Fanzine

[Sporatical_Distractions]

OMG!!! HENRY!!!!!!!

[C-Fan]

Nice top post painting! I'll take it.

What are your thoughts on Worlds now, you certainly would have been a good chance for a medal with a good routine.

Well, hindsight is definitely 20-20. If I had known that Vasek and Jindra were going to be injured, that Honza wasn't competing, that Milan wasn't going, that no open level Americans other than Evan were competing...then I definitely would have bought a plane ticket. But going into this year I did not know any of these things, so my decision process went like this:

1. What do I hope to achieve at Worlds in terms of results?
2. How likely is it I achieve those goals?
3. Is Trnava a place I'd want to visit from a purely tourism standpoint?
4. What is the cost (flights, time off from work) of going?
5. Based on other life variables (parents' health and potential pregnancy), is this a good time for me to go?

When I weighed all these factors, I decided it wasn't a trip I should do. Looking back at the information I had, I have no doubt I made the right decision at the time.

Here's a breakdown in gorier detail, for what it's worth:

1. In terms of Worlds goals, my two remaining ones are: go dropless in Finals, and win a medal. If I made the trip out and didn't accomplish either of those goals, I'd consider it a bust.

2. Without knowing who was going or who was getting injured, I figured it was a safe bet the following players would be at Worlds 2016: Vasek, Jindra, Evan, Milan. Then I figured there was also a chance Honza could go, and a random chance that any number of other top European players could be there. I figured there'd be a smaller chance Landes could be there, but there was a chance. So assuming that only 3 of those guys show up, I'd like my chances of making finals, but I'd have my work cut out to get a medal. Still possible, but far from a lock.

3+4. The next two questions also played a role in my decision. While I have never been to Slovakia, and I'm sure it's lovely, I have been to Prague twice and Warsaw once. All 3 times it was a super long trip, I didn't speak the language, I had to fight bad jet lag, and the food didn't blow me away. So assuming Slovakia would be similar, it didn't strike me as a place I would want to visit if Worlds wasn't there (for that price flight, that amount of time off, etc.). If I'm going to make a trip to Worlds and not achieve my competition goals, I want it to at least be a place I'd want to visit as a pure vacation.

5. This last one was hard to factor in, since there were so many unknowns. As it turned out, my parents' health issues cleared up and the pregnancy has been straightforward. But its been a lot easier to deal with that in my own home and without the added pressure of training for competition.

Basically, it just didn't look like it was in the cards for me to go. Will I one day look back at Worlds 2016 and wonder if that was my best chance at winning a medal? Perhaps even a World championship? Very possibly yes. At the end of the day though, we make our decisions with the best information available to us. It was going to be an expensive trip to a part of the World I've seen already, during an uncertain time in my life family wise, to achieve a goal that would be difficult if Vasek/Jindra/Milan/Evan/Honza showed up healthy. I have no regrets I decided against going.

On a less heavy note, here's a video from a 20 minute session. I had to stop early as a thunderstorm rolled in on top of me, so I ended up including some highlights I would have normally re-done or tried again (e.g. getting a deeper plasma, sealing blubber with a better trick, etc.):
Weather is supposed to be cooler this weekend, so hopefully I can get in a session or two.

[C-Fan]

Exactly 10 years ago, I posted in my blog about my last shred in Arizona before going to grad school. It's crazy to look back that far and think about how much has changed in 10 years. I was only 2 years away from starting my career in Federal government, but I had no idea at the time. I was still almost 3.5 years away from meeting Haley. I never would have guessed I'd make my home in Denver. I was about 7.5 years away from nemesis and clownface. If you went back and told me that, I don't know if I'd be more surprised by the fact that I finally hit those tricks...or that I'd be 33 years old when I did. Reading blog posts from 10 years ago really does feel like getting in a time machine. On one hand in makes me feel old, on the other hand it makes me feel good I'm actually a better player in my mid 30s than I was in my mid 20s.

Here's an excerpt from that post 10 years ago. I think I'm going to try for some of these during my next session, as a throwback.

August 15th, 2006

*whirling swirl bsos
*toe blur and reverse swirl, all BSOS.
*torque x2, bsos
*blur-smear-DSO bsos, with tomahawk bsos in the seal.

*9 contacts of rubberman, starting on atom smasher.
*blurry whirl-rubberman.
*otherside blurry whirl-rubberman.

I think my future rubberman goals will be:

#bl. whirl-rubberman repeat
# rubberman x2
# fog rubberman again.

Turning my gaze forward rather than backward, in one week I will be on a plane to St. Louis. Pretty sure this will be my first time there. I've already reached out to Cory and Kyle about hanging out and shredding, and I'm looking forward to that. I was hoping to play this past weekend to get back into playing shape, but I couldn't make the time. Saturday and Sunday I painted the nursery for Lil' Fan, and I also made a trip to IKEA to return a dresser they were recalling because it had caused some tipover child fatalities. I haven't played in a week, and if I don't get in some shreds before next Monday, that'll mean I'm 2 weeks rusty. #motivation.

Here's a vid from last weekend:
Whirr felt like it was making a bit more sense, and I was happy ripsteins were feeling more natural. I'd like to put a lot more work into both. I would be so happy if I could make them a regular part of my game, since they look so stylish.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

The Ripsteins look really good and consistent. Any luck on flipside? Whirr looked nice and clean, too. I'm afraid to Whirr now, so I'm going to cross it off of my list of tricks, I think, but it was fun while it lasted.

Sorry about taking it overboard the other day. Sometimes I get caught up in my sensitive side and my passions take hold of me and make me say crazy things, that make little-to-no sense, which I later regret. No hard feelings.

Have fun in St. Louis. Hope someone films.

[DC Clinks]

Enjoyed reading the reflection, didn't know you went to grad school/ worked with the G-Men. Laughed super hard at the Lil Fan comment. Shred vid was swell too, you rock the OG hat look nicely.

[C-Fan]

The Ripsteins look really good and consistent. Any luck on flipside? .

Short history of me and ripstein. I first hit ripstein in 2001, using my right foot. I think I only hit it like 3 or 4 times, and it was Jon Schneider/Rippin style. Like a mid-timey hop, where my support leg leaves the ground, like this:
I then went something like 9 years without hitting any kind of ripstein after that, until I started messing with toe set swirling. I hit a few toe set ripsteins with the set, again with the right foot doing the dexing: It wasn't until October 2011 that I tried to learn ripstein the way everybody does it these days, where its like a swirling set merged into downtime swirl. I messed around with it for a bit, was horribly inconsistent, and only managed to hit a couple ones that weren't completely "the" before abandoning it. These were all right foot as well. There's one at the 40 second mark here: I don't even remember why I decided to mess with it on left side this summer, but now that one feels stronger for sure. Next time I'll play I'll give a few attempts on right side, and see if I've learned anything I can apply from my progress on the left side.

Next week I'm in St. Louis for work, so this week I'm trying to cover the morning and evening dog walks since Haley has to cover both while I'm gone. Between that, the hot weather, and the distraction that is the Olympics, I haven't been playing footbag or working on the pod. I'm hoping to carve out some time this evening to get episode 3 done, since it's due out on Friday. Eep.

The past year has seen a few life changes that have really eaten into my free time. Keeping the lawn alive, walking the dog twice a day, and general work on the house have really hampered me from playing footbag regularly. I can't imagine this is going to get any better once the baby arrives in January. I am now starting to seriously consider if the writing is on the wall for my competitive footbag career. Like, I can definitely see myself continuing to play for fun and exercise, continuing to make videos and pods, and hopefully even continuing to go to tournaments. But making the time to train seriously, to grind at a routine and really push to win? I may have to make peace with the fact that those days might be behind me. I'm not saying I've made any final decisions yet; this isn't a retirement announcement. But its feeling a lot more real than in the past. At this stage I wouldn't be surprised if Copenhagen was my last competitive Worlds, but I also wouldn't be shocked if Portland is.

Portland Worlds. When I found out they were gonna host in either 2016 or 2017, I was certain I'd be there either year. It's cheap and easy to get to (2.5 hr flight), and we know we love the town. Looking at it now though, Lil' Fan will probably only be 6-7 months old at the time of the tournament, so no idea if travel with the baby is even viable. Assuming that it is, the other half of the equation is whether I'll be able to train hard for the months leading up to Worlds while also raising a newborn and being sleep deprived. I'm still working out what my paternity leave will look like schedule wise, so I really don't know how to factor in Worlds.

Despite all the uncertainty, I'd really like to go to Portland, and compete one last time. I started freestyle seriously in 1997, so capping off my career at Worlds exactly 20 years later would feel pretty special. I also feel like I've never done a routine in Finals at Worlds that I was really happy with. If I could cap off my career with a dropless in Finals, I'd feel more at peace walking away. It'd also be nice to finish with 10 dropless routines for my career. Further motivation also comes from the fact that I already have a song picked out, and I think I could make a pretty unique routine with it. I'm definitely intrigued by the idea of doing a super original routine that wins all the artistic cards, even at the cost of a lot of technical points. I think that could be a lot of fun, and may even be a good strategy for me.

All that said, if Portland isn't in the cards for me and my competitive career is already behind me, I'd be at peace with that. I wrote a post back in 2011 where I set 2 goals for myself before retiring (make routine finals at Worlds, win USO routines) and publicly challenged myself to do it. I've had a longer and better career than I ever would have expected, and for that I'm truly thankful. I really don't know what the next year will look like, but regardless of what happens, I feel lucky for having found footbag, for the friends I made through it, and for all the soaring highs and crushing lows it gave me. No matter what.

Random closeout vid, with some stuff I submitted to the footbag instagram account:
Hopefully I can get Episode 3 of the Symposium out on Friday. Personally, I found this conversation to be one of the more fun ones. I'll be curious to see how it goes over with listeners.

[Derek]

Seeing your progression of Ripstein gives me glimmers of hope. If your child is born on my bornday (Jan. 15th), it's middle name/nickname will forever be Bladerunner McEggs. McEggs is debatable.

[Asmus]

Maybe Deckard McEggs - Get it?

Looking forward to the next episode of da pod.

I hope you make it to Portland you have certainly had a great competitive footbag career.

[Allan]

I thought it was Podcast week?

[boyle]

You can travel with little ones from about 3-4 months old. Nicolas was just over 4 months when we came back to Australia, and some people do it even sooner.

[C-Fan]

In St. Louis now, taking a training for work. Neat that I get to visit a town I've never been to, and see footbag friends while I'm at it. At the same time, its tough leaving my pregnant wife alone at home taking care of the dog and house by herself.

Episode 3 of the podcast is still unreleased. It was supposed to come out Friday, but my laptop battery died in the middle of last week, and I didn't get the replacement til Saturday. Monday morning I was literally doing the sound editing until 8:30 am, which was bad since I planned on leaving the house at 8 am to get to the airport for this trip. I made my flight, but it was close. Haley graciously did the finishing touches on the pod (adding intro and outros) once I left...she's helped me so much with this project, and she doesn't even footbag. I'm so lucky. Also leaning on Ivan and Allan for help on the Wordpress front. Hoping to get it out soon.

I haven't played in a week, and if I don't get in some shreds before next Monday, that'll mean I'm 2 weeks rusty. #motivation..

Didn't do very good with this motivation. I got in one session before this trip, and it was the day before the trip. So pretty much 13 days of no footbag, then one session, then on a plane the next day. That combined with overworking my back doing chores (moving crib pieces, fertilizing the lawn, refilling the dog food) really hurt me. I woke up in the middle of the night on Sunday with lower back pains, and Monday morning I was hurting enough I needed advil and heating pads on my back. I gave myself a 40% chance of playing in St. Louis, and figured that even if I did play I'd have to take it easy.

I met up with Cory and Kyle pretty easy, and we played in the park where St. Louis hosted the Worlds Fair in 1902. Very pretty structures and park. During warmups I wasn't sure how I'd fare, but once I got warm I was able to play without any issues. Felt very lucky and happy about this. Amazing what adrenaline and caffeine can do for you. Kyle played well. His game is developing very nicely, with some unique concepts you don't see a lot of players do at the same stage of their playing career. Stuff like quantums and guays, which I really dig. Cory had a rough session since he hasn't been playing regularly. He still has such nice style, so light on his feet with his landings. We played at one spot for 90% of the session, then walked around the park and zoo to hit some tricks in front of different backgrounds. We grabbed some St. Louis style pizza and toasted ravioli (another st louis specialty) for dinner after that, and just hung out a bit.

Yesterday I got dinner with Kyle, but we agreed to take a day off from playing so I could continue resting my back and legs. Tonight we're all getting together for a shred, so I have high hopes for that.

Here's an excerpt from that post 10 years ago. I think I'm going to try for some of these during my next session, as a throwback.

August 15th, 2006

*whirling swirl bsos
*toe blur and reverse swirl, all BSOS.
*torque x2, bsos
*blur-smear-DSO bsos, with tomahawk bsos in the seal.

*9 contacts of rubberman, starting on atom smasher.
*blurry whirl-rubberman.
*otherside blurry whirl-rubberman.

I spent my last session in Denver before this trip going for these highlights. Had a good time doing that. It was interesting to see which highlights I was able to hit easily, and which ones were tricky. As you can see in the video, my whirling swirls are still way inconsistent, even 10 years later.

[boyle]

Can you do multiple whirling swirls in a row? That's something I find very difficult.

[C-Fan]

I'd guess I probably top out at 2 on each side? I haven't really worked on whirling swirl in a few years. The last time I did, I was focusing on stepping out of them, which requires a similarly solid clipper at the end of the swirl.
At this point though I have more interest in working on ripsteins than whirling swirls.

The real question though, is what do I want to work on over the next year? That hinges on whether or not I think I can go to Worlds in Portland. If I can, I should stop playing with stuff like big tricks and ripsteins, and improve my stamina and variety for routines. If I'm not going to Worlds, then I should just mess around with anything I find interesting that keeps me playing. All things equal, my preference would be to go to Worlds so I can take one last shot at doing a good routine in finals. I plan on talking with HR next week to get a better idea of what our potential paternity/maternity leave options are, which may be what decides Worlds for me.

I'm posting from my hotel room in St. Louis, less than an hour before checkout. It was definitely a fun trip footbagwise. I hung out with Kyle 4 nights in a row, hung out with Cory twice, and got in 3 sessions total. I'd met both of them before this trip, but I feel like I got to know them a lot better and became better friends over the course of the trip, which is always a great feeling. Shredwise, we all had one bad session each, but none of them overlapped. I got a good amount of clips from all of us, and enough background variety that I should be able to make a decent video from the trip. Maybe I can work on that a bit this weekend.

The other big news footbagwise was that I finally released episode 3 of the podcast. I had some rancid timing with my laptop battery/cable dying in the middle of last week, which was compounded by me having to leave for this trip. Thankfully Haley was able to take us to the finish line from Denver, and we were able to push the episode out Wednesday night. As some observant listeners have noted, the episode is "3A" and not "3." Based on feedback I got from surveys, I'm aiming to keep all the pods under an hour, so I'm splitting Derek's up into 2 episodes. That said, I probably won't release 3B until much later, just so there's more variety of guests for the next couple months. I haven't gotten as much feedback on this episode, in the form of Facebook comments or private messages, and I still haven't figured out how to track hits/listens on the website. Which is to say that I have no way of knowing if interest is increasing or waning on these pods. At the end of the day though, I enjoy the pods and I have faith in the project, so I'm going to continue with the project and just hope people are listening and enjoying.





https://thesymposium.modified.in/podcas ... ttlefield/

Excited to be heading back home. Hopefully this weekend I can work on episode 4 of the pod, edit some of this STL footage, and maybe even sneak in a session or two. We'll see.

[boyle]

What happened with the transition in that one? It seemed that the ending credits just came over the top mid sentence. Good to have Derek on there, interesting character.

[DC Clinks]

Oh wow, I just got the whole meaning of the Symposium title. Like its a throwback to the ancient Greek philosophy stuff but also a footbag concept. Wow. I'm not too bright.

I like that you make it a habit to post a video / additional media with every post. Something I've been trying to (unsuccessfully) emulate.

[C-Fan]

Nice to be home again. I've got 2 solid weeks here before hitting the road again, with trips to Sacramento and Idaho. Ideally I'd spend this time at home playing footbag, so I won't embarrass myself when I play with shredders on my next trips, but I've had an abysmal track record of doing that this year. I think I need to think about footbag in the context of the baby, as that might make it more likely that I carve the time out to play. Like, instead of convincing myself to shred because I need to stay sharp for my upcoming trips, I should approach it as stress relief to help us continue getting ready for the baby. Worth a shot at least.

Have fun in St. Louis. Hope someone films.

Filming is never the problem for me. It's getting that footage turned into a video that is the real challenge. Whenever I have good footage on my hands, I feel like my 3 options are:

1. Edit the footage myself, to my video quality standards. I usually don't have time to do this, so I end up sitting on the footage for months. A good/bad example is the Vegas Jam video I made, which I released almost a year after the tournament.
2. Release the unedited footage. This is the fastest option but I never do this, since I feel the footage "deserves" better treatment.
3. Outsource the footage to other editors so they can make a well edited cut. This option is the most appealing to me, since it takes the least time and also theoretically leads to a better looking final product (since most editors who volunteer are better than me). Unfortunately, this route can take a long time, and I have the least control over it. The last 4 editors I've sent footage to haven't made videos yet, but I remain optimistic they will eventually.

So while I didn't get in any shredding this weekend, I did make time to edit a video from my St. Louis trip. I had around 13 minutes of usable footage, which I boiled down to a 4 minute video. The edits aren't as clean as I envisioned them in my head, but overall I think it came out pretty well. I may make a "leftovers" video with the remaining footage, with zero editing. That said, I knew I had enough good stuff that I really wanted to make one good cut from the trip, to have as a souvenir. Here's what I made:
It was interesting going through the footage, because it really hammered home how much video lies. On my trip Kyle and I had 3 sessions, and Cory had 2. We all had one bad session each, but a lot of the best footage for each of us came from our "bad" sessions. For example, my worst session (in terms of fun, consistency, frustration, etc.) was on the Wash U campus. It was super hot and muggy and mosquitoes were eating us alive. I never felt like I got in a good rhythm, and at the time I felt my biggest achievement in the session was controlling my mental game so I didn't get overly frustrated or angry. Despite this, almost all of my best clips came from the footage from that session.

Oh wow, I just got the whole meaning of the Symposium title. Like its a throwback to the ancient Greek philosophy stuff but also a footbag concept.

When I decided to do a pod, I took cues from many of my favorite podcasts. My favorite basketball podcast is "The Lowe Post" by Zach Lowe. I liked that the podcast title was a pun about basketball, so I knew I wanted a footbag pun in mine. I initially thought about doing some pun with "Fan" or my name like Zach Lowe did, but then I figured that's a bit narcissistic, and that giving it a title untethered to a person's name would leave the door open for other people to host the pod in the future. The Symposium worked on a bunch of levels and came with the bonus of ready-made thematic imagery, so it seemed like a natural fit.

[C-Fan]

Finding time for footbag continues to be a challenge. When I do make time for it, sometimes it feels like a choice between playing footbag or working on the podcast/videos. Making a good video cut, or producing a podcast, is very satisfying from a creative standpoint. It just feels good to have a physical product at the end of it, that you can watch/listen to later, and that others can also enjoy. That said, nothing can replace the feeling of physically playing. But when I make the decision to get in a shred I sometimes feel guilty for not working on the pod. I guess I'm saying its tough to find a balance between playing and producing footbag content. It wouldn't be if I had more time to dedicate to footbag overall, but at this stage of my life it's just hard to make that happen.

On that note, I got in a shred yesterday. On a whim I tried plasticman, which is a drill I've never had much success with. For some reason I find it easier to hit clean flurries than clean barrages (from clipper), so I've hit plasticman with flurry more times than I have with barrage. I would like to hit it with deeper barrages, but I was still pleasantly surprised to get it as well as I did. I wasn't sure what else to work on during the session, so I did my usual whirr/ripstein practice with mixed results. My hit rate with whirr is higher than ripstein, but my cleanliness rate is higher with ripstein than with whirr. Or to put it another way, I need to work a lot more on both of them. I also messed around a bit with Shred30 practice, but my stamina and consistency weren't there...probably since I have been playing so infrequently. One nice surprise though was setting a new PR for atom smashers, which was pretty unexpected:
In the evening I worked more on Episode 4 of the pod. I think if I make a strong push again today I should be able to get it out this weekend. I have 2 weeks of back to back travel coming up soon, so I really should work on Episode 5 as well so its not hopelessly late by the time its due. One thing at a time.

[C-Fan]

Gearing up for back to back trips over the next couple weeks, so time has been at a premium. I've been trying to cover both dog walks every day, since Haley has to cover them while I'm gone. I wish she didn't have to, since our dog is close to 100 pounds and can be a handful, and Haley's baby bump continues to grow. Thankfully I'll only have one more trip after September before the due date.

While I hate to be away from the family at this stage of the pregnancy, I am looking forward to seeing Derek next week, and the Boise crew the week after that. I'm hoping to play at least a couple times with Derek, which hopefully knocks some of the rust off before I hit Boise. It'd be nice to get in a session or two before I head to Sacramento, but we'll see if that's even an option.

In podcast news, I released episode 4 last week. On one hand I continue to be frustrated with how much time and effort is needed to make each episode, but on the other hand I'm generally happy with how they're turning out. It does feel good to look at the Symposium homepage and see 4 episodes on there...it makes me feel like I'm building something. One thing that has helped my motivation is that Haley installed a widget on the page that tracks listens for each episode. Prior to that, it was really hard to gauge the community's interest which sometimes got me down. Take the Landes podcast for example. I flew out to Boise, took the time to record, spent hours editing and balancing audio, edited a photo for the post, uploaded it and released it...and got 14 likes on Facebook. And of the 14 people who bothered to click the "like" button, I don't even know how many of them listened to it. At least now with the stats widget, I can tell myself that people are listening even if they aren't giving feedback on modified or Facebook. I also try and remind myself that I'm getting a lot of good indirect feedback. I've had 5 people contact me asking to be on the podcast, which I'm guessing they would only do if they had listened to the pod and liked it. So there's that.

As for my own opinion of the pod...every time I listen to an episode I can't help but note all the little mistakes in each episode. Sometimes the audio boosting is conspicuous. Editing out boring/controversial sections can lead to jarring/confusing transitions between topics. I sometimes interrupt or talk over my guests, especially when I get excited (this was particularly bad with the Landes pod). I try and edit out the "ums," "likes" and "you knows" as much as possible...but there are still more left than I'd like. But every time I start to beat myself up over these mistakes, I remind myself that each mistake shows how much work goes into each pod. The audio boosting isn't always perfect, but if I didn't do it you wouldn't be able to hear certain responses. Transitions between topics can be jarring, but if I didn't edit as much as I did the pods would be longer and more boring. Interrupting guests is bad practice, but it's really hard to steer a conversation and keep it flowing in interesting ways (I have a whole new appreciation for late night talk show hosts now). I can't edit out all the filler words we use, but if I didn't cut any out it'd sound a lot worse. So I can't help but hear all the mistakes of each episode, but I'm trying to be positive by using them as reminders of all the work that I'm putting in.

No shreds since my last post, so for video here's some leftover footage from St. Louis that didn't go in my polished video:

[C-Fan]

In less than a day I'll be in Sacramento, hopefully chilling with Derek after a solid shred. Looking forward to that. Pushed really hard at work last week, since I'm out the next two. Stayed late at work Friday, so figured there'd be no chance to footbag since it'd be dark after walking the dog. To my surprise I find this note when I get home:



I'm the luckiest guy in the world, I really am. I take advantage of the hour of sunlight this buys me, and go out to shred.

Lately I've been working on whirr, ripstein, and shred30. The first two I'm working on just because they're cool tricks I always wished I learned. The shred30 practice is more of an attempt to get my stamina and linking back to where I'd need it if I train for Worlds next year. Even if I got my Shred30 solid next summer, I don't even know I'd compete in it at a tournament. It's really more of a means to an end than a goal in its own right.

Whirr and ripstein are interesting tricks. They both definitely feel outside the normal wheelhouse of stuff I do, for various reasons. I also think they share some common traits. Both of them are basically a set to a downtime component, but the line is a bit blurred between the dexes. Like the first dex isn't quite a full on set, and the downtime isn't fully downtime. It's also weird, since the set is the same component as the downtime part (swirl set to swirl, whirl set to whirl). I have found that if the first dex of either trick is too strong/high, it makes the downtime component a lot harder. Conversely, if the first dex doesn't pop enough, you won't have time for the downtime component. The main difference for me is that my whirl set by default is too strong/high, while my swirl set is almost always too low. So I find both tricks difficult and inconsistent because of the set, but in one case the set is too strong and the other the set is too weak. I do feel like I'm making incremental improvement on both tricks, though some sessions its hard to see it. I want to keep grinding at these though, because I think it'd be a worthwhile payoff if either trick became somewhat consistent.

On a weird note, while I continue to struggle with both whirr and ripstein, all that work has somehow unlocked double blender for me (one side only). Like, I had hit double blenders in the past, but now they feel a lot easier, tighter dexes, better flow, and more control. I had another session Saturday where they still felt that way, so I don't think it's a fluke:
OK, next post will be from Sacto. Hopefully it won't be too hot, and I'll be able to see Derek a couple times while I'm out there.

[C-Fan]

In Cali now, near Folsom Dam. Met up with Derek and Special Mystery Guest (SMG) yesterday afternoon without too much trouble. My GPS took me to the wrong location 15 miles out of the way from my hotel, but that probably only made me 30 minutes late. Took us another little while to find a park, but when we did it was pretty good. SMG was out of practice, but you could see him improving and gaining steam through the session, eventually hitting stuff like mullet and spinning swirl. Derek played strong right out the gate, with long runs and more clippers incorporated. He's started doing stuff like pixie muted clipper to ducking legover, which I really dig. I had a lot of fun playing. Can't recall many highlights, but I was in a good mood and just felt happy to be shredding with friends.

After footbag we hit In N Out. I always think of Evan when I go there, since my regular order (extra spread, chopped chiles, grilled onions on a cheeseburger) was inspired/enabled by his insider info. The food hits the spot. We grab some snacks from Trader Joe's then head back to the hotel to hang out. Back at the hotel I realized I forgot to pack my micro SD card adapter. So while I'm able to recharge my camera, I may run out of memory very soon. Damn. Asked SMG and Derek if they have an adapter at home. If either does, I should be able to get footage from 2 sessions. If not, I'll be forced to just work with the stuff I shot yesterday. If thats the case, its not horrible, since that was a pretty strong session. Once we settled in at the hotel some, we recorded a pod, where I tried a couple new things format wise that I'm excited about. I half wonder if I should release some of the episodes out of order just to mix things up.

Capped the night off by checking our schedules and deciding to have our next session on Thursday afternoon. Going to use that as motivation to catch up on work as much as possible before then, so I can take that time to footbag and not feel guilty. Important to be a guiltless footbagger.

OK, closing this out with footage from my last solo shred in Denver: Was happy/surprised with the midstring whirlwind, and it was nice to rehit the sick 3 at the end on both sides. Hadn't done that one in over a year. Wasn't thrilled with the seal on the first one, but it was getting hot and I was getting tired, so I settled for it.