Mosher's Footblog

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 08 Jan 2005 15:23

The mods you do depend greatly on the model you choose.

Right now I would say that the best models are the Climacool 1's, though my Climacool Response's are kicking ass thus far. The reason I don't recomend the Response is because there are SOOOO many different models of Response's out there and 98% of them look like crap for footbag. So my not recomending them means that no one will go out and buy the wrong one then bitch at me that they don't work.

I went to Guelph yesterday to shred with Jon Haber. As expected it was awesome shredding with him. He is (as usual) a bit better than me so it pushed me hard to keep up with him. I think our shreds complement eachother well because we are at similar levels with most the tricks we do and also we both hit lots of tricks the other one doesn't which pushes us to try new stuff.

I felt pretty good with my shred, I think my one achievement was pheonix BSOS, that's my first BSOS five. I footed frantic legover barefoot too.

I bet I can duck a frantic set.

Jon and I competed at seeing who could hit a pattern for the most number of contacts, I love that game. We played it with.. rip>rip>inf rpt, torque>inf rpt, torque>drifter rpt and so on. We did the torque>inf one for sooooooooooooooooooooooooo long! I bet I will have really solid torques soon, that trick is so awesome.

Oh yeah! I hit a really clean toe set sympOSIUM swirl back to toe. I can do really high toe swirling sets now, I was trying to throw symp toe swirling torque.. in time it will happen.

I bet I can duck a toe swirling set.

I bet I can toe smile. Oooh I bet fairy/atomic muted twirl would look really cool.

After the shred we went back to Jon's place and he made us a feast! I somehow fuelled myself all day via 2 McDonalds breakfast burritos and some orange juice, thus I was starving quite literally.

He called up some friends to come over to hang out and eat with us.
Jon has some good friends, all the ones I have met thus far have been smart and funny, good combo.
I decided to stay the night so that I could get boozed up with them. We started the night with 151 and apparently we ended it with tequila, but I don't remember that.

We did our best to get his friend Lindsay to love footbag. It was funny, she was only using her right foot and when I asked her to try her left foot she confidently told me she couldn't possibly use her left foot and then sealed a perfect toe stall first try. I love how footbag can challenge your assumptions of what is achievable. I think footbag has given me the attitude that basically anything can be done if you think and try hard enough.

We went out to a bar and played pool and drank lots of beer. My estimate is that I had a pitcher or so. A few rounds of pool into the night my memory goes blank.

Apparently after the bar we went to Lindsay's place and drank more! Hah!
Jon told me that we had some special imported tequila and the fun lasted until Lindsay and I both passed out. I can't believe I went to someones house and I don't even remember it! I am so scared of what I may have said or done during the hours I don't remember. I hope I didn't reveal to them the location of zee meecrofeelm.

I woke up this morning on Jon's couch WITHOUT A HANGOVER! wooo!!!! Suck on THAT alcohol!

Tom 1
Alcohol 0

Take care friends, dex tight.

hacksterbator · Post by **hacksterbator** » 08 Jan 2005 21:12

mosher wrote:I woke up this morning on Jon's couch WITHOUT A HANGOVER! wooo!!!! Suck on THAT alcohol!

Tom 1
Alcohol 0

tom let's be serious here... it's probably more like

Tom 1
Alcohol 257

qphox · Post by **qphox** » 09 Jan 2005 00:06

I want to shred/chill/party with you Tom. Also, I want to explore some drains. When you take Andrew to see some "fucked up shit", can I come along too?

And ducking frantic is TOTALLY possible. I've gotten off some pretty high shoeless frantic sets, but you know how it is, I'm always too surprised to react and duck it into something.

After all, it happens like one in thirty.

And Toe Smyp Swirling. That's raelly cool. Fairy Symp Swirling is obviously already done by people, but do you think you could Pixie Symp Swirl set? It feels like your legs would get tangled up, but so does Fusing.

C-Fan · Post by **C-Fan** » 09 Jan 2005 02:05

qphox wrote:
And Toe Smyp Swirling. That's raelly cool. Fairy Symp Swirling is obviously already done by people, :

I saw a guy in Wellington, New Zealand, hit this set. His name was Seb. Pretty much phasing, just without the first dex. Cool stuff.

jon · Post by **jon** » 09 Jan 2005 10:49

The shred with Tom was awesome! I will for sure be coming up to Kingston in the near future to shred some more.

Tom is gonna be really gooooooood by glass, there is no doubt in my mind you will be crushing every circle you step into

btw The toe sym swirling stuff is really really cool and I cant wait to see you bust crispy full sym ripstein

The drinking was also a blast. I have not been that drunk in a while. My new motto is never start the night with 151 and end it with tequila. Besides the fact that I was hurting bad when after 4 hours of sleep I had to get up at 7:30 to go to work everything was great. We went to a local bar (not representative of the guelph bar scene at all) and had lots of fun drinking pitchers and playing pool till we were kicked out

We did indeed go back to Lindsey's place where she did crack open a special bottle of tequila she brought back from the deep interior of mexico which was really very good. I dont think Lindsey remembers much about the night either so your not alone Tom :p I was lucky to stay remember the night and stay awake after the rum, vodka, beer, tequila mixture we drank that night. But I am sad to report that after everyone passed out I started smoking cigs which was when I called my buddy rob for a drive at 2 am. By the time he got to her place I was on my third dart in a row (I never ever smoke so I was all loopy and drunk

) and rob and andrew came in and helped tom and I to the car. Well dragged us in

and drove us back to my place. I owe those guys so much or else I would never have gotten to work the next day.
It was a really memorable night, well at least for me

cause no one else seems to remember the later half but it was good times and the even better after the full day of shredding.

ps. I think tom can testify that listening to the grey album over and over and over again while shredding can get boring :p you rock tom mosher

see u soon

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 09 Jan 2005 11:27

Hey Jon, thanks for dumping your thoughts from the day/night here, I like having more dimension to my memories, and it's nice knowing what went on when my memory failed me!

I can't believe you were smoking!!!!
I can't believe I was too!!! Fuck! never again!

Here are things I need more of:
- I want FlexThis to continue his story about his footbag past, I found that so enthralling
- Regular Fanzine updates
- Girls drooling over me
- Money
- Guiltless shredders to bust with
- 32's
- Comfy socks
- Shred videos
- Time to shred/drill
- Hugs
- Time with my family
- Motivation to excel at school again

FUCK!!! yeah, FUCK.

I just remembered how fucking shitty I did this semester at school. I was just a huge fucking stoner that didn't do anything. I would sleep in till noon each day regardless of when my classes were. Then I'd roll out of bed and over to my bong for some wake-and-bake. What a fucking waste of a life.

I am going to go school crazy this semester I just decided right now. I am tired of being a failure, I know that I *can* excel if I desire it.

I find that I get very set into patterns, I intend on finding a suitable groove of doing schoolwork EVERYDAY (that's the important bit) as it will encourage me to keep going. I didn't have enough work last semester to necessitate working each day so I just never worked, I will be much busier this semester, I hope that helps me.

ok, I havn't said anything about Liane for a long while because I havn't exactly had anything to say.
I think normally if a girl was so aloof and difficult to contact (she checks her e-mail sooo rarely so our conversations take place slowly over weeks) I would think she didn't give a damn.. but this girl is different. I am letting her take her time and I refuse to be pushy. She has expressed a desire to come out to my club meetings, no boy would ever be as happy as I if this came to fruition. I don't even need to date her, I would be as excited (well.. nearly) if she wasn't a smoking hot interesting girl that wanted to play footbag if she just wanted to play footbag at all. Also, despite how infrequently we chat I still have one time during the week where I know precisely where she is. She will always be on the radio Friday mornings at 9 AM, I like that consistency. I like to call in to say hi on Friday's because I know she'll be there to answer.

Sigh.. girls.

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 09 Jan 2005 22:45

These are the exact shoes I have, they are very good for freestyle if anyone wants to win this auction:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 06728&rd=1

They are easy to mod and you can open up the toe area a ton if you want.

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 10 Jan 2005 07:50

On saturday night I went out and checked out some drains with a dude I met off some exploration forums.

I had found this huuuge infall (where the river goes underground and I go in) that was heavily grated (big metal bars blocking the entrance) that I *had* to get into. I brought my carjack incase I was going to need to bend any bars to gain entry.

We found that you could swing the bottom foot and a half of grating open with enough might and so entry could be gained. The fact that entry was technically possible didn't mean it would be easy as well. The swingable hanging 'door' weighed over 100 pounds easily so getting it open and subsequently slipping through it were difficult tasks.

To get in I had to push with all my might at the base to get it to swing open enough to let my buddy slip through the opening. Once he was inside he held it up for me while I slipped through. That step in the process is so scary because if the gate holder slips the person would totally be crushed. whee!

So we were on the other side of the bars, that's such a strange feeling because looking out of them the open world seems so far away because of the effort required to get that far. The only way to go is in, so in we headed. At the infall the drain was two 6 ft x 12 ft rectangular openings, 60 ft in or so they joined together via a huge slide turning into one big huge box shaped drain.

All in all this drain didn't have many features to speak of, it was kinda boring in fact. A few minutes into it we rounded a bend and saw the light of the outfall (where the drain becomes a river again) up ahead. The drains are laid nearly perfectly horizontal and in general they have quite small flow through them, the last 70 or so feet of this drain was laid on a slight angle to encourage the water to pool up as to kill it's speed. I noticed that the water was getting deeper with each step I took which is rather intimidating since it didn't take long before it was flirting with the top of my boots. We realised that exiting via the outfall would not be an option as logic told us that by the time we reached the outfall the water would have been several feet deep, which is to say, several feet of icy winter water deeper than my boots would allow me to venture.

We trudged back through the uneventful drain to the infall to repeat the process of getting our bodies through the device meant to keep bodies from getting through.

It was alot easier to pull the swinging gate open from the inside, though still rather tough since it was a hundred something pounds of unlubricated metal on metal that I had to bend down and try to hold up. I held it up for him as he slipped through without a problem, then it came time for him to hold it open for me while I went through. Now I don't know what his problem was, perhaps because he was kinda a douche, but he couldn't hold it open for me from the outside. He couldn't figure out how I had done it for him. He could get the gate to swing about 4 inches open but that was all. I got frustrated with him and pulled it open myself and had him jam a rock up by the hinge to hold it open for me. I guess I didn't admit to myself how dangerous (and stupid) this situation really was. The opening we were slipping through was not exactly generous. It was at the edge of this gate which was about a foot from a cement wall on one side and directly on the edge of the flowing icy water. So to get through you had to lay on your side in the snow, curve your body into an S shape (I am sure I twisted my hips more than twice on the way through, I better get the paradox add) and wriggle through the small opening. As I was going through he said to me 'Make sure you don't knock it!' which was almost ensulting as knocking it was the last/worse possible thing I could do. I had my torso through safely and I rolled over onto my back to slip my legs out to freedom.

At this point I knocked the rock loose. Yeah, I did the worst possible thing.
Again, I still probably havn't accepted how potentially awful that could have been. The rock fell, the gate started to swing and I caught it with my hand pinched between the gate and my boots which were pressed against the metal cage. The dude I was with hurried to help me and we got my legs free of the gate and I was out safely. If I had knocked the rock when my head or torso were going through I may have been dead!

We drove around until we found where the outfall was and right then we were really glad we hadn't tried to venture to the exit to get out. The water was pretty deep and we'd have had to get through the same type of gate as the entrance except doing so in deep water. Not just that, but deep water that cascaded down an inclined plane covered in big dramatic cement columns in place to slow down the water as it ran down to become a river again.

Since that drain didn't really have much to offer we decided to see if something I saw from the road while driving to that drain would pan out to be anything interesting. I saw that on one side of the road there was a sign that said 'Sawmill Creek', that side of the road looked pretty convincingly like a place you'd find a creek, however the other side was a set of residential houses with no river to be found. I love when that happens! That means that the river dives underground when it reaches the road, sweet!

We parked the car and walked around for a while until we found the most odd thresher grill (the bars that prevent human/tree entry) I have ever seen! I will post a picture of it when I get home. It was long and pointy, like a half cone, and at the big end of it if you climbed to the top it also had a hatch you could swing open to get in! I climbed up and in, I wasn't expecting much from this drain since it was a small round concrete pipe that I couldn't quite stand up in. I walked 20 feet into it and burst out laughing with excitement. 20 feet in it opened up into a HUUUUGE mammoth rectangular drain. Not only that but it was a double barrel mammoth so it was an exciting unexpected find. The drain had several 1 foot waterfalls to deal with a slight elevation change, it would have been cooler if they just did one big dramatic one. Hearing a noisy waterfall up ahead is an exciting motivator to keep going.

The drain was spacious.. I suppose that's it's only real feature.
Regardless, we walked to it's end and exited via the outfall, it is always so rewarding when you can exit through the other end. Much of the time the drain only has one end. If you enter via the outfall you often face the shitty outcome of having the drain just get smaller and smaller and smaller the longer you walk. There is no 'start' to the drain, these are not buried rivers, these are just rainwater collectors that gather water and dump em into rivers. They suck ass because you don't realise that you won't be able to get out until you're way into it usually. At that point you either frown and walk back along the way you came in or you find a manhole you can pop and get out through.

Leaving via manholes is scary because you have no idea where you are going to come out. You climb up the ladders (the manholes are always at varying heights from the drain below based on the land above, sometimes they are at the height of the drain, sometimes 40 feet up) to the top, wait for a while listening for traffic, and then with way more might than seems appropriate you press your back against the manhole (which weighs 90-100 lbs) and wedge it up enough to see out of it. Thats the really scary part because you could be in the middle of a highway for all you know. I once thought I was popping out into a parking lot only to discover I was in an intersection shared by an 18-wheeler that was about to drive right over me. I dropped the lid and held my breath and didn't die. (that situation was rather scary too since I happened to be at the top of 40 feet of ladder)

Whoa, I totally just ranted there.

Anyways we exited the drain in a rather strange location. Normally when I go in a drain I will park the car near where I enter, walk for hours through the drain, come out the other end and then spend hours walking back to the car on land. This time since the closest parking lot wasn't too close to the entrance and the fact that we walked around a bit until we found the way in meant that when we exited we were right back at the car!! That's definately never happened to me before!

Ok, I suppose that should suffice. I havn't bothered to check how absurdly long this turned out to be, I just started typing and this all oozed out.

Slowsis · Post by **Slowsis** » 10 Jan 2005 09:34

FUCKING AWSOME MAN!!!

I have done that kinda stuff all over toronto.....but i prefer to go up instead of down....

Actually in november i found a crazy storm sewer in midtown toronto...only blocks from yonge street(torontos main street). It went for over fifteen minutes and then opened up into three different chambers, all connected by these strange gateways made up of three vertical concrete pillars. There now is some crazy graff down there!!!

Also urban exploration of the tops of buildings is neccesary.
THE HOW TO GET ONTO TALL BUILDINGS GUIDE:

1. Make sure to have a card, a length of wire, and a couple of assorted screw drivers.....locked doors can be overcome!

2. Scope out your building....preferably one of good height but which is very new or quite old. New buildings sometimes do not have adequate security mesures in place yet, while old buildings tend to have doors which are easily pryed or picked.

3. Deliver a package!(This step is only neccesary in apartments, office buildings are easier to walk right into).......Go up to the registry of building residence, pick an easy name on one of the middle floors...and pretend to be the puralator guy!! Or fedex..whatever floats your boat.

4. once you are into the building, take the elevator two or three stories from the top, this dissapates any suspicions curious landlords may have, as they know people love infiltration. At this point do one circut of the floor which you are on. Find the fire escape stairwell.

5. Now you are in flavour country. Many people will give up once they have reached this point, confronted by locked doors. This is where your tools come into effect. Often one must explore more than one building before a suitable door can be found. I will not explain lock picking, as if you do not know the card and wire method, then your quest may be hopeless.

6. Congradulations! You have successfully infiltrated the rooftop of your structure.....now bust out a footbag and shred!!!!!!
(but don't kick it over the edge!!)

Camilleon · Post by **Camilleon** » 10 Jan 2005 10:28

Ok, I'm jealous and I need to explore with you guys... Although I'd prefer summertime... Ugh... only 6 months away...

Muffinman · Post by **Muffinman** » 10 Jan 2005 10:54

My brother is a photographer and does lots of that urban exploration stuff. It looks crazy and really dangerous (frozen flood gates, buildings to be demolished, decripid warehouses, sewers, industrial sites) -- I'd really like to try it too!! There was this great big fire in Winnipeg a few months ago -- an old storage facility caught fire and the fire lasted, like, 3 days and the whole city was all smokey. My brother was saying he was, like, in there the day before it caught fire or something.

Camilleon · Post by **Camilleon** » 10 Jan 2005 11:08

Yeah it is really dangerous stuff... It's terribly dissapointing to hear how close you came to death, Tom... Please be more careful...

I think I'll try to steer clear of anything really stupid when I go...

LittleBoy footbag · Post by **LittleBoy footbag** » 10 Jan 2005 12:14

tom, that was awesome!! Whatever you do, you can make anything sound a trillion times cooler! I'll try that lbut like camille said, I guess be more careful. Other than that, whoa! That's really neat....

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 11 Jan 2005 12:39

I forgot to mention this in my CP review, one of the coolest moments for me was when I was down on the tennis courts and John Mahood called down to me from the upper level "hey Tom, hit paradox blender!'. I centered my focus, dropped the bag to my foot and layed out a crisp clean paradox blender. I am not sure if his request was at all related to one of my recent movies in which someone calls that trick out to me or not, but DAMN it felt good to hit it in front of them!

I had my first session with the militia last night. It was good to be back shredding with those guys again, Ive got a good posse.

I hit pixie ducking whirl last night.

ericksonj · Post by **ericksonj** » 11 Jan 2005 12:44

mosher wrote:I hit pixie ducking whirl last night.

I like that move, tough one too. Props!

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 12 Jan 2005 17:11

Everyone should watch The Hudsucker Proxy, I had never heard of it and it was so awesome.

I hit spinning paradox whirl and clipset double pickup today.

And I re-hit mobius a bunch of times on both sides, that trick is the most awesomest move evvvverrrrrrrr. I tried a few big apples, it seems totally doable, you just have to have the set, the hop, the spin, the dex and the follow through perfect, no problem!

Does any one else find symp whirls stupid easy? They are like.. half the work of regular whirls. I love the feeling of floating there while the trick just happens next to me.

I played today with Derrick, he hit bsos ripwalks for his frist time! and umm.. oh yeah, he did bsos rips twice and each time he was close to bsos sidewalks in the same string.
Derrick has been playing for exactly 4 months now, it's cool how he can school me on stuff now. He is a better spinner than I am, I saw him put down a really smooth spinning clip>spinning clip.

I have been playing medium for a while now. I am still improving but I still find myself struggling alot of the time.

We have a footbag club meeting tomorrow. I am predicting a cresendo of emotions.

I made Liane a sweet footbag and dropped it off at her house.

I wonder if she totally hates me.

The weather conditions in kingston today were hilarious. I stepped out of my door and bailed to the ground right away. The whole town is covered in a sheet of ice and everyone was falling and sliding all over the place all day. I saw one dude have both feet shoot out to the side and he slammed hard on the sidewalk. If you could get a run at it you could slide soooo far.

Ogden 09/04 · Post by **Ogden 09/04** » 12 Jan 2005 21:40

Props on those mobius', they were sick Tom. That was a good sesh today, i just hope the next place we pick, doenst just have a doorway, so that the people walking by dont think were just two half naked guys in a room all alone. Its just too bad we spent 30mins finding a place, when you could of spent that time hitting Big apple

Footbag is traditionally a game of courtesy, hence "The Courtesy Toss": a light lob usually toward the receivers knee.[/b][/i][/u]

B_Man · Post by **B_Man** » 12 Jan 2005 22:21

mosher wrote:I saw one dude have both feet shoot out to the side and he slammed hard on the sidewalk.

Hahaha, upon visualization I broke out in laughter on that one. Just picture this:

Homer on sidewalk. Homer slips. Both feet fly to the side. Down goes Homer. D'oh!

But seriously, what's the temp over there in Kingston Tom? The reading on our thermostat says -36 degrees as of 2 minutes ago of writing this.

I also send my props to Derrik. Ripwalk bsos is crazy good! I remember not being able to do pixie sets and, instead of doing Dimwalk, doing a toe set Da Da Curve kick. Keep it up!

mosher · Post by **mosher** » 12 Jan 2005 22:37

It hasn't been that cold at all lately, hence the ice. It was hovering around zero so it rained and then the rain turned to ice.

I just watched Shaun of the Dead. It was phenomenal. If you havn't seen it then.. erm.. you certainly havn't seen it.

Derrick mentioned something that was really annoying today. We were shredding in this vending machine room. It was in a hallway in the basement of a first year residence which meant that there were ample opportunities for dumbass jocks to see us for a short enough time to deduce that what we were doing was stupid or gay and probably nothing more.

Fucking morons.

steeban · Post by **steeban** » 12 Jan 2005 23:14

mosher wrote:We were shredding in this vending machine room. It was in a hallway in the basement of a first year residence which meant that there were ample opportunities for dumbass jocks to see us for a short enough time to deduce that what we were doing was stupid or gay and probably nothing more.

Fucking morons.

i've had the same experience at my school in the tunnels... drunk assholes don't understand footbag. but if it's high kids (i played a lot at 2-3am) they love it!

fuck them tom, keep shreddin