Canberra, Australia via SCL - Daniel Boyle

[boyle]

Good session today with Olly and Law. They are both learning more footbag tricks. Olly did flapper set whirl, which was pretty awesome. I finished up the session with blurry torque. Very satisfied with that. I was also able to hit whirl from flapper after many attempts.

Down to Narooma this weekend, should be a great time. Looks like we will have a good turnout, with a bit of international flavour.

[Asmus]

Have fun at Narooma!

Film a little if you find the time.

[boyle]

Narooma was great. I filmed plenty, but haven't had the time to even watch it yet. Been super busy lately.

Hit some really good long runs, had ripped warrior b2b midstring, hit riptide, hit spinning ducking butterfly-mobius, did 1416 consecutive kicks, won that game Articulate alongside Caroline and Chris, got really sunburnt, played plenty of hours of footbag, drank some beers, played some cricket, kubb, good times all round. We had 8 players there, with 10 people total.

[C-Fan]

Who was there? Definitely interested in seeing some video.

[boyle]

Juho, Chris Tristano from New York (+ Kim, his girlfriend), Copey (+ Kara, his girlfriend), Dyalan, who came down with Ryan R and Mitch from Sydney, Caroline and myself. I just plugged in the camera, so let's see what I can do if I get any time.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Stoked to see the footage. Great amount of players getting together for that jam!

Ripped b2b midstring is no joke. That's kick ass dude. Ever done any other Alpine Stepping links, like Ripped> Spike or Jack> Ripped?

[boyle]

Jack ripped I have done once. Juho did it bsos. With ease. Of course...

[boyle]

Good session just now, working on my routine a bit for Worlds. Have chosen a song, have done some shorter performances with it, and maybe a full 2 minute routines 10 years ago, but need a bit of developing. Good to start early on to have it perfected.

Also did 115 tiltless. I think that's possibly a record for me, I might have done 120ish. Aiming for 200 sometime before Worlds. Haven't had the chance to have any serious sessions since Narooma. It's always just a quick kick in the park during my lunch or dinner break at work. And on that note, time to go to work.

Good to see a few more people getting their tickets to Worlds. I have a feeling this is going to be a really good one. I just had the chance to have a look at that interview with Sergio and Asmus. Good viewing.

[boyle]

Just did my routine dropless in practice. Not wearing lavers either. Look out world. ..

[boyle]

Hi blog. Have been playing a bit, but not enough. Have some video to edit for a couple of interesting projects, but time is not my friend of late. Considering that it's just about to go past midnight, that's not happening today.

Working a lot, picked up a few more tours this week, which means a few more extra mini footbag demonstrations. Cass wrote to me the other day to pick my brain for some advice on doing demos. It's interesting, as obviously I am no superstar of footbag (there aren't too many of them), but I have carved out a solid CV of footbag performances, for about 10 years now. I think my first one was in 2005. In reality I can probably make a longer list of what not to do, but the key things I said were be very confident, no matter if you drop or make a mistake, make full use of any titles you have (Cass has the advantage of that World Champion tag), and try and get one performance to lead to another.

I'm not too interested in seeking out performances right now, but later in the year, probably more looking towards next year, I would like to set up some educational programs. At the moment I don't really have time for that.

Anyway, been playing a bit. Not as much as I would have liked, and haven't been playing particularly well. Lots of dropping on simple tricks. Quite annoying. Hopefully the next sessions will be better. I have practiced my routine a few more times and they were the opposite of dropless, more dropful. I have a feeling that over the course of practice, I would have dropped on every single trick in the plan.

I booked a hotel for Copenhagen. I booked on booking.com, so I may still change our booking if something better comes up. I booked the Cabinn City, seems they had a weekly rate as well, which brought down the price a bit. You get a bit of a shock committing about $1000 to accommodation, though the reality is the prices are very similar to hear in Australia (really expensive).

[Cass]

Your quick and detailed response to my message is much appreciated!

[boyle]

No worries. ..hope it goes great!

[boyle]

I played for a while at uni today. Life is getting busy with uni. At least it's only two days per week, but with work as well, makes for a long day. This is how my day worked today.

5:30am wake up. Nicolas was up earlier than usual, but I made some milk and he drank that and then was come for a bit, but soon enough we were playing with the toys.
8:30 drop off at daycare
9am at uni, class for an hour and a half. We have to do an online quiz each week in that subject, so another guy and I do it straight after the class, which seems like a reasonable idea.
I had a bit of a break there so I ate some lunch and then played some footbag. Normally I do it the other way around, which is obviously better for digestion, but I was feeling an early hunger.
Another class after the footbag session, which I will detail a little later. Then straight to work, up to 11. Ride home and then try to wind down a bit, then time for bed. At least I don't work tomorrow, a couple of classes though. And a work party to attend. Free beer is free beer though...


In the session, things stared very badly. I couldn't even put a few tricks together. Eventually I found some rhythm and hit 40 guiltless. Not long after I hit 30 guiltless, with double spinning clipper toward the end of that run.

I have been working a bit on my toe game - particularly on DSO (b2b). Would like to hit pixie dso b2b. Working on atomic ss eggbeater. Haven't come too close yet, but I think I will hit that soon. Also started having a think about stepping dso. That might be a way off, but it's not ridiculous to think I could do that. Have had a couple of looks at gyro barrage. This things are all a bit out of my reach for the moment, but I will keep working on them.

Dexter just arrived in Australia today. Looks likes there's going to be a session (I won't be there), but Dyalan, Matt Baker, Max and others are among possible attendees.

[Asmus]

Cool toe shit!

Free beer is free beer though...

Words to live by!

[boyle]

Nice sunny day today, day off work, on track with uni work, paradon swirl to finish session. Friends visiting on the weekend. Dexter probably coming down next week. All going well.

[boyle]

Not much playing lately. Working a lot. Went for a bike ride of about 65km the other day. That was probably overdoing it a bit and still paying for it getting towards one week on. Glad that Jim Penske and Nick Landes reached their crowdfunding goal.

Here is a little bit I wrote about it quickly. http://sportslashlife.com/footbag-crowd ... ches-goal/

Pretty awesome person to have ticking you over into funding territory. Here is a little article I found about that particular character from many moons ago.

https://books.google.com.au/books?id=nG ... ag&f=false


A couple of pictures from the ride.








Dexter is coming down tomorrow. Looking forward to a kick. Hopefully catch up with Copey in the evening too. It's been a good year for international visitors, and it's only March...

[boyle]

Good quick visit from Dexter. Two sessions of about one hour apiece. Good to chat about footbag, travel, life. They had spent a bit of time in Colombia, nice to hear how those guys are going. Phoenix-fog was the final combo I hit. Took ages, but I got it done.

Feeling pretty tired today. Finished uni, hard to remotivate for going to work.

[boyle]

Haven't posted much of late. Being playing in a lot of small sections. Sometimes at midnight, sometimes with a few beers, sometimes in my dinner break. Just finding minutes really, it's a busy schedule lately. A couple of days off from the hostel coming up and I'm deeply pleased about that. Also have a longer weekend coming up, it's still a couple of weeks away, but that will be good. I put a couple of videos on my Instagram - https://instagram.com/p/0kj-u6GILE/?tak ... ylefootbag

Anyway, working a lot on long tiltless runs. Have been getting 50+ with fairly good consistency. Not really any new tricks or links to report. Caroline will be coming back here in the coming weeks, can get in some more practice when she is around. Maybe...I'm sure she will have a pretty busy schedule too.

Going to a show tomorrow, my friends in I Exist are playing with Psycroptic, a famous Australian metal band. Should be fun, the musical events I've been to of late have been few and far between.

[boyle]

Haven't posted in a while, since my last post mentioned Caroline would be coming in a few weeks, and now she has been here a week or two. We had a good session on Saturday, with Copey, at this new place called "Westside", which funnily enough, is on the west side of the lake.

It's one of these pop up shipping container village kind of things (very hip...) and also has a rooftop bar, basketball court and plenty of other stuff (miniramp, small bmx track). I think it would be a really good place to do nationals in Spring. We'll see how that idea goes.

Anyway, I was playing well, had some big long runs, some hard tricks. Alpine blur>pixie paradon is probably a new link, don't remember having hit that before. Copey hadn't played since Narooma, but he had a couple of little things - dimwalk>dlo was probably a highlight, and like usual lately, Caroline had some very long runs.

We have had a couple of other sessions in the garage, it's starting to get cold here now and that's a great space. Also on the cold note, we turned on the heater for the first time the other day. It was blowing out cold air. Convenient...That's been fixed for the moment, but we'll see how that goes from here.



Here is a photo that Dexter shared from his visit a while back. We played there in 2008 the day before the nationals, the National Museum is a pretty fun place to play - though it's a bit sloped. The security guard was very impressed with us when we were there. I originally thought he was going to boot us out.

I have been working some more on my routine. It is getting more consistent. I also changed the first moves, I had originally planned on starting up with a big high kick, and then stall it, though this was proving quite dangerous, I haven't changed that to something more "mainstream", and though it's harder in difficulty, it's close to risk-free. Really looking forward to going to Worlds, I'm thinking it's going to be a strong turnout.

[Derek]

What a magnificent picture. Dude, so you'll be at Worlds, eh? Gonna be nice to finally meet ya, games been looking STRONG from the recent videos. That shipping container village thing sounds like one of the most hipster things I've ever heard of. Australia is such a pretty place.