Kicking in the cold in the middle of winter has been a big part of my game over the last couple years. I have a space in the garage that allows to play pretty much anytime, though maybe it would be worth putting a little heater in there to warm it up before going in there.
Today I had a short session, about 30 mins. By the time I finished I had a few good little tricks ticked off. I was particularly happy with parkwalk swirl, which I have hit before, but not for a long time. On my first attempts I was nowhere near, but in time I got there.
New trick for the session, or at least I don’t think I’ve hit it before. Flipside spinning ducking legover.
The Swiss Planetfootbag are shutting up shop and they put some Quantums online for sale. I don’t really know if they’ll fit me, they might be slightly to big, but I order 3 pairs. They are either 12s or 13s and it seems Quantums are one size up on Lavers, so that should be fine, though the 13s might be pushing it. I also got a couple of pairs of shorts and a wallet. If I have to pay the shipping, I may as well stock up.
I’ve been waiting for this for a while. Some people were suggesting the new Quantum models would come out at this Worlds.
Dreaming.
So tomorrow I finish up my practical experience and I finish up my degree. That’s really exciting. I’ve applied for a job that is available at a school just walking distance from here – that would be a pretty amazing start, but we will see how things go. I better get some rest for my last day.
I just realised in the “My Sites” section, you can create multiple sites, so I might just create a few as time goes along. First stop would be some about teaching/education/workshops etc. I have some things, partly advice and some other thoughts on how to set things up and that would be a good platform to put it on, it could then be exported elsewhere if need be.
So speaking of school, I am finished up my third week of prac. Overall it is going well, but it is exhausting. I have been working some days as well, probably this week was the hardest one in terms of balance because I worked on the days there were meetings, so it was pretty full on some of these days, and other days I was just trying to catch up on sleep.
At the school I have had a couple of chances to show some footbag. At the end of yesterday I finished up the lesson about 5 minutes early and took the students outside to show them some footbag. I wasn’t wearing the right shoes or clothes.
Speaking of shred with bushwalking shoes, here is my latest vlog, it’s filmed a while back, when the sun was shining. A couple of good tricks in there considering the equipment.
I purposefully booked tomorrow off to have a bit of relax, and due to that I had a harder week this week, but I’m really looking forward to taking it easy. I was considering going to Sydney but I’m very glad I ticked that off.
I don’t think I mentioned it the other day, but the other day when kicking with Mr Cope I hit another 6>6 (pixie ss motion>locomotion). That takes my collection to 2, which is not particularly large, but something I am working on a little bit.
I have had a couple of sessions in the garage late at night this week. Haven’t really hit anything special, but it’s been good as a bit of a winddown.
I am not a new player, I have been going at this for a while, and you can read all about that here. I’ve got a slow day at work, so I’m going to write a bit of my personal history with footbag in here.
I first started kicking a hacky sack around when I was in early high school, probably 12-13 years old. I didn’t really find out about freestyle until later in high school, so by the time I got to high school, I had a pretty solid kicks base (my record was over 1000 by the time I finished high school).
Eventually I found out about the competition in 2001, it was the first Australasian Championships, held at the “Xtreme Games” in Sydney. The first event of this was consecutive kicks (5 minutes), which I won. I had no drops, and maybe one penalty for not changing feet. Off the top of my head it was just under 500 kicks, maybe 496. I believe the other placegetters in that were Lotus and Matt Baker. The big influence on my early days in freestyle was from Ian Pritchard. He was the same age as me, and just kind of starting out, though he was a fair way ahead of me., as I was just mainly doing kicks and starting with some stalls. Guys like Lynton Stephens and Brendan Erskine were a bit older and much, much better, and that was a bit intimidating for me. Then there were guys like Dan Ednie, very young, and also much better, and I didn’t like that either.
I grew up in a country town and hack circles were pretty popular through school, and from there I really got into trying to beat my personal record. By the end of school there was another competition, by this time I had a few tricks in my bag, but I wasn’t really able to present any of them on the stage. This was at Homebake, which was a big music festival of the time, with all Australian/NZ bands. In the sick 3 you had something like 10 attempts, and I still couldn’t get anything. I don’t remember a routine at all, but I imagine it was pretty bad.
I moved to Sydney the next year and hoped to kick regularly with the scene there, which was pretty active. There was a scene going well at Sydney Uni, but these guys kicked during the week and I was working full time. I kind of disappeared from the scene for a while, probably up until the Nationals of 2005 in Melbourne. It was only this year that I first got a pair of Lavers and a proper bag (up until the first tournament I had used the Guatemalan style, then after that I had used some sandbags.
I actually wrote a big story about my involvement in Australian footbag some years ago, as part of my degree in Writing. Now I am coming to the end of another degree, and hopefully there won’t be any more of them, but in a couple of weeks I will be finished studying as a teacher.
Now I am going to test if you can magically embed a few things like Instagram, Youtube, etc. I just chose a random recent post, but it’s from one of the places I play regularly, which is Glebe Park, just down the road from work. All the main places I play are related to convenience. The tennis court near Nico’s daycare, the uni, though probably won’t be there much any more, this park near work and in the garage at home, which works well for late nights.
Looks like yes. That’s cool. Especially the instagram embed, I have had a lot of problems with that on my site.
I have been doing a vlog this year, up until this past week I have put one out every week, but now that I am on prac, I haven’t been able to get that done, though I have some old footage that I had saved in case, so I may or may not look at that today, but I may just put another post that has all the vlogs in them.
Vimeo works just fine too. That’s nice, this is my video from the Joulukalenteri, which I ran in 2015.
It has taken me a while to come on board to this new format, but hopefully many other players will come on board, especially with the easy embeds. I’m also thinking of setting up some sort of collections that just kind of watch certain things (eg new videos, best stuff from Instagram for the week etc), but I’ll wait a while on that one.
