both sides]
PS whirl > PS whirl (I think?)

Then Johnny showed up to watch. Dave was trying atom smasher x2, which he felt was way harder than any of the others, on account of catching 2 bags on a teeny toe surface. After trying for, like, 15 minutes or so, he asks Johnny if he wants to shred and try this combo. Johnny takes his pants off and without any warmup whatsoever, and after saying, "I'm not gonna hit this, I suck.", continues to hit it first try. This preludes a "sick drill session" with the two. I can't really remember the exact combos, but there will be another Dave Clavens DVD for sale in the near future with all of this stuff on it and much more. Some rough ideas of what drills were hit could be:
skull smasher > smoke > nuclear same mirage [repeat] (no... but a harder variation...)
nuclear same whirl > whirr > whirlwalk [repeat] (again, not exact combo, but something like this)
tombstone > gravedigger [repeat] (both sides for Dave)

It wasn't as fun to watch as the two of them just shredding, but they seemed to have fun and push each other. Power and style. So then I kinda wound-down with my roomies and watched some shred. Then went to bed. In the morning Dave and I got together and trained to the airport together. We figured out our stuff and then just chilled, waiting for my plane to board. He showed me a ton of card tricks for the first time. It was really cool, and he let me take a video of one. Awesome stuff. And now I am home. Recapping kinda jolted the awesome factor, but overall there is some really life-changing crap happening that is really, really hard to deal with and I'm having a real rough time. I'm feeling super bummed and not sure how to deal with New Years. My grandma is having us over, which could be nice, but I'm, like, super lonely, and kind of really need to be with someone and have some fun. I don't really have friends in Winnipeg, but I'm gonna call one that I see a couple times a year and see what's up.

Anyway. I may be going to shred with the crew last minute right now, so I'm out! Thanks for New Years Jam everyone!

EDIT: Shred was really bad for me and Andrew. May film a Manna special instead of shredding on Saturday. I had one notable run with vortex > spinning rev whirl, spinning rev whirl x2, and spinning rev whirl > mobius on the other side.

2008-12-15T23:03:00.002-06:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081215:
Definitely one of the worst sessions to date. Andrew was under the weather too, but he has an excuse. I have been for months. Weeks at least. I'm surprised that I actually have highlights. They don't deserve to be a different colour, 'cause it shouldn't look like I had a good session by any count, so: Blurry reverse whirl > spinning reverse whirl [repeat] > reverse tomahawk, first try; gyro rev whirl + spinning rev whirl both BSOS, one run (I never do gyro). Yup, that's seriously ALL I did all session (3 hours...)

Manna and Andrew each got me a MOTW, so expect those tomorrow. Maybe I should just post one and save the other so when we miss a week I actually have something :p Manna hit fairy same revup, and Andrew hit fairy dolomite. Oh, Andrew also hit alpine fog for the first time ever. Second try. Wicked.

I've been on a Terry Fox kick lately. What a hero. I just read a biography/memorial book today. Wonderful. Makes me wanna do something like Shred for Savvy with footbag. And just be an awesome person in general. That's all I've got. I had better get over this crappy footbag streak before New Years Jam [which I'm attending in Chicago on the 26th-ish]. Dang... a week and a half? For reals? Oh geez! I should do Christmas shopping... Oh, my job is wicked. I'm a school librarian. The teachers and everyone loves me, the kids love me, and the girls are in love with me. It's wicked. The other two librarians are treating me to lunch on Friday apparently. And I know, like, half of the kids names, and they always wave and say hi to me in the halls. It's rad. My current career aspiration, at the moment, however, is to be a children's book illustrator.

2008-11-29T22:20:00.002-06:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081129:
I played with Manna today. Andrew came too, but injured himself on a warm-up run, on a grifter. It was pretty sad, and he just stretched a bit and then left, like, half an hour in :/ Poor Andrew. Hopefully he will be out again next week.

It was an interesting session for me. Somewhere between neat and awesome. Prolly closer to neat. I had crap runs again, but had more neat big trick-ish highlights. I decided to try double downs to see how they would affect my knees. And bam, they were oooon. Awesome! Probably the best I've ever played with double downs. I'm gonna own them soon. So some highlights:

-stepping mirage > paradon > blur > paradon [repeat] (dropped on the last trick though)
-barfly > blurriest BSOS (dropped on perhaps my first attempt at spanishfly ever... super gimpy!)
-fog > dimwalk > haze > dimwalk > fog (was doing some fogs real well and thought, "Hey, maybe I could do that drill!" And I totally can! I think that was first try.)
-haze > pixie clipper > haze > pixie rev whirl
-haze BSOS mid-shuffle, and also a bedwetter?
-bedwetter > ducking symp mirage BSOS
-twirl > spinning clipper [repeat] (first try again, but on video)
-double spinning clipper > "PS" rev whirl [both sides] (also BSOSed DSC for the first time in a while. I never do them because my weak side is quite weak and so I don't do god side, and so I don't do them at all. Haha. Weak was really on today though, so expect more of that.)
-blurry rev whirl > fog BSOS (and also a haze in the same run?)
And also some neat combo runs where I did stuff that isn't usual for me that I got big props for. I can't remember at all, but all of this is on video and will be in the Christmas Calendar hopefully.

I think I broke two toenails. Ouchy. The same nail on either foot.
I also decided to try a MOTW combo, since we haven't had one in a while (though we got one on film last week -- just haven't had time to upload it). I tried mobius > rev tomahawk > rev tomahawk > mobius, and footed the last mobius on first try! That was cool. Torques is definitely my weak point. It is by far the hardest for me to learn. Also swirl tricks (including rev swirl). Though I AM catching onto torques more or less. Manna mentioned after the session that I did an "average amount", which for me is quite a bit. I did some pdx torques... I dunno.

On some other notes, Manna and I have started a tradition of playing Rock Band after sessions. This was the second time. It's pretty fun. Would be more fun with more Hackrificers! Maybe this can be a selling point for Derek to come out :p Umm, and today I bought my ticket to Chicago for New Years Jam, which is possibly the first tournament that I have ever gone to where there wasn't anyone else from Winnipeg? Oh no, wait, CSS4 also. Second. Wow.

Anyway, a fun day!
I'm about to go play some Star Wars: Force Unleashed, which I haven't played yet, and I'm quite excited! I also just acquired the newest version of Premiere, so that should be wicked and prevent glitches (particularly in sound) in future videos (I HOPE!!) K, signing off.

2008-11-25T23:03:00.002-06:00

I played for about 45 minutes today after work. I just fooled around and did basic stuff, 'cause I was pretty stiff, then stretched halfway through which was really nice. I did hit spinning osis > ripwalk > gyro osis > ripwalk [repeat], which seemed really easy and natural. I guess I have added stepping out of osis to my arsenal. Oh, I did spinning osis > blurry ducking clipper at the last Saturday session too at some point. I fooled around with regular swirls a bit. I forget how I ended up there. I cannot swirl for the life of me. So it was suuuper satisfying to force myself to hit 5 swirls each side (not consecutively, are you crazy??) and may have hit far swirl each side. Man that makes rev swirls seems like cake. But now a few hours later, my one knee is suuuuuper tender. Like, sucky, and I shouldn't push swirls so much :/ I wanna be able to lay down far swirls like Jay Boychuk. Man, what a sick, styley trick.

That's all I've got.
We watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist tonight. It was fun.

2008-11-23T22:00:00.003-06:00

Hey, it's good to know people read!
I've been very occupied this past month and barely getting on the computer or anything. We played yesterday as you can read in Andrew's and Manna's blogs. I think Marita and I played once during the week too for just an hour or so. Yeah, just before The Office and Bubble Tea night on Thursday. And played last Saturday with Manna too. Oh wait, I think last Saturday was Manna, Joel, and Marita? Or the week before.

Anyway, yeah, like they both said, I filmed. I didn't play as well as they both made it seem though. I was super frustrated. I did hit some neat things here and there, but I had crap for about 80% of the session. Like 2 moves > drop. A lot. I'll recap some highlights from last week's and yesterday's sessions. Actually, I tried to just think of stuff and can't really. There is some on video though. But, yeah, Manna was on fire. He has a lot of runs in the video. One highlight I got of myself on video from last week was porque > reverse mullet (just barely missed BSOS). I've watched that on video so many times. Hehe. I don't have much to say. I did some illusion stuff again and Andrew said it was clean lots, and told me how to tell. Also I started doing flails out of nowhere, which I haven't done in, like, 5 years or so. I had a couple neat combos with that, like, bubbabeater > same flail > torque, blurry ducking legover > same flail > diving symp mirage > symp pixie > same flail (or something like that?). My knees kinda hurt a touch from all the symp stuff. Yeah, nothing much else to say right now. More stuff when I have time. Thanks for reading!

2008-11-11T23:18:00.004-06:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081111:
Remembrance Day shred.
Had another laid-back session. Was gonna shred with Marita, but she got an unexpected long distance phone call. I played about 1-1.5 hours. It was really fun. Pain-free again, though I felt tenderness and avoided drifters for my hip, and big stepping tricks for my shins. I did lots of different things. I'll cap some highlights:
-Porque BSOS (dropped on gravedigger)
-Mobius > blurry rev whirl [both sides] (dropped the rev whirl on BSOSing it)
-Double switchover BSOS (starting from both sides; this is a completely new trick for me. Very different.)

I seem to think there were more highlights.
I started with the usual warm up, and then tried some stepping diving again. Did good on one side (the tougher diving side, but better ducking side), but the other kinda hurt my shins so I stopped. I drilled a bit semi-Anssi-esquely. I did 25 rev swirls each side (like, as many as I can before dropping, then picking up and immediately continuing). I did 4 inna row at one point on my flip, which is the most I've ever done, and my record on good side is only 3, I'm pretty sure. Cool! Started to do this for torques too, but lost the energy and got sloppy, so stopped. I schooled gyro butterflies a bit too, 'cause they are curiously tough. I did gyro butterfly > diving clipper [repeat] X3, I think. I wanna be able to warm up with gyro butterfly > spinning butterfly [repeat]. Tough! Ended the session with a 110 guiltless. Oh, I also played around with illusions, which I never did because they are the and hurt my knees. I figured a way that I think may be clean for peak-time illusions, but I'm not sure if anything is clean... But I'm excited to start throwing some of those, 'cause that's another styley element that so many people avoid.

Non-footbag-wise I had a super great day off. Lots of relaxing in pajamas. Reading comics, and I had this crazy drawing kick where I got amazingly inspired and drew three pages in my sketchbook. One page I'm really, really happy with! Uhh. Yeah. Gonna sleep now.

2008-11-10T00:19:00.001-06:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081109:
Had a short solo today. I have been eating so unhealthily and putting on the chub again. My brother picked me up some Turkish Delight (my favourite!) and some other candy stuffs and I am just loathe to even think about eating it. So I played a bit. It was really fun and laid back. I opened with a 70-some contact tiltless run and closed with a 124 guiltless. My vision always goes in an out during long runs or long consecutive tricks. I played with stepping diving a bit and wanna do that more. Maybe stepping diving clipper > blurry diving clipper [repeat] in the near future? Jackknife is super tough. Uhh, also threw some eggbeaters and fogs and hazes. I wanna try Anssi's training program soon. Started too with eggbeaters but it wasn't fun enough for the only session in a while. Also forgot to do torques which I'd meant to. All-in-all really fun and satisfying. I foresee more shred in the future (obviously).
(Pain-free again too! (Stretched lots))

2008-11-05T21:57:00.002-06:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081104:
Well, Manna and I played the other day. It was a really bad session since neither of us had really played since a week and a half before-ish. I felt it in my shins and knees for sure. So we ended up keeping it light and doing swirl stuff quite a bit. Nothing significant at all. A 98-contact run and a 92-contact -- nothing great in either run. I wanna push 200 some time. Yeah. That's basically it. I'm looking forward to playing again and reconditioning my legs so I'm pain-free again. Marita is here for a month though, and so I kind of don't wanna play for this month; I think Saturday will depend on whether Andrew shows or not.

I had a sudden urge just now to go to New Years Jam in Chicago. It's a super bad time for me, since my family is really big on family time at Christmas... I'm gonna think on it though.

2008-10-26T01:36:00.004-05:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081025:
Had a pretty good session with Manna at my house today. He started quite on, and I ended the session quite on. We got a handful of more MOTWs, which I'm stoked about getting up here again. We also got a few runs each for a little slap-together vid, mayhaps. I may have to buy an external hard drive in the next few days to be able to make any more videos.

Anyway, some highlights:
-gyro diving mirage > pixie rev whirl [repeat]
-stepping rev whirl > rev whirlygig [repeat] (like, second try?)
-wetdream BSOS

Yeah... I guess that's basically it? I ended the session with a handful of pretty long runs. One was, like, 50-something, and the other 30-something, and both with quit low on bails. The 30-some may have been completely bail-free. I ended the session, after the 30-contact, thinking, "It would be neat to end on a big trick like alpine rev whirlygig in one try." So I tried and did it. Also, Manna's MOTW was fairy ducking butterfly swirl... Pretty freakin sick! A really fun time in all. (MOTW vids should be on the main page and the videos section in an hour's time.)

I had a really great day today. Lots of really comfortable bonding time with my besty, nice shred, good stuff on video. Also, I made an "impulse" buy of $120 of comics the same day I got my first paycheque. Haha. I made a $50 purchase the week before too. Some sick stuff I look forward to! Last week I got:
-"The Complete Metal Gear Solid: Sons of Liberty", by Ashley Wood (been waiting 2 yeeaars! Incredible! (Though maybe a step down from the first complete collection?)
-"Tank Girl: The Gifting", by Ashley Wood (Super disappointing as with quite a few of his books, I'm discovering -- 90% of the book is drawn by his "assistant"... It looks like he MAYBE did screentones and colouring overtop himself, but... laaame. I've shelved it.)
-"Blade of the Immortal 19: Badger hole", by Hiroaki Samura

Stuff I'm stoked for aaaanny day!!:
-"World War Robot", by Ashley Wood
-"Sparrow: Kent Williams" (Mini Kent Williams artbook from Ashley Wood's "Sparrow" artbook series.
-"Mythology: DC Art of Alex Ross" (Alex Ross artbook)
-"Justice Volume 1", by Alex Ross (I haven't read this before. I looked it up beforehand and it looks like he only paints over another guy's pencils, but it really just looks like his other fully painted books. Should be sick. If so, the other 2 volumes will be ordered immediately!)
-"PulpHope" (Paul Pope artbook. Mike Faille kinda got me interested in Paul Pope. I didn't really like what I saw too much in Batman Year 100, but the previews of this artbook look RIGHT up my alley. Really... Becky Cloonan-esque.)
-"Rough Work" (Frank Frazetta artbook. THE fantasy painter. The master. Love his stuff. I'm a little worried it won't have much painting though, which is what I dig. I didn't see any other Frazetta artbooks on Amazon though...)
-"Gunsmith Cats Omnibus Volume 4", by Kenichi Sonoda

Also, Manna showed me this sick video of Chemical Brothers and K-OS, and I've had this song stuck in my head ever since. I am listening to it on repeat as I write this. You gotta check it. Sick video!

2008-10-24T17:21:00.000-05:00

An interview of me by Asmus Helms, from Denmark

2008-10-23T20:35:00.003-05:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081023:
Well, had a pretty satisfying solo session for the first time of the week (I'd been dying to play since Saturday. Man I'm on fire!) I warmed up for about an hour or so, just schooling the usual stuff. And then I decided I would film some stuff and ended up doing a toe-only session. Here are highlights:
-rev swirl > ripwalk [repeat]
-rev swirl > ripwalk > rev swirl > sidewalk [both sides]
-smog > diving symp mirage [repeat]
-eggbeater > ducking mirage > same eggbeater > ducking mirage [repeat]
-eggbeater > same eggbeater [repeat]
-stepping rev whirl > blurry rev whirl > blurry rev whirl > blurry rev whirl > stepping rev whirl > blurry rev whirl > ...ripwalk
-stepping rev whirl > blurry rev whirl [repeat] > rev whirlygig (trying this combo BSOS... maybe went halfway into the sauce, and did the first bit both sides I think)
-pixie ducking symp rev whirl [both sides] (not new, but first time on camera)
-ducking symp mirage x3 > diving symp mirage [repeat] (attempt? I don't remember if I hit it or not...)
-rev whirlygig > rev mullet BSOS

Good stuff.
I'll have a video maybe tomorrow ;)
(Or now:)

2008-10-19T14:59:00.006-05:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081018:
Had an amazing session last night.
It wasn't particularly amazing shred, but much fun was had. We met at my house (I kinda wanna start taking pictures of shred locations for future posts, ala Sam Colclough from the days of OopsFootbag.com (man, does anyone but me remember that? People always say how they grew up on Hackrifice, following everything here, Oops was my Hackrifice.)) around 5-ish. Our new guy, Brandon showed first and we went out to my back yard with some tunes and warmed up. He was so blown away by my warm up runs. Haha. Like, everything > osis repeat drills times three sorta stuff.. just long, 40-60 contact tiltless runs. I should mention before I forget that teaching Brandon is really neat I discovered last night. I was trying to teach him the "magic hop" and sort of basic tips for two adds, and I totally kept coming up with stuff that I want to apply to the beginner "intro" section of this site. Basically, we were all dumbfounded as how to teach the magic hop, other than practice at home, but then I was, like, "Maybe if you try to do toe stalls with the hop", and told him to never have both feet touching the ground at the same time. And it totally worked IMMEDIATELY, and he tried legovers and the hop just came naturally after, like, 2 minutes. Wicked. Then He was having trouble with legovers, 'cause his ankle was limp, and would flop around, and I tried to explain to keep his ankle locked, but he didn't understand, so I played around in my head and told him to try flexing his toes up to lock his ankle, and he tried and immediately was, like, "Yeah! That works!" It felt super cool, 'cause often I have a lot of trouble teaching new players certain things.

So the session itself like I said didn't contain too much awesome shred. Brandon left about 7, after sitting out for a while from sore muscles. It was dark by this point too, and so I'd run into my house and got a spotlight, which gave this cool effect that made the session feel really underground (is what Andrew and Manna said). I totally fucking hit janiwalker for the first time. So solid to to a hand catch. It was SO controlled that after I was, like, "Man, I should have done, like, rev whirlygig out of that." Flip never came, but it was close. It didn't hurt my knees as much as furious attempts have in the past. Awesome! Awesome, awesome, awesome. I know it's not a huge deal since everyone is hitting furious everything these days, but this is my first furious move ever, after playing 10-ish years... Like, I'm not sure if the set existed when I started.

Manna's game is so smooth and awesome. I was doing lots of osis stuff, and my runs were okay, kind of always JUST below satisfying, but okay. After shred we did one shots and then Move Of The Weeks. We hit a bunch of tricks that I hope to get up. Hopefully MOTWs will get people to come back and check the website regularly. So, in order, what we hit was: blurry voodoo (Andrew), Forquelift! (Manna), whirling same drifter (me), spinning ducking DLO (me). Andrew hit alpine whirlygig, but I was moving around at the time and the camera is kinda in and out... he also hit whirlygig > whirlygig right after the camera died. I had morpheus off my foot a ton (it's so mine!), and blazing drifter off my foot in about 3 tries (also mine, if I so choose (I kind of owned blazing before I messed up my body... After the session, actually, I was thinking of hitting blazing rev whirl. Should be easy.)) Oh, I also hit rev swirling blender when nobody was looking.

It was just really, really fun, playing in pitch dark night with the spotlight and my backdoor light. It was a perfect temperature too. Super nice. Just great. Music. Ah. Then I was off to sleepover at my best friend's house, which was super fun. I love her so much. We watched this movie, "The Fall", which was really, really incredible, and had a really nice talk sitting up in a tree. ♥ Oh, we're also working on a photography website called WE (Willow + Erik); really cute.

(Oh, Manna and I also watched a bit of the Dave Clavens CD which I got in the mail a few days back. Sick stuff, Dave!)

I'm thinking of playing hack again. I feel like a machine. I have lost 10 pounds in the past month and have a much nicer tummy. Here is my favourite pining song lately. This it completely how I feel:

2008-10-16T18:43:00.005-05:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081016:
Oh, my fingers are completely numb. So cold out.
I just had a 2 hour session, just about. My legs are holding up quite well. Not much too great, and my runs are still suffering (though my brother joined me for about 10 minutes and I noticed that I pushed more and had more interesting runs then).
-wetdream [both sides] (new trick on flip!)
-bubbabeater > same eggbeater [both sides]
-mantis (gyro eggbeater, right?) [both sides] (not new, but so tough for me!)
-toe torque > pdx DLO [both sides]
-twirl > spinning clipper [repeat]

I really wanna work wetdream. It's so sick and nobody does it. I can see it becoming easier. Eggbeaters are a bit rough on my shins, but I guess my consistent stretching is paying off! I've been playing a lot for the past 2 months and feeling pretty good! I really wanna get fog like Andrew... where it's just stepping... double legover. Not STEPPING DOUBLE LEGOVER. I can do them fine, pretty consistently, but my head gets stuck behind "big moves"! and makes tricks harder when they don't necessarily need to be.

I had an okay 60-contact, and some other okay runs. I hope Saturday will be good. I crave runs. The Office and Bubble Tea Night commences in t-minus 60. Oh, and here, enjoy this trailer for Pierre's + Fred's new DVD:

EDIT: Also, this, if anyone hasn't seen it. Super Marjo + Smooth Criminal:

2008-10-12T19:21:00.002-05:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081012:
Rough times call for shred.
My head and heart are a real mess, and the only thing I have been able to do to distract myself is physical activity. So I strapped on some tunes to my head and went and kicked around the football again. I was trying different things. It's so neat, because the simplest things are so satisfying, like just keeping it off the ground, or alternating toe stalls. Here are some highlights from the football kicky:
-45 kicks (lots was alternating knees)
-7-ish alternating toe stalls?
-ATWout > ATWin
-4 headbutts
-7 headbutts (alternating between me and my brother)

Headbutts are totally the most satisfying and fun. It's neat. I played for, like, 2 hours straight in the rain without getting tired. That is really cool. I got a little bored kinda, but not really. Kicking stuff outside in the rain felt incredible. So I decided I would try my foot at hacky again. I played that for about another hour. Fun stuff. Nothing that great. I worked on downtime components, so tried little runs with "toe-set", "clipper-set", and PDX variations all in one run. I found eggbeaters are definitely the toughest. Even torques weren't that tough. Though I didn't really achieve that "drill" for most of the components. Drifters were friggin fun, and with no pain! I'm so throwing those more now! Pdx drifter feels so magnificent.

There are a couple of new videos posted in the main blog (and video section). I'm not sure if anyone knows to press the "+" to see the main blog. Plus I'm not sure if it would be better to post there, or to embed my own teeny little fooling around videos in my own blog... I think I'll try that next time. Well. I will post the latest one here too:

(From yesterday:)

2008-10-11T20:10:00.002-05:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081011:
Well, I didn't end up playing on my birthday (yesterday), but I had a really nice day anyway. I worked, which wasn't bad. My best friend came and picked me up after and we walked home together and hung out and she gave me the sweetest birthday card ever! I have pictures on Facebook. Ridic. Then I had a family dinner at a Chinese restaurant that we really like. It was super, and we all had the perfect amount of food. I was gonna hang with my besty again all night, but I remembered that Marita said that she would try to call from India to wish me happy birthday, and I had recommended 10 PM as a good time that would work with the 11-hour time difference. She eventually did call, and we had a really nice talk. I'm glad we're on such good terms. It was still super, super rough though. I wasn't planning to play hack for a while (on account of the last few sessions being pretty lame, and my body feeling wrecked), but my aching heart needed pain killers: The Hacky.

I started out just not caring and just wanting to have fun. Not school anything, not try big stuff, just play and let it flow. That was really nice and gave me the calm and freedom to play well and enjoy myself. I started doing longer runs with nothing in particular, but I was playing okay with no pain. I started filming around my house just for home video sort of stuff, and so my brother came out and was filming my other brothers playing with throwing knives while I hacked. So when they were done, I brought the camera back out for some action. Oh, I also played around with a soccer ball for a while before. I played around with toe stalls, and headbutts, the crazy hard toe > knee > head > op knee [repeat], and some basic 2s, like legovers and ATWs. It was SUPER fun. My brother came and played with me a bit after I was done, and then almost immediately tried to do some flicky kick thing and fell like a tree face down into the ground. Ouch. It wasn't cool. But very dramatic.

Anyway.
I played hack quite well.
I owned vortex. How did that come about? I was kinda frustrated by trying to spice up my runs completely, trying to do ALL new stuff from scratch. Hence my runs had been super crap lately (Manna mentioned "walk spins" -- he meant wauxpins :p). And this continued. I would have some great run starts, but would drop on OSIS after, like, 15-ish contacts. Frustrating. Especially since osis is all I school. My bane! So I schooled some neat stuff for video. I'll try to recap some highlights:
-vortex x2 [both sides] (maybe not new?)
-spinning rev whirl > rev swirl > rev whirl > stepping rev whirl > rev whirlygig [both sides] (was trying BSOS)

A couple okay drills rolled off a ton, both sides:
-vortex > ripwalk [repeat]
-spinning rev whirl > ripwalk [repeat] (maybe not hit before, but I've done spinning rev > blurry rev [repeat])
-blurry drifter > ripwalk [repeat] (hit before)

Vortex just seemed so ridiculously on with no hip pain (like, less than regular drifter). I May have hit 3 one side. And it totally felt like I could have done Vasek's 11 from Worlds '02 :p I also was trying vortex > vortex > mobius both sides. Close. Vortex > mobius BSOS was super close. I stopped trying, even, 'cause it seemed like a joke that vortex was so easy. Also tried some stuff like vortex > spinning rev whirl > mobius both sides. And vortex > gyro DLO BSOS and stuff. Maybe next time. ERIK HAS UNLOCKED THE POWER OF VORTEX!

2008-10-07T19:34:00.003-05:00

DAY 9
SATURDAY, AUGUST 16, 2008:
(As continued from my former blog at Modified.in; my trip to Prague, Czech Republic for Worlds. "Day 9" = my ninth day in Prague, not to be confused with the ninth day of Worlds (especially since Worlds only lasts 8-ish days).)

Today I opened with trying to compile a list of the people I'd met total so far. Clearly it was a flop, as the list is quite short. But here are the people I wrote down off of the top of my head at that particular moment: Lise + Anne, Mads Hole, Aleksi Airenen, Mikko Lepsito (though I don't think I ever official met him, but he gave me a nod!!), Sergey Kozlov (was really nice and seemed enthused to meet me :)), Ales Zelinka (knew my name!); Marco Hartig, Kjolpa (in retrospect I'm not entirely sure I correctly associated the Estonians with their Modified screen names... Rozo (who was injured), Kuba and GF (again, sorry for forgetting her name and not looking it up!) Geilnik; Ners, Olaf, Hania, Verena, Mitko; Caroline Birch, Nathan; Flavio. It's obviously a bad and incomplete list. Taylor should definitely be on there. We liked her a lot.

We woke up around 12. I got ready. But Marita wanted to just stay in and read, or go out instead of going to the venue, not knowing if any freestyle would be going on at all, and be stuck indoors (it was still raining) with only potentially watching net to entertain us. I thought that the possibility of ANY freestyle would be worth the trek, so I decided to go check it out. I went and got some groceries alone and headed off. Luckily the tram was running properly this day and I didn't have to figure out alternative routes on my own! I got to the venue, and lo, only net. What a bloody disappointment. I looked around and barely recognized ANYONE. I finally saw Mathieu and Ianek. I went and said hi briefly, and they headed out a minute after. I was, like, "This is so incredibly lame." And left after staying for about 5 minutes. What the fuck, Worlds? So I went back home and fed Marita with my groceries. Oh, on the walk from the stadium to the tram stop I saw Andrew Grant and Max Kerkhof. I guess they were all set to watch some net? Andrew complimented me on my shirt. I said I got it at Value Village.

Oh no, wait, I got back and we picked up some more groceries after I woke her up... I think. Then she wanted to go see the Jewish layered cemetery that we were told by multiple people was a must-see sight in Prague. We subwayed to the Old Town and after wandering, realized that we had passed it many times and many times before that. Eventually we realized that it was Saturday... Sabbath? So, it was not open, unfortunately. What a bummer. And I felt bad that the one thing Marita wanted to see, we weren't able to. So I had some sightseeing ideas, though Marita wasn't too keen on doing more of just what I wanted to do. We went and did a tour of stuff I'd seen in Vasek videos. We went in search of "the cable cars" that are supposed to go up the hill to the rip-off Eiffel Tower (that is a few feet taller than the real tower in Paris (counting the hill... Those cheater-pants Czechs!)), which turned out just to be a kind of above-ground train that goes diagonally up. I don't know why I thought cable cars? Anyway, so that led to a beautiful view of the city from up high, which I also recognized. I paid for Marita's way to go up the tower with me (she wasn't keen on it), and I whined the whole way up about how scary and high it was (I'm very afraid of heights!). Oh, it says something about "Lennon Wall", too.. I forget what that was. Is that just the wall in "Kampa Park"? I was never able to find the place that looked like the place in the actual "Kampa Park" video with Vasek... maybe they painted over the wall since? Anyway, also, on the way up to the "cable cars", we saw the place where Eli's Ales video was filmed in front of the steps with the creepy statues. I took pictures of all of this, but it's on actual film, for which I will have to pay, like, $50 to develop all my rolls.

Anyway, then to satisfy Marita, I said we would go to Cafe Ebel to eat, since we were hungry. I have a note that she was sick? Felt sick? I don't remember specifically. So we trammed... I think. Hmm. I'm confused in which order things came. I guess we went to try to subway to Cafe Ebel. On the way, we were in New Town for the first time, which was quite nice. We were walking to Cafe Ebel, and I suggested that maybe we could try a local restaurant, something new, since I think we were having trouble finding Ebel, and we were really hungry. So we stopped at a local pizza joint. It was incredibly lame, we discovered. The pizza was crap, and they wouldn't give us tap water (big surprise!) We tried to order, like, juice, I think, but they didn't have it. So we tried to get milkshakes; nope. Also, I think our first choice of pizza they didn't "have"... Pretty lame. Right, so then we got on the tram. We had a nice tour of the city on the tram, saw some new nice churches and whatnot, and then I dropped her off at the event site tram stop and continued on back to the hostel to get my shred stuff (just in case footbag might actually happen! CROSS YOUR FINGERS!!!!)

I got back to the event site and just caught women's routines. I don't have a note saying so, but if I remember, the dumbass fucker we had all come to know and love as the soundman fucked up Taylor's routine music. I was so angry. They let her start over later, like... almost immediately after after she was all spent. I felt so bad for her, but she roughed it out! I actually managed to play a bit of hack at this point. Someone told us that there was some small room in the back of the complex somewhere where people were warming up and shredding. I grabbed my stuff and went immediately. I think it may have been Ken who told us. It ended up being quite lame, as per usual, a la Prague. It was an okay gym, about the size of the teeny one used for comp, but it was full of freestyle disc players. There was Anssi, Honza, some of the players I met in my first circle whose names I forgot... a couple other awesome players. Sergey for a bit, I think. Anssi hit DDD swirl for the first time, and BSOSed it in that same run (though I missed it, Marita said it was big and made me ask what he hit). I played a bit with the guys from my first circle, though really, really badly. No, wait, these guys I hadn't met before, the guys from my first circle were warming up a bit on their own by where I left Marita sitting (reading my Ghost in the Shell 2 manga (which was our shared reading material in Prague)). When we first got in the gym, there was a closed set up bleachers (so, like, one really, really, high bench basically, like, head-height), and Ken was trying to climb up onto them. We were all kinda, like, "Uhhh, careful Ken..." Oh there was a girl's circle too -- Caro, Taylor... someone else? Oxana? I didn't talk to Oxana at all this Worlds, which I was disappointed with; I liked her a lot in Florida. I played a bit with Taylor after. I played really, really bad in that gym. Someone also came in and dimmed the lights on us. Hooray. Like, an organizer. There was also a moment where Honza asked my whole circle to move away from him where he was warming up, which I guess is understandable, but I felt that it was said in a really rude way, and he had done this earlier, like one of the first days at the track too. It did not give me a good impression.

We watched open routine finals. Sergey went dropless! Vasek went dropless, and his routine was really neat -- it was a mash-up of different rad songs, and well choreographed (very low difficulty though!). We decided to skip the party, since I was really disappointed with Worlds, and just would rather spend time alone with Marita. Oh yeah, not only did the sound guy fuck up Taylor's song, and continue to play the music way too loud, but he played the completely wrong song for Norek. Norek was, like, "What??" and gestured semi-wildly at the sound table. After, I wanted to shred a bit, but, nope, we were kicked out of the gym immediately. Yay Worlds. So yeah, we didn't go to the party, but found out after the fact that it was probably the best part of all of Worlds. Great. Apparently there was the hardest shred there at the party, three floors of shred! And awards ceremony and all. Norek got BAP, as we all know already. His BAP name is Hi-tech, and I'm sure I explained why in some post, though maybe not in the write-up, though I don't care at this point. Kinda wanna wrap it up. I'm getting bad vibes from recapping such bad experiences. Caroline Birch asked me to sign her Worlds poster. I felt bad that I only wrote my name. I kinda wanted to write a nice message, but couldn't think of anything worthwhile or genuine. A couple people took pictures with me; Marco the day before, and the black spiky haired guy in the back gym this last night.

The next day, Marita and I were planning to go film me playing hack in Prague for my Europe video, and then leave in the evening for Vienna, just to chillax before having to be back in Munich for her work for Wednesday. It sounded like a great plan. We talked to Alex, though he said that everyone was gonna be in Berlin, so we wouldn't have a hacker to stay with. He did say that a bus was, like, 25 Euro to get there, though -- supa cheap! Then, we were on our way out to the tram stop to go to old town to film me. We saw all of the people waiting for the bus to leave for Berlin training camp. We stopped and talked to Ben Roscoe, and Andrew Grant, and Andrew McCarger, and then Jakob and Paul were there while we were talking to someone, and they were, like, "You guys should come to Berlin." And we were, like, "Hehe, yeah." And then we asked how much it would be, just out of curiosity, and it turned out to be, like, the same price, but somewhere else we had wanted to go anyway, and with all of these people we knew and love. Within 5 minutes or less, we were completely convinced. They said we had 30 minutes before they left, so we flew back to the hostel and started packing. Marita tried to get a refund on some crap, but failed on account of the hostel's lameness. But we got our stuff together and... went to Berlin. Haha. It was fun, and I guess I'll just more or less end there. I had a bit more detail, but nothing written about Berlin, really, so, this is the end. Worlds 2008, Prague.

In other news, my job is awesome. Tomorrow I'm meeting Manna for after-school shred. Should be a blast. When it gets cold out we hope to get one of our school gyms to hack in. I'm gonna ask my principal. Then I can expose the sport to my school (his already knows all about it :p). Also, on another note, I applied for a PERMANENT library clerk job at another school, which is right beside the school I worked at last year. Permanent would mean benefits, good pay, the 2-month summer and... permanency! So I would just stay there without having to worry about losing my job on account of seniority or any other crap. I would be part of the union, and I would be able to stay as long as I want. Apparently I came "very highly recommended" :) Though, so I applied to this other school, and kind of figured I have a good chance, on account of my rep, but wasn't really sure or banking on it. Plus, the job posting said "12-month", which for anyone other than teachers means you work through the summer (teachers are 12-month with a 2-month paid holiday), so I kinda also gave up not wanting that. Then my dad came home today and showed me an amended job posting for the same position.. amended to "10-month". Sick! So now I want it again, pllluuuss. Apparently my old principal was talking to my dad and asked how I was doing and what I'm up to, and my dad said that I'm library clerk at this one school and watching the opening at the other (right by my old school where I worked under this principal). My old principal told my dad instantly, oh, well I'll talk to "____" (the principal at the school I'm applying for) and talk him up -- 'cause they are next door schools, and my old principal absolutely loved me and felt bad that I lost my job when he almost guaranteed that nobody would apply for it. So... I may be a permanent library clerk soon-ish. The only downside would be that it's much further away than this current school... and not right next door to Manna's school. (It's also high school, which I'm not as keen about as elementary). We'll see how this plays out. I miss Marita a ton, though she keeps calling her mom from India to say she's okay and makes sure that her mom calls me to let me know, which is really sweet.

K, bath and sleep time shortly.

2008-10-04T22:25:00.002-05:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081004:
Not a too good session. I slept in and was somehow, like, 2 hours late. Luckily Manna had Jess to shred with. It was a slow session for me and Andrew. Just weak. Andrew was sore from working out at the gym, and I had JUST woken up and biked straight to The Forks practically. Manna was on fire. I'm sure he'll blog about it.

I didn't really do anything noteworthy, but I did hit a dream move. It's kind of lame. But Manna was doing infinity swirls and whirling swirls like cake all over and somehow it came up and he asked me, "Erik, hit whirling swirl." And I caught it and hit it first try. Haha. It was super cool. Not quite as satisfying as I would think. I guess it's not really a huge move though. I also randomly tried furious, and was pulling off some great sets. It hurt my knees quite a bit though, so... yeah. It was actually a pretty fun session though. Jess was there a bit and Joel was there and just hung out for a long time. That was really nice and we spent a lot of time just talking and joking around. Hackrifice is the best!

Well that's really about it. Nothing else to report.
I got that librarian job though, and start Monday, so yippee!

2008-10-02T18:27:00.003-05:00

SHRED SESSION: 20081002:
Hey! Just had a totally bodacious solo session! Man alive. Hahaha. I feel amazing. I started out with a couple hours of osis trainer as usual. Fun, fun, fun! I did some new stuff like:
-osis > ducking legover > osis > diving legover [repeat]
-osis > ducking pickup > osis > diving pickup [repeat]
-osis > ducking mirage > osis > diving mirage [repeat]
-osis > far legover > osis > same legover [repeat] > osis > far pickup > osis > same pickup [repeat] > osis > pdx mirage > osis > same mirage [repeat] X2 (a new warmup I wanna always open with (except X as many times as I can...but at least X1))
-osis > blur > osis > stepping mirage [repeat]
-osis > blurry legover > osis > shmoe [repeat]
-osis > blurry pickup > osis > stepping pickup [repeat]

And I tried a couple things that I didn't quite finish:
-stepping osis > spinning clipper > blurry osis > spinning clipper [repeat]
-spinning osis > ripwalk > gyro osis > ripwalk [repeat] (still no dice, but still feels awesome!)

I feel like I've kind of lost my spinning osis > gyro osis [repeat] drill. That sucks, especially since all I have been training is osis. So then I was doing some torque stuff and ended up doing pdx torques and was like, "Hey I should try to film some more cool combos again [but with an actual camcorder]!" So I did, and I hit some super cool links that I'm gonna post a video of in a few hours!!!:
-pdx torque > pdx torque (other side from last day)
-gyro dlo > pixie paradon (I kinda never do double downs 'cause of the high impact)
-spinning ducking osis > rev maelstrom
-mobius > mobius (other side from last time!!)
-fog > tapping symp rev whirl
-nuclear same pickup > pixie dyno
-mobius > pdx torque (other side from last time?)
-vortex > rev whirlygig
-stepping symp mirage > smoke

All in all a fucking awesome session.
I totally can't wait to post this video!
(Oh, I also hit twirl > mobius on the other side.)

2008-10-02T00:58:00.004-05:00

Well I finally more or less finished revamping the website. Man alive. I never thought I would do it in, like, a day! I kind of pictured myself getting into it for a few days and then having it peter (I've never written that word before -- I was always sure it would be either "peeter" or "peater"...weird) off over the course of a month. But wow, I just marathoned it. I decided, like, the other day basically that I wanted to do this, get us blogging on the website and revamp the look and I just...did it. And worked on it non-stop, basically for 26 hours actually (minus 4 hours nap). Hardcore.

There are some really annoying glitches and things that I have to touch up, but overall 'm quite happy. Some things that concern me are:
1) The issue I mentioned on the main page (not the blog) about text and objects shifting; it just makes the site look dumb when things should always be in the exact same place.
2) Background image on the bottom left pretty badly obscures the text on top of it
3) Tutorials and Videos sections are kinda boring. I have ideas for Videos, but not so much for Tutorials at the moment.
4) I have, like, 4-8 hours' worth of work left to do on the Videos section, linking up all of my hundreds of shred videos from .org. It's such a pain that I never even finished it on the old site (after I decided to link ALL Hackrifice vids from the site). 2002-2004 is the most intense video period in Hackrifice history. Each year has, like, what, 50+ videos? that I have to get info on and enter manually and edit up. Bleh! It will be awesome and satisfying when I'm done though.

The last post was actually copied and pasted from my last blog entry on Modified. I'm kind of glad I copied it, first because it's really lengthy with lots of the regular types of things I footblog about, so I can see how I will have to play with formatting when I make entries here as opposed to there. It was also a kind of significant entry. So Yay. Blogging here will be really, really different. I've almost completely lost my interest in finishing my Worlds '08 write-up. I think I will, so that I can read it in later years, but ideally I wish I could take all of my Modified blog entries and archive them somewhere accessible through my blog here... Maybe I will work on that in the future. I'm so tired, and I'm finally gonna get some food and sleep. Yes!

Oh, something neat happened today. My dad is kinda famous in the education world, locally anyway. He was at a board meeting and the principal of a school came up to him and said she wanted to interview him about having me work for her (potentially as the library clerk [again]!) This is really cool, because I don't know this woman, and she doesn't know me. But my dad says that I have a really good reputation in the School Division. So, man alive. Like, I don't even have to do anything. I don't have to interview or follow up or anything; she's going to contact ME. Hahaha. Well, the library clerk would be my dream job (as per last school year), but if this comes to fruition, the school secretary could potentially take the library clerk position, and I would be the school secretary. Another cool thing is that it's a school a block away from Manna's school, so... lunch-hour shred?

2008-10-01T05:43:00.005-05:00

Shred Session: 20080930:
(Yeah, I do still plan to finish my Worlds write-up...honest...)

I just had a blast. 2-hour solo.
I don't know if I've ever had this much genuine (no pun) fun with footbag as when I've started schooling the crap out of osis. I should clarify that I have always been one of those players who felt that osis should be 9 adds. It has never, ever come easy to me. It has all I have been soloing for the past month, and it is sooo fun. It's low-impact but still challenging as anything else. And styley as hell. I keep looking forward to soloing so I can push this part of my game more. It was just a blast. So my session was basically JUST drilling. I think I only did one or two actual runs to warm down at the end. I'll try to recap all of the stuff I did:

-osis > merkon > osis > parallax [repeat]
-osis > pandora > osis > gyro pickup [repeat]
-osis > spinning mirage > osis > gyro mirage [repeat] (I tried to back-to-back all of these drills, but man alive I guess I'm not QUITE ready; almost)
-osis > spinning ducking clipper > osis > gyro diving clipper [repeat]
-close again to spinning osis x3 > gyro osis x3 [repeat]
-may have done diving osis > gyro osis [repeat] > ducking osis > spinning osis [repeat]
-rev swirl x3 (only 2 flip -- shin discomfort wouldn't let me push)
-torque x3 (only 2 flip -- shin discomfort wouldn't let me push)
-toe torque > torque [both sides]
-pdx mirage > torque > osis > osis > torque [repeat]
-pdx torque > pdx torque (first-ish try!; really close on other side)
-also tried spinning osis > ripwalk > gyro osis > ripwalk [repeat]; really close; feels AWESOME!

Yeah.
That's basically it. It was really fun. I should pop an ibuprofen though. I gotta go meet some friends for bubble tea before they move back to Whitehorse, Yukon, in about 2 hours. In other news Andrew, Manna, and I are planning to revamp Hackrifice.com and blog there instead of here with videos, like JohnnySuderman.com Should be fun! Maybe within the week. Also, our new recruit ordered Lavers within one session with us! DOPE!

In non-hacky news, I found out that I can apply for internal school division jobs (I am already an employee... just not employed Razz) all online without interview or application or resume or anything Very Happy Sweet! So I applied to a position today. I'm trying to be productive. I wanna make some money and finally move out and get on track... for whatever is out there. Marita and I are gonna stay best-best friends, which is really, really nice. She is in India though without contact info, so I miss her lots. My best friend is also out in the country visiting her dad, and it sucks to not have her here, but I may go drive out with her roommate and stay a night or something later this week. And I'm gonna start hanging with two other friends whom I never see much of, so that should be really nice. I've never really had friends other than Marita and my best friend, Willow. What else... Oh I should remember to bring in my bike for tune-up later tonight (and find out where Gord's Cycle moved to!) Here is my new uplifting song that gets stuck in my head. Really sweet:

EDIT: Here's something that Matt Cross wrote in the FAT blog today. I found it really sweet and brought back incredible memories:

Matt Cross wrote:
What's your favorite FAT story?

I've got a lot of them, of course.

Here's one of my faves.

The time I came up to do the Breaking the Cycle show with Erik and Adam!

The show itself did not go well for me. Erik and Adam both played well. I played really badly that night, BUT...

after the show, I got my YTV Jock Shorts TV spot a few days later, so I had the privilege of staying in TO a little longer. I had some family friends I could have stayed with, but Erik and Marita put me up in their apartment, right by the CN tower. I had been taking a break from my smoking habit, so my lungs and head were clearing up nicely, which led to me doing some of my best freestyle playing to date (which made it onto the FATCross video). The non-footbag time there was great, though;

it was my first time meeting Marita, and she totally took care of me during my extra time in TO. Erik had work, so while he was there, Marita and I went on long walks and talked about TO and my girl problems at the time. We went shopping and had lunch and basically had a great time. I'd never even really spoken to her before, but Erik told me she liked my music, so when we got together back at the apartment with Erik and Mike after the FATCross session, I played some guitar for them (which also made it onto FATCross), and got to see some of Mike's work on paper.

I had had NO idea of the depth of his talent, passion, and skill! I tend to infer a lot about peoples' character based on how I've seen their passion manifest itself (or rather, whether they have passion at all; if someone's got passion, I can respect it [maybe just partially, or maybe on a separate level from the rest of my opinion of them], no matter for what that passion is for) so when I know someone outside of one of their passions, and then I become exposed to it, I usually see people on a whole new level.

So, it was great to be exposed to Marita's passion for friendship, hosting, and welcoming, and to be exposed to Mike's passion for images. They both brought me to a new level of admiration for their beautiful selves.

back to the Breaking the Cycle show...

the FAT session we had afterward was a blast! Josh Lackey broke out MC#42 (turtle), a bag that he's kept in PRIME condition for as long as possible (thanks Josh! means a lot to me). I'm not sure if anyone's game was super hot, but there were LOTS of people around to check out freestyle, and it was during this session that I got my YTV session, as well as some contact info from a promo agency in TO that I have yet to take advantage of Wink gotta get on that...

So, just wanted to share some positive Toronto memories. I could go ON and ON!!! and, tell you what, if a few more people share some nice memories, I'll post another one Wink

love you guys!