The concert on Wednesday night was amazing. I am so happy that I got to see Superchunk. If anyone reads this blog & lives somewhat close to Asheville, NC, I'd highly recommend catching their next show (which will be in 2008). There is not a font large enough to describe how hard they rocked.
All the gas stuff got taken care of really early on Thursday, so I had the whole day to just relax. Haven't had many chances to do that lately, I feel so refreshed and calm today. It won't last!
Kicked at Welles yesterday. Showed up a little before 3, was the first one there, started warming up & doing tiltless drills. There were all these high-school kids there, they were preparing for Olympics Day. So I was a little worried about my playing area getting overrun, and having another confrontation with some douche. But it didn't happen, and the only comments I heard from the kids nearby were positive. I hit some really clean datws for them.
The session started off really relaxed, Zeke was working on his bike, Ronnie showed up a little after Zeke. I drilled flip terrage until I hit it. Booyah. Ronnie and I hacked and then Ronnie borrowed my footfighter to practice ATW - which he hit for the first time. Vicarious booyah. So I only have one other 32 panel - a Raye mini, which is basically retired because one of the colors gets holes in it very fast.
I was pixie setting the Raye bag really well and came agonizingly close to Phoenix once or twice, but no cigar. Also practiced flip datw, also came close but not quite there yet. So we just kinda hung out for a while, I was lazily practicing some stuff, Zeke was still working on his bike, Ronnie worked on his bike too.
Then we played squares. I won the first two games of three square against Zeke & Ronnie, just started out hot and managed to stay a point or two ahead of Zeke each game. Abe joined us to make the third game a proper four square matchup, and I won that as well. Then Twitch, Meinard, Marty, Cuba, and eventually Reile all joined us as the fourth game was in progress.
Whenever the games get that large, with people jumping in midway, it gets harder to stay focused. I had trouble adapting to Abe, Meinard, and Marty for the first several rounds against them. Also there were a lot of hack offs and probably questionable calls in that game, which is kind of a sign of amateurish play IMO (not that 'amateurish' is really the appropriate word, but you get the point). I think that lots of bogus calls and overly generous hack offs just mean that somebody who should have won probably got denied the win just because people were voting against them. I think Meinard probably should've won, but had to hack off like every other point, some of which were probably bullshit.
Anyway, Meinard, Zeke, and I were all at game point for dozens of rounds. Twitch and Marty got into the middle teens as well (playing to 21), maybe some other players, too. I broke out all my most vicious tactics to keep Meinard and Zeke from winning, like dumping a pass behind them when they're in sq1 just to keep them out of the game. After several rounds of not getting to ksq, I made it in, and won game point when somebody (Cuba?) kicked it out of bounds. That was a very satisfying victory - received props from everyone. Next time I demand that you carry me around the softball field on your shoulders.
So I won all four games of squares that I played. Just played really solid, consistent defense all day and that got me the victories. Additional booyah. Gloat gloat gloat.
Then I decided not to jeopardize my perfect squares record for the day, and sat out the next game. It was really entertaining to watch Reile, Marty, Cuba, and Twitch play, but then Meinard and Abe were freestyling so I joined them. Abe's PLO>Ducking Butterfly is a really cool combo, I like it a lot. Reile joined us, Meinard had to take off, then Abe had to take off. I hit Paradox Symposium Mirage, no seal. Reile worked on Merlin and some other crazy 3-dex stuff, I wish I could've been more help telling him if all the dexes were clean, but I seriously don't even know what's going on with moves that are that advanced.
I tried flip datw some more, and actually just overdexed it several times, otherwise I've got it. That's encouraging, I know I can work on not overdexing it and improving control without beating my head against the wall and having no idea how to improve. So maybe I'll hit it in a couple weeks. That's been kind of a dream of mine - to hit DATW with both legs, both directions. So its exciting to be closer to that.
To recap:
Flip Terrage (first time)
PS Mirage (first time, not sealed)
Smear> Dimwalk
Won all 4 games of squares that I played.
A pretty satisfying day indeed. And today's Friday! Hells yeah.
EDIT: I really like how Iron Clad Ben keeps track of his time spent kicking, so I went back to see how many days I've kicked --
Since May 28, after taking time off to fully heal, I've kicked on 18 days. That's 72%!
In the first three weeks of june, I've kicked on 15 days. That's 71.4%! Holy shit.
See you rascals this weekend. Gimme a call, y'all.
Or tattoed to my forearm.
Props.
So that's the secret to hitting new tricks.
) & Saturday the 7th has Cracker (Cheap Trick & Soul Asylum