Post
by KRyan » 23 Aug 2010 20:29
So, Worlds ended two weeks ago for me. I decided I shall do my write-up now rather than save it for a time when the memories aren't still as fresh.
So, firstly, before I flew out with Dan Boyle to SFO airport, we had a meal in the Air New Zealand lounge in Sydney. The fact we got into the lounge was a miracle, considering I wasn't a member. My Dad flies a lot and somehow managed to smuggle us in. This was a very good sign for worlds to be awesome.
The flight took around 14 hours, by the end I was so relieved to get out of the plane. I had about 5 hours sleep and every bone in my body was aching. I really needed to stretch. Getting off the plane, I found myself really tired. This was most likely due to the fact that the night before I caught the plane I got no sleep. I tried to make myself really tired, so that I would sleep on the plane, but that didn't really work.
After disembarking on the Monday in the US, we headed straight to the BART and caught the train to the Oakland Convention centre. The trip took us about 40 minutes. I don't know if anyone in San Francisco realises that the noise in the BART is almost deafening and actually made me wince a couple times. Yeah, so for future reference, DON'T CATCH THE BART IF YOU WANT TO BE ABLE TO HEAR IN THE FUTURE.
So Dan and I reached the hotel after Dan had led us on some maze away from the correct direction. This was when I noticed that all the shops were closed. I found this very strange, not sure if that is natural in the US, as shops in Australia are usually open everyday of the week. When we entered the hotel, saw a few footbaggers waiting in the lobby. Considering this was my first World Championships, I did not recognise any of them. One of the players, turned out to be Lon Smith, came over and asked us who we were as he was ticking names off. So awesome that the first person I met over there was Lon.
Anyway, we headed up to our room on the 9th floor as I recall, entered and realised that the other players in our room had already arrived. There was like a 5 kg pack of Cranberries sitting on the counter, along with a lot of other random quantities of food. Dan saw the pool outside and was instantly drawn, I on the other hand pretty much collapsed on the bed. However my long-awaited sleep was shortly interrupted by Jay Boychuck and Kevin Regamy coming into the room. I remember Jay introducing himself as a nube, however I could see through his lies. Yes, even in Australia, we have constant access to the internet. Kevin was in our room with Marco Hartig from Germany as well.
Kevin and Jay said that they also were going to the pool so I decided to put my beauty sleep off for a while. I met a couple more people down at the pool; Anssi, Armin, Marco, Dave Clavens, Will Tuttle, Tuuka and a couple more. We chilled at the pool for a while, but once it started to get darker, I decided I could not put off sleep any longer. I went to bed at about 8 pm that night, also forgot to eat dinner. Dan and the others woke me up when they returned to the room. As we were sharing beds, it did cause a little bit of time to adjust to Dan's strange body movements. He slapped me across the face half-way through that night!
I woke up the next day at like 7am. I went down to the lobby with Kevin and chilled for a bit. We were eventually called over to help with the set-up of the net courts. I helped them out for like 3-4 hours, realising at about 10 am I was going to die from hunger due to not eating dinner the night before and exercising without eating breakfast.
The footbag meeting was held at 11 am that day, I remember seeing Vasek, Tina and other famous shredders for the first time. I remember when Dave hit nemesis first time during the interview and thinking, 'I am going to amputate your legs and try to attach them to me instead', or something along those lines. Leg transplants aren't realistic yet so I decided to oppose that plan.
Circle competition was beginning soon after. I tried to warm up, after I had got some food of course, but felt really sick and dizzy. Yesterday I had not kicked much with the others down at the park, and today I was still sleep and food deprived. Not a good way to start off my first ever world championship competition. So, I did the circle thing anyway as Ken, Brian Sherill and Brian Cooper were in my group. I had always wanted to shred with Ken, so I tried even though the exercise was taxing. I did quite poorly, no more contacts than 6-7 contacts in any of the strings. I remember almost passing out at the end of the circle as I was just taxing my body. Ken and the others did pretty well, although Ken was the clear winner. I watched the rest of the other circle competitions, which lasted till 2-3 pm that day. One highlight was, I met most of Team Japan during the day which was exciting. I am going to be at their National Championships this year, and last time I was over there I did not get to kick with many of them.
After circle, Dan and I went for a swim. This actually turned out to be a 3 hour swim nonetheless but it was very refreshing. Caroline, another Aussie trooper, brought out her stereo and a little wahu ball. We spent about 2 hours chucking that around before realising how wrinkled we had become. By this time, I had met a lot of the footbaggers.
That night I grabbed dinner, don't remember what it was, and came back to the large hall to watch Dante, Greg, Mathieu and Nathan still kicking. I was soooo impressed with all of their styles. I really wanted to be them at that point in time. I went to bed at about 11pm that night.
The next day was routines. I was going to do a routine, however I was still feeling sickly. Upon that I had received an injury before I had come to Worlds and did not really have a routine prepared. I told Steve Goldberg that I was scratching, he was not pleased that I did not tell him earlier. Dan and I went to chinatown for breakfast. We both spent about $2 for a breakfast consisting of chinese dumplings and buns. They were, to say the least, awful tasting but I did manage to eat half of each bun.
That day, I received the privilege of being mind blown time and time again. Although there were some amazing routines, Lon Smiths and Phil Morrison's routines stood out for me. Lon was dropless and had some crazy torque strings in there, while Phil did a handstand for about 10 seconds after doing some weird little dance. The intermediate routines led me to believe that most of the players probably should have competed in the open division, however that was their choice. The female routines were all extremely good, and apart from Tina, would be very hard to judge in the finals I thought. After routines, Dan wanted to just hide himself in beer after his routine fiasco, I decided to stick around and try to kick up a storm. I started to feel a lot better that night, after kicking for a couple hours. Afterwards, dinner was at who know where, and again returned to the hall area. Szymon, Tom and Wiktor had set up a two square court. I watched them for a bit, and decided 4 square is better. So, I went to work on setting up the first 4 square court for the World Footbag Championships 2010. Once a group of us started playing, it became an addiction. So many people gathered and we were force to make another 4 square court. Just as a notice: DON'T EVER THINK YOU CAN BEAT SZYMON AT 4 SQUARE. HE IS TOO GOOD. He proved this fact time and time again over the next few nights. Every night we played 4 square for at least 3-4 hours. Went to bed at about 2 am that day.
Woke up, had breakfast, went and got a Hot chocalate with Nathan Pipenberg at the closest Cafe. That day we had Circle semifinals, the names were astounding. The fact that only one from each group would progress to the final was even more so. Circle semi-finals was probably the most amazing footbag-related thing I had ever see. There were 2 nemesis' hit by 2 different people. Clavens and Penske both felt obliged to show us their skills with this trick. Damian Gielnicki, was to me, the most impressive shredder in the circle. I know this is arguable, however the strings he pulled off were amazingly difficult and he did not concentrate on string length(although his strings were very long). Pretty sure I had a swim that day, went and got a Jamba juice with Dale Waldren, had some US style dinner, played another 4 hours of 4 square and shredded for at least another 2. I was feeling normal today, so my condition was back to normal and was playing a lot better. I bought a pair of nucleas shoes on that Thursday. I have to say that yes there are some bad design faults however, my clipper has improved tremendously from practicing with them. I hit a few new moves while shredding on the Thursday. I hit smoke bs and pixie op whirl both sides.
I will continue with the Friday and the All-night shred in my next post.
You've got a hundred years to live, but probably not footbag. Better get Shredding!
I'll have to get down to Melb in the next few weeks to shred.
but I couldn't do much more