Bobby G's footblog

[bobgreen]

I think this will be a top post, so I'll play the top post painting game.

When I lived near Philadelphia we went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art somewhat regularly. This painting may be my favorite thing there.


Moorish Chief by Eduard Charlemont

I'm in Boston for work right now. It is a quick and busy trip, unfortunately making it difficult to coordinate a session with BSC this time.

I got an online deal at a hotel in the seaport district pretty close to my work, which is nice to be within walking distance. I'm on night number two at the hotel, and whenever I've come or gone the hotel lobby and the bar/lounge across the street have both been full of people in motorized wheelchairs. I would say that last night when I arrived that the lobby area had at least 20 of these folks hanging out and playing cards, board games, etc. I've tried to be observant without awkwardly staring, and beyond the chairs I cannot see a commonality. There are all ages, some who have normal speech patterns and some who have difficulty speaking, etc. There must be some kind of event, and I'm very curious what it is. I tried an on-line search of "Boston disability conference" but did not come up with anything. I suppose if I were an adult I would just ask someone why they are here. I also think if I were one of the attendees that if someone came up to me and said, "So why are you all here?" I would totally mess with them. "What do you mean why are we here; I don't know any of these people." For now my desire to not be fucked with and to not be a rude asshole by asking outweighs my curiousity.

Footbag this coming Saturday at Steve's house. Derek, Dustin, and Brian are all supposed to be there, so it should be a well attended, fun session. Steve had some good news at work recently and I believe also has a birthday coming up, so I'll bake a cake to bring and share with everyone after the session. I don't get home until around midnight on Friday, so probably I'll buy a box mix instead of making it from scratch. Kind of lame sauce, but whatever. I intend for this to be a surprise for Steve, but given my vast my readership here I'm not too worried about giving it away. =-)

I've had a couple of sessions where I get all basic L, M, and P as separate strings in the same day and most sessions I'm getting through at least two of them. An all basic illusions drill is mostly theoretical at the moment as my same illusions and near illusions are not very consistent. Been trying to fix that with specific illusion drills. I'd like to do something like all basic mirage > all basic pickup (e.g. minimum 24 contacts including the clipper sets), but so far I've only gotten like 6/8 through the second set in a single string.

Last weekend I got through all basic pickups > all basic mirages. The all basic mirage half of the string had a couple of extra same side clippers to catch my balance, and I hand caught at the end instead of keeping on, so it must have worked out to 26 contacts. Lots of other good basics type drills that I feel like are helping, so I'm going to keep down the avenue that I've been working on.

[C-Fan]

Wow, what a great TPP! I looked up the artist, and one trivia tidbit is that your TPP is the best selling item in the Phila Museum's gift shop! Pretty neat.

Also cool that you're making a birthday cake. You da man Bob.

[bobgreen]

Yeah Ken, that painting is pretty stunning. I’m not surprised that the gift shop does well with it. It is massive too; something like 5 feet tall.

Stanford session was fun, and Steve seemed pleased with the cake. I mentioned before that I’d been trying to get up to Sacramento to have a session with Derek. That finally happened yesterday. Derek and I caught a session at a park near his house on the tennis courts you’ve seen if you’ve watched many of his videos. Good weather, and the playing surface on those courts is very nice. We played for a little over an hour. We both discussed at one point that it was kind of a contented but low energy session. That is, we both played pretty okay but nothing fantastic. Derek was able to get a new combo I challenged him to, almost BSOSing it. I only hit a couple of strings in excess of 20 contacts, but managed to hit some good drifter stuff. I hit pixie muted clipper > drifter BS and also managed whirl > ducking clipper > drifter. I also hit a couple of magellans, which is almost unheard of. I think my recent pixie work will make that more frequent for me.

After the session, we headed out for mexican for lunch. I noticed Derek was sitting underneath a sacred heart of Jesus, so I had to get a picture. I think it turned out pretty well.



After a nice lunch I scampered off to visit my Mom. Nice visit with her for a couple of hours, then a shorter visit with my sister before heading back home. This evening I’m on the red eye to Boston. I haven’t been able to coordinate a session with BSC, so I think I’ll leave my gear at home so I can travel lighter. I’m lame, but it is kind of a pain in the ass to find a shred spot in winter in Boston. If any of the guys get back to me, maybe I’ll be able to get together with them for drinks or a meal.

Home Thursday night, then next weekend we will be off to Idaho for Thanksgiving week. Going to see my in-laws in Twin Falls, and a probable Boise trip of two for an Uncle visit and possible footbag shenanigans.

[boyle]

It must be exhausting all this travel that you do for work. Particularly that it seems to be quite relentless and you don't get too many weeks where you just get to hang out at home.

[bobgreen]

My work travel is more than the average chap on the street, but definitely does not compare to a lot of folks I've worked with in the past (sales guys, etc.). I think my blogging habits probably make my travel seem heavier than it actually is. I'm posting somewhat infrequently these days, and I think that my posts are probably disproportionately during or near work travel. I seem to find more time to post when I'm on the road alone than when I'm at home spending time with my family. =-)

That bit said, I am definitely traveling more heavily than I have historically. I'd say for a good chunk of my career I've averaged about 15-25% work travel. That estimate is a total guess. I've recently started tracking my travel schedule more closely, and since the end of June when I started tracking I've had work travel 35% of the time. It is very lumpy though, and comes in waves for sure.

For the most part I don't mind work travel. Coming back to the Boston office is actually very energizing in many ways. I don't like being away from my family, but even that is easier than when Ruari was smaller than he is now. He is more and more independent, so that makes me feel a tiny bit less guilty about leaving Kristin home alone to take care of him.

[bobgreen]

This post comes to you in two parts.

Part 1: 2016 Footbag Highlights

In 2016 I knocked a couple of playing goals off the list, but probably more interesting than my meager accomplishments is the variety of people I got to kick with this year.

• BSC: Hogan, Bowler, Little or a subset thereof, all various times every month or two

• SUFC: Goldberg, Dworetzky, Sherrill, Rhodes, Littlefield off and on throughout the year

• Polini: 2x during work trips; Second time also got to kick with Hoffa, Bonslaver, and a large, fresh contingent of other players in PA

• Boats: Stayed at my house and shredded with SUFC during his CA trip in April

• Dawson: Rory Dawson came to California for Maker Faire, and SUFC got in two sessions with him. I'd never met him before, and the rumors on the interwebs that he is a super cool dude are true.

• Baker: I met Australia's Matt Baker at Steve's house when he came for a visit while waiting for a flight home later that evening.

• USO: Hogan flew out to CA the week before USO. We did some site seeing and got a couple of sessions here with SUFC, then did a roadtrip to Boise with Lon and Derek on the way to USO. First time meeting Lon since probably 2000 in Vancouver. Shredded hard and had good times hanging out with at USO with tons of folks.

• Clavens showed up to SUFC once in August timeframe; first time kicking with him since ~2005. Unfortunately, haven't see him since.

• Somolinos: Got to nudge my way in on a session with Ken and Derek during one of Ken's work trips to Sacramento. Got in some Trader Joe's grub and a good visit afterward.

• BFC: Not sure if anyone other than Red calls them the Boise Foot Clan, but I got in a session with Husted, Genz, Penske and Landes. Sunny and Josie came out for dinner afterwards and the whole day was great even if I did play like a 40 year old who hadn't played in two weeks. I didn't get a chance to blog about it, but this was a day trip to Boise during Thanksgiving while my family was visiting Twin Falls, ID. My father-in-law is nearing the end of a long road with a disease called Progressive Supranuclear Palsy which is like a nice little cocktail of Alzheimers and Parkinsons mixed together. We are very thankful whenever we get time with him, but it is hard to watch him go through this, and the day trip to Boise was a welcome reprieve from too much adulting at once.

• Aubrey: My stepdaughter Aubrey was home for Christmas weekend, and we got in two sessions together. She is getting to be a decent circle kicker and throws down with the occasional toe stall as well. I tried to mix in circle kicking with her and took a string about 40% of the time too.

That's the list I come up with while skimming through my posts this year; hopefully I didn't miss anyone. Given I only made it to one event, it is a pretty impressive group of sessions there and I'm fortunate to have gotten to play with all of those folks.


Part 2: 2016 Life Events and Future Plans

As far as milestones go, the two big ones for 2016 are that I turned 40 and that Kristin and I celebrated our 15 year wedding anniversary. Generally speaking I feel "young" and healthy, but I need to focus more on eating and exercise going forward to stay that way. There is a history of cancer in my family, so it is time to ask my doctor to start slipping me a digit once a year. Not a tradition I look forward to, but better than the alternate by far. Married life is still good 15 years later, perhaps even better than it was the first few years of marriage. We are fairly different people, and over time we've learned to communicate a lot better with each other and our relationship has gotten stronger.

As discussed in earlier posts, at the end of 2015 we moved cross country from MA to CA after a nearly 2 year process trying to get out west to be closer to family. As such, 2016 represents our first full year in our new area since the move. The primary goal, which was to get closer to family, has been achieved. For my Mom/Sister and Kristin's Folks/Sister, we've definitely had an increased frequency of visits. California also has a lot going for it, what with the weather and all, and there is a lot to explore here and we haven't even scratched the surface. We are fortunate.

Roses and sunshine aside, after being here a year, neither Kristin or I feel like California is "home". We felt this way pretty quickly after moving to PA too; "This is really great for now, but let's not plan to spend too many years here". We've enjoyed the new experiences that living in a few different places has given to us, but we have both gotten to the place that we are ready to settle down....we don't want to keep moving around every 5-8 years. Maybe I'm not so young afterall.

The map below shows blue pins in the locations where our closest family live. Family was the primary motivation for leaving New England (we loved it there), and that has not changed. The red house is where we currently live, and the grey houses are the other places we've lived since being married. Throughout our marriage we've always talked about trying to get to Portland. My uncle lives there, Kristin's best friend lives there, and it is the dream of the 90s. We've always thought that if my work never ends up taking us there that we would retire there.



The problem with Portland is that although there are jobs for Chemists there, I've only once seen a job post there for a job that lines up really well for my specific niche. I've always thought that to have ultimate choice in what city that we live in that I would have to change the focus of my work. Not that this is off the table, but I like what I do quite a bit.

That said, this year has really opened my eyes up to the possibility of telecommuting. The office I work at in California is a satellite office with only two other employees. They both have similar or heavier travel schedules compared to me. Frequently, even when I'm home neither of them are in the office. Around October I made the decision to work from home on the days I'd be alone in the office if I went in. Why spend 30 minutes commuting each direction to sit in a room by myself? Since that time I've been working in the CA office 24%, work travel 36%, and working from home 40% of the time. Given that I'm in the office only 1/4 of the time, it doesn't seem like too much of a leap that I could transition to a remote position. I plan to float that by my boss when we go through the end of year review process sometime in the next 4 to 6 weeks. If he was open to it, we would consider relocating as soon as this summer (prior to Ruari's next school year). If he is not open to it, I will continue to seek work experience that could translate into a remote position sometime in the next few years (preferably before Ruari is in high school).

If I had a remote position, we could finally move to Portland! Not just Portland, but we could basically take our pick of anywhere with convenient airport access. So here is where the angst comes in. Despite all of our longing to get to Portland, I think Kristin and I are both more interested in Boise right now. Proximity to family has become a bigger priority, and the Portland of today in all honesty is a bit different than the Portland we fell in love with. From a relationship perspective, we are closest to Kristin's family and to my Dad's family. Kristin's folks live less than 2 hours away from Boise in Twin Falls, and my Dad's family live in Wyoming which is more convenient from Boise than Oregon. Looking at that map, actually, Boise is pretty much the center of mass of our family cluster. I also have an uncle in Boise, and of course at the moment there is a significant cluster of footbaggers there. We simply have more resources in Boise than in any other place on that map.

So looking forward, maybe Portland will never be in the cards. We don't want to keep moving over and over again, and for now at least, we have our eyes set on Boise.

[boyle]

If you can get in a kick with Clavens it's a pretty good year. You've got most of the names people were throwing around on that top 5 thread on Facebook. Maybe you can have a look at Portland in August this year...

Always love seeing your posts.

[bobgreen]

It has been an 'interesting' year.

I wrote that last post on January 15th and spent a good bit of time talking about our desire to end up either in Boise or Portland. On January 16th, I was contacted by our landlord who was giving us notice that he was planning to put the house we were living in on the market. We knew that time would be coming, but based on earlier discussions with him we had thought/hoped that we would not have to move before the end of Ruari's school year. I was also secretly hoping that I'd have a chance to pitch telecommuting to my boss at my yearly review and that somehow timing would magically work so that we could move this summer. A long shot, but a guy can hope I suppose.

We found a new place quickly and ended up moving to a new rental the 3rd week of February during Ruari's spring break. The new place is about 10 minutes further away from work for me, but is a much nicer house, is $100/month cheaper, and backs up directly to a county park....only neighbors on our right and left; not behind us. Despite not wanting to have to deal with a move, it really is a better place to be living. I did pitch the telecommuting idea to my boss who was fairly receptive, so maybe that can still work down the road. The CA office if finally expanding a bit though, so that could make the notion of me telecommuting less palatable to my company.

Between preparing for that move and having a fair bit of work travel and just long work hours in general, footbag had definitely fallen to the back burner. Been also dealing with death and grieving....one friend from college died unexpectedly on Mother's Day, another friend has cancer and will die anytime now, and I still don't expect Kristin's Dad to make it through the year. My 18 year old cat's breathing is making me nervous too; prior to my last work trip I really didn't know whether he might die while I was away. Anyway before turning my footblog even more into a shitty country music song, the point is that I haven't had a lot of time to play footbag and when I have I have not been particularly focused on the task at hand.

Worlds steadily marches closer, so I've been trying to change that and get motivated to kick and get in shape. I don't have aspirations to compete, but I'd like to be able to show up and feel like I can step into a circle and play with people and not be embarrassed. I can now report that for the last few weeks I have felt like I am better at the end of the week than I was at the beginning of it. I'm planning on what I want to work on ahead of time, and tracking my progress against those goals to keep myself honest. That is really good; I just need to do whatever I can to keep my momentum up so that I'm playing 3-4 times a week. Really I ought to be doing some kind of non-footbag activity, like bicycling, to help with endurance as well. That park I live next to has great trails on it, so I just need to get off of my rear and get it done.

On a positive note, even when I haven't been playing as regularly as I'd like there have been fairly frequent weekend sessions with the California crew. I even hosted folks a while back for back patio shred and cooked up a bunch of vegan recipes to munch on after the session.

So I guess that's my update for now. Maybe I'll try to record some of my solo sessions and post here or on my FB wall to keep myself honest.

[bobgreen]

Happy (insert holiday/greeting of choice). It is the end of the year and I find myself in Twin Falls, ID with a little spare time, so I thought I’d fire up the ol’ modified footblog.

Brief Worlds Writeup
I attended worlds in August and had great intentions of doing a proper write up on that. The problem with vacations, though, is that you get behind at work. Things were pretty busy when I got back, so I never got around to it. Since I sort of lost the magic moment on summarizing that one in gory detail, here is the abbreviated version of my experience across 5 different worlds events.

• Worlds 1997 in Portland, Oregon – spectator for one day; I was essentially a circle kicker at this stage and was too shy to actually kick with anyone. I was working the summer in Portland and my uncle told me about the event after reading something in the paper, so I checked out one of the preliminary rounds that was held in a school gymnasium somewhere.

• Worlds 1999 in Chicago, IL – lived and breathed footbag all week. I think the only tourist excursion I did was to go to the Sears Tower one day with a bunch of other kickers. I had only attended a couple of tournaments prior and didn’t actually know many folks. I contacted the Dallas Footbag Club ahead of time to make arrangements to crash on the floor of their room (I had knew them from the old listserv and had met them one time before). I competed in open timed consecutives and in intermediate routines.

• Worlds 2000 in Vancouver, BC – Took a road trip from Pocatello, Idaho with a guy named Jim Pomey who lived in SLC at the time. He brought a couple of people to tag along with us as far as Seattle, WA. Jim was a bit of a scammer, and I’m pretty sure he actually got them to pay him for a ride in the back of my pickup. We did not have lodging….crashed in the back of my pickup all week and bummed showers from people. Jim sponged off of me all week because he brought no cash….things got hairy given that I only had a $500 credit limit at the time. He made a trade with me a few months later that more than made up for the cash he borrowed. Also lived and breathed footbag this entire week; I have no memory of doing anything tourist related. I competed in open timed consecutives, intermediate routines, and footbag golf.

• Worlds 2001 in San Francisco, CA – I had just graduated, gotten married, and moved to Pennsylvania a few months earlier. I flew out there by myself and felt a bit guilty all week for not bringing Kristin with me. This was Penske’s first worlds and I’d been kicking with him for a couple of years by this point; was really fun to watch him turn heads as one of the new guys coming out of the woodwork. Did tons of sideline shred but did not compete.

• Worlds 2017 in Portland, Oregon – This worlds was markedly different for me than the prior four. We have a lot of friends and family in Portland, so this was very much a family vacation and footbag event for me. My split was about 70/30 on footbag/vacation, and Kristin and Ruari had the reverse split. I shredded a good amount, but also feel like I missed some good sideline shred when I was hanging out with friends and family. Whereas there is piece of me that is sad for missing some of the shred, the time I spent visiting our friends and family was really very nice. Given the chance for a do-over, I would not change the way I split my time. One thing that was kind of cool is that the players party at Jake Wren’s house is only a block from our friend Kristin who we were staying with. My son is old enough now that we felt comfortable leaving him at our friends house for an hour while I took the Kristins to the players party. When they decided it was time to get back to the house, Hogan and I walked them back, and had a nightcap with them there before walking back to the players party. I enjoyed meeting a lot of new people this week. I’ve been back playing footbag for a few years now and feel like I know most of the active US players. This tournament was cool because I got to meet several European, Asian, and Australian players that I’d never met before. OK, one funny story to cap off the worlds summary. The first day official day at Westmoreland Park I saw Caroline Birch making her way around saying hello to old friends and introducing herself to new ones. I’ve never met her at this stage, but I recognized her from FB photos and know who she is. She walks up to someone who also had never met her and must have heard that she does not have an American accent. “Where do you come from”, he said. I SO BADLY wanted for her to respond with “I come from the land down under!”. Alas, she did not but in my head the whole exchange was hilarious.

Well, the worlds summary was not quite as abbreviated as I expected. Let’s keep the wall of text going and move onto the US Open summary, shall we?

USO: a.k.a. the worlds after party

The year 2017 has been difficult for me to play as consistently as I have in the previous couple of years. I had pretty much decided that I would not attend US Open even though it was relatively close to where I live. I was planning to skip both because I feel like I’ve leveled down it is discouraging/embarrassing to let people see that, and because I simply did not know whether I would have the time due to end of year work commitments. My wife Kristin, who is uber supportive of my footbag habit, encouraged me just to book the ticket and go. So a month or so before USO I decided to go for it and cashed in some airline miles for a flight and reserved a room at the host hotel. I offered to Brian Bear that he could crash with me if he wanted, but generally did not advertise that I would be coming. I hadn’t heard back from Brian so I assumed he made other arrangements, but the day before I flew out he messaged me to ask whether he could take me up on that. Sweet! I've been kicking with Brian fairly regularly since moving to California, but I feel like just spending a weekend hanging out with him I got to know him way better.

Flew out of San Jose Friday morning and had a short flight to Las Vegas, arriving sometime around 10:30 am. Caught a Lyft to the host hotel. Early check in was not yet available, so I dropped off my shit with the bellhop and headed to Smashburger to meet up with my friend Angela who lives in Las Vegas. For my first ever Smashburger experience I ate a Cobb Salad….ha! Ang was pretty good friends with Kristin and me in college, and I had not seen her since we moved in 2001. We ate lunch together and bullshitted for about 2 hours. That was pretty awesome. Things like that have the chance of either being totally awkward or just being a re-hash of days gone by, but this visit had substance and it was fun to hear all about her life now and tell her about ours.

After lunch it was still only about 2pm, but I was able to get in on an early check in at that stage. Dropped my stuff at the room, and then headed down to the convention center to walk the Skillcon floor. Checked out competitive cornhole, Sepak Takraw, and some of the other events that I’d never seen before. Said hello to a couple of the early arrivers like Nick Polini. Met Nathan Pipenberg for the first time. Didn’t get to chat with him a ton, but he seems like a pretty nice guy. Brian texted me at some stage letting me know he was close to the hotel, and we decided to meet up at the room.

The rooms, by the way, were huge. I think Brian was just hoping for some floor space or maybe a couch to sleep on but it was a pretty big suite and we both had a comfortable bed to sleep on. Brian and I made our way down to Skillcon, and by this time a lot more folks were around. We ended up in this sweet circle that for me as the pre-event warm up was the perfect mixture of a hack circle and a shred circle. There were several full hacks, but also a lot of shredding. I think most people were into the hack part too, except for poor Bonslaver. That young buck just wants to shred, and I think he was honestly a little bummed we were hacking 40% of the time. Lon was regulating the fuck out of him on self serving and calling the occasional toe-y double dexes so that was a little interesting to see too. Bonslaver held his own though and didn’t seem to let it phase him too much.

At some stage I saw Larry Workman. Larry lost his daughter a few months ago…. I didn’t know what the fuck to say to him, but I walked up and started bullshitting with him even though I was not sure how to approach that. When Mayleigh died he was crowdsourcing cranes because one of the things that she really liked was the legend of 1000 origami cranes. I had never heard of this, but when I mentioned it to Kristin she knew exactly what it was and wanted to contribute. Kristin and I ended up mailing a package of around 200 cranes to Larry and Camille (Kristin gets most of the credit here; I probably only did like 10% of them). Larry mentioned that he would be interested in having a meal sometime over the weekend, so I spoke with Brian and we made plans for dinner with Larry and Camille. We had dinner with them and then hung out afterwards; all told probably about 4 hours of time with them that night. I really didn’t know Larry or Camille too well before the weekend, so it was a good chance to get to know them and I’m really thankful that I spent my Friday night that way.

Back to my apprehension about going to USO. I’d been starting to try to reconcile where my place in the footbag community is going since I feel like it is becoming harder for me to make the time necessary to continue to improve. I still think there is a lot more I could be doing on the volunteering and organization front, I’d prefer to actually be a player as well even if I’m not competing. At some stage I had a bit of an epiphany. I was in a circle with Lon and a couple of other similarly high level people, and he went off and hit something amazing and jaw dropping in front of me. At that moment I realized that even if I were at the judging table, that I wouldn’t have near the view or experience of what as I had being in the circle. I think I need to put my ego aside and just keep going at it as long as I can, right in the circle with everyone else, as long as they’ll have me, to get that kind of experience. When I get down on myself down the road, I’ll need to remind myself of that moment.

After the late Friday night with Larry, Camille, and Brian, I slept in until 10 or 11 on Saturday. We headed to a breakfast place in the casino complex called the Hash House. Ended up seeing a bunch of other shredders there who we joined for a big breakfast. After breakfast we headed up to our room to grab our shred gear and get ready and then hit Skillcon again. Kicked for another couple of hours that day and enjoyed watching the routines. Larry, by the way, hit a one drop routine. The difficulty wasn’t as high as some of the other people, but I think it was the best routine he has done at an event and it had the fewest drops and most contacts of any routine all weekend. He ended up being seeded second going into finals. I know he has hit it dropless in practice, but I was thrilled that it had gone so well for him.

Saturday night a large group of folks went down to the Las Vegas strip. There was a rollercoaster ride at New York, New York, a bunch of video games, and a walk to the Bellagio for a fountain show that never was. At some stage a taxi ride back to the host hotel, and some folks ended up hanging out at the Breakdown suite for a bit. I peeled off around 2 am for some beauty sleep while some folks there were still going strong.
Sunday I caught brunch with a couple of folks and then headed to Skillcon. I’d played about 3 hours each of the prior two days and decided not to play on the last day. My eyes get infected pretty easily over the last couple of years for some unknown reason, so I’m really careful to shower right after I play footbag. I knew I’d be flying out that night without a chance to shower, so I decided to take in the event and just hang out and watch. I’d played about 2-3 hours each of the prior two days and felt content that I’d gotten enough shred in for the weekend. After taking in the events, I walked around and said goodbyes to various folks and then headed for the airport.

It was a great weekend, and I’m glad that Kristin encouraged me to go.