Month: August 2017

2006: FIRST WORLDS #TBT

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Once a month I am gonna take  you down memory lane and tell my story in footbag. Each post is gonna focus on a different year in chronological order. You can read all the previous posts here.


Fjellerad Footbag Camp

Once again the year started with a footbag camp in Fjellerad. This  time without anybody from Copenhagen. I think they thought traveling to the northern part of Denmark three times in a  little over a year was too much. It was still a great weekend. I remember Mathias Blau hitting a run with “BAP” drill and “Rubberman” at 13 years old.

DEMO in Fåborg

A bit later that year we did a footbag demonstration at an event about alternate hobbies and sports. Fåborg is a small city near my hometown of Svendborg. A bunch of players from all over the country came and we played footbag for 6 hours. The more experienced players also did a show with Mads Hole on MC duty. I played really well, this was probably the first time I didn’t feel like a total newbie.


Me playing with Søren Nøhr. Slightly pink hair and slightly pink shirt that Tom Mosher sent me all the way from Canada-land.

Worlds in Frankfurt

Finally the day came! My first Worlds! I travelled with Søren Nøhr to Frankfurt. Me, Søren and Mathias Blau shared a room. Mathias’ parents were also staying at the same hotel. It was my first time travelling outside of Denmark without my parents and it was as expected a great experience.

I met so many people for the first time that it would be hard to list them all. Some of them are my close friends to this day, some I still keep in contact with from time to time and some have unfortunately vanished from my life, but that is to be expected. Nobody mentioned, nobody forgotten.

I will mention three experiences I had during this week that I still remember very clearly:

The first one was a late afternoon where Søren Nøhr, Mathias Blau and I went back to the event site a late afternoon. We walked around a bit and thought that there were nobody left, but behind a small red house we found Vasek Klouda and Steve Goldberg. Vasek was playing and taking requests from Steve. He let us give him requests as well and tried all kinds of crazy stuff.


Me and Mathias Blau in the background witnessing the magic of Vasek.

The second one was me in a barefeet circle with Felix Zenger and Jorden Moir. We were just fucking around and attempting stupid shit. I decided to try Enterrage and hit it. My first three dex. The both went crazy. And at exactly the same time Mads Neuhard, Mads Hole and Lise Thygesen showed up at the event and they also joined in. Getting love from my heroes and my footbag family at the same time for a big milestone was such a great experience.

The third one is not shred related but still had a huge impact on my future life in footbag. I was already interested in the behind the scenes stuff at this time and at this time the most important guy in footbag in Europe was Jan Zimmermann. Jan Zimmermann is the guy who started planetfootbag and he was the main force behind the Quantum footbag shoe that was unveiled at this tournament. I had a long conversation with him sometime during the week and he told me a lot about the Quantum shoe and all the other work he was doing. It was really inspirering to me and it made me realise you can really make things happen in footbag, if you are willing to put in some work and that is possible to important to the community without being a great player.

Danish Open

Danish Open returned to Copenhagen and this year there was a big turnout of foreign guests:
  • SweJohn from Sweden
  • Grek from Hungary
  • Shirine Daouk from Switzerland
  • Jakob Wagner from Germany
  • Vasek Klouda, Honza Weber and Dexter from Czech Republic
    (The king of footbag video was filmed at this tournament.)
  • Felix Zenger from Finland

I finally won intermediate and was now ready to step up and compete with the big boys next year. This was also the first time I felt like I was invited along to party with the older Copenhagen players, which was really cool for a young naive Asmus.


After my winning routine

 

From Great to Epic

asmus 2 Comments

Played with Kim yesterday at the now usual spot. As you can see on my recent posts it has been Kim and me 1 on 1 a lot lately. We usually play around 7, which is the perfect time for me and Kim. Kim can put the kids to sleep and I can fuck around for a little bit after work before playing, but I don’t think it is a good time for anybody else. Nis is in Russia at the moment and I know Mathias played near his hood, so hopefully some more people will come out soon.

We played for well over an hour with good energy through out and we both did good. It’s been a long time since I have played this hard and well. We started out playing to French electronic duo The Blaze. After that we played to grime tunes. Really liking this one at the moment:

Kim had a run with both Mobius and another cool five. He also stepped out of a Janiwalker. Here are the highlights of mine I can remember:

  • Kim telling me I looked like Vasek anno 2004 (biggest compliment you can get)
  • Magellan > Pixie Kneebump > Ducking Symposium Rev Whirl > Run
  • Blurry Legover > Toe Ripwalk [rpt] > Run
  • Same Butterfly Swirl [bs]
  • Pixie Quantum Legover > Pixie Symple Swirl

After the session Kim was practicing some two bag juggling and out of the blue the original bag juggler Mads Hole appeared. It was as if he had rubbed the magic lamp and the Genie appeared. Mads Hole is the definition of epic.

Bonus info: Mads Hole’s two bag juggling record is over 80.

Rainy Dayz

asmus 4 Comments

On rainy days I sit back and count ways on
How to get rich son, show and prove, ask my bitch
Stood up late nights, build with my a-alikes
We can pull a heist, snatch ice, or rock mics
– Ghostface Killah on Rainy Dayz

Yesterday it was raining, like it has been most days this summer, so me and Kim decided to take a kung foot athletics inside for a change. We played at Nørrebrohallen, where as some of you might remember we had Worlds.

It is funny how when you move your sessions from inside to outside, you are at first annoyed by the uneven surface, the wind etc. and when you move inside you are annoyed by the bad air and (for Nørrebrohallen at least) the noise.

Kim was not happy with how he played. I think it was okay. Short runs but he hit some cool links. Lots of fives.

I played a bit up and down. Some good stuff. Some bad. Almost hit Drifter [bsos] which I never do. Hit Atomic Reverse Whirl [bs] which might be new. Hit 10+ contacts of Pixie and Stepping shuffle. Hit Fairy Same Blink which is definitely new. Stuff like that.

We managed to play well over an hour.


It was raining like crazy, when we were done. So we had a beer before biking home.

 

Three Sessions in a Day

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No, I did not play three times in a day – I am getting old guys. But for the first time in years there were three sessions going on in Copenhagen on the same day. Mathias and Nis had a session, so did Troels and Andreas and finally me and Kim had a late session.

Kim and I played at the spot where we have been playing recently. Right next to us there was some big guys practicing medieval fighting techniques (real swords and all). The sounds of that mixed with Kim’s electronic music and my playlist of current hip hop bangers was quite interesting.

Kim sprained his ankle a little during the jam on saturday, but he still played well. I  also played well. I think I am close to being back in footbag shape. I even hit three new tricks:

  • Eggbeater bs
  • Gyro Twirl


I re-did my personal website. You can check it out here.

A Session and A Jam

asmus 4 Comments

On August 1st I had session with Nis and Verena. None of us played that well, but I did have two highlights:

  • Pixie DLO (first try) > Run with both DLOs
  • Flip Ducking Symposium Reverse Whirl

Nis in action

FootbagDenmark Jam Dung

On saturday footbag Denmark had a little jam. A bunch of players showed up:

Troels, Peder, Mathias (+ girlfriend), Jan (+wife and kids), Andreas, Nis (+ wife), Nikolai (+ kid), Rasmus, Kim (+ wife and kids), Basse, Jasper and Søren

We had request contest, where me and Nis died in like the second round. That was a bit embarrassing, but atleast Nis joined me. Mathias of course won.

I did manage to hit one new trick during the day: Symposium Blink

Video by Nis

After playing real footbag we played some rounds of 4square while drinking beers. We haven’t done that in years and always really enjoy. Nis, Kim, Rasmus, Mathias and I each won a round.

After that we had pizza and many more beers. A great day and night with the footbag family for sure.