Rob's Add Sum

[Mathochist]

Well. I seem to have bribed someone to cover my shift at work, so it seems I just spent the whole day at Jazz Fest. I couldn't be gladder about it, as probably all of LA's top shredders were there, and the group is starting to congeal. All us young bucks with our neato tricks were there, and indeed Larson and Andrew were up to their usual tricks. It's great fun to watch them both hit all their solid 15 contact strings (I promise that's pretty good for us, and we are hitting some solid 3-5 add tricks.). However, I was especially pleased to get to play with two others, whom I haven't played with in quite a while.

The first was Aaron, whom I was both surprised and thrilled to see, since I have him to thank for turning me on to footbag freestyle and pointing me toward footbag.org as well. Were it not for him, I'd have spent an entire semester in Prague, blissfully unaware of the huge footbag scene I was missing. Secondly, I kicked with Steve, whose name I finally caught this year. I had played with him before at many a Jazz Fest, and recognized him usually for the black converse he used to wear and the 30" ceiling he keeps while kicking. This year, I finally got around to talking with him, and I discovered that he used to play competitively, holds a 11,000 odd consecutives best, and was familiar with some of the big footbag names that I only know from hearsay and videos like Tricks of the Trade 2. Steve was present at the '92 worlds competition, and also helped in hosting a small footbag competition here in New Orleans some years ago. I'm very optimistic that I'll be collaborating with him to further cultivate the local scene and eventually host invitational events here in my home town.

Also of note: I met some friends of the parents of Ellis Piltz. How small is this world, eh?

[footjam_heger]

nice guys! you improved very well!!
hey rob! you are going to shred better than i do! cool!

[Mathochist]

Well my last week of school forced me to put down the footbag, but I played yesterday a good bit. Not feeling entheusiastic about schooling delay tricks for some reason, my accomplishments were:
dragonfly > ss dragonfly and
butterflyer > op butterflyer.

I've been hitting consecutive flying clippers for some time now, as many as three in a row.

After finals this coming week, the serious shredding shall recontinue.

[Mathochist]

I'm quite excited to announce that I'll be attending the upcoming jersey spikenshred. This will be my first American competition, and it's been too long. Routine prep commences.

I'm pleased with today's session with Mark. My consistency is improving quite nicely, which I must attribute in part to Mark's new bag. Mark just got himself a brand new, green on other green, Abshire MINI! It was my first time with a mini, and I liked it. I want it. I'm gettin' me one soon. The bag demands precision, but leaves me feeling like I had done the work in doing said delivering. My pixies have never been better (although I badly need to drill them weakside.) My duckings were oh so clean. Yes, I will own one soon.

Recently new combo for me: alternating ducking clippers.

[bigdirtyfoot]

I look forward to meeting you when I come to New Orleans next week! Props on all your new moves and everything (PS Whirl definitely!!!).

Later.

[bigdirtyfoot]

Well, I got to play with the New Orleans crew and it was definitely awesome! Thanks guys! I'll write a more full review later... and I got some pictures so hopefully those will turn out well.

[Mathochist]

Well Mr. Foot, I'm glad you enjoyed my fair city. I'd have gladly stuck around to enjoy it with you, but as you know I'm currently enjoying the fair city of Somerville New Jersey.

I had predicted that this would happen sometime this weekend, as being around this kind of wealth of talent always boosts my own, and sure enough, last night at the players' party

I HIT TORQUE!

Torque has been a pet project of mine since early Prague, like late September. So hell yea.

[bigdirtyfoot]

Congrats on hitting Torque! Definitely cool... and I'm glad you hit it since you told me you wanted to hit it in Jersey.

[footjam_heger]

props for torque! i can't make torque

[Mathochist]

After a nominal hiatus, I'm back on the scene, ready to bring some net to NO. I played a bit on my own today and twisted my ankle attempting weakside torque. Meh. But, after long training sessions of my not knowing what was wrong with my mirages, today I figured it out. I was planting too much, planting both feet after the set. I started just getting into a good set-dex-set-dex hopping rhythm doing mirages. My alternating legovers drill lengthened as well. This bodes well for my ever dreaded string length.

Also, anyone who wants to fire up a Godel conversation with me is invited to.

[Mathochist]

To compensate for little organized play, I've been playing sporadicly in my living room, barefoot. I'm not landing any clippers, so I'm forced to work on toe stuff, which is good for me. I started with pimping legovers, which I'm having plenty fun with. I threw down a couple of smears for good measure. My biggest news is that I hit my first double around the world, at least in the form of a pixie ss pickup. So yay me.

Also if anyone has a cheap apartment for me or needs a roommate or such, do let me know.

[bigdirtyfoot]

Hey I've been calling Andrew every week or so and he's told me that he and Larson get together to play. Have you been shredding with them at all? He said he normally plays by the tree?

[Mathochist]

Be assured, dear readers, that although I haven't posted all summer, I've been shredding as much as I can. I am among those affected by the recent weather conditions in the gulf south. I have evacuated here to Houston with my family, and I've even hooked up once with some of the local kickers. It's been a disorienting past few days to say the least, but we are among the luckiest. We've all developed our own plans to resume life; mine entail moving to Baton Rouge to continue my math studies at LSU. I look forward to joining their footbaggers and contributing to their shreds. It'll be some time until I can go back to NO for my car (which is safe in a hotel garage, several floors up) and some of my stuff, but I hope to be back at UNO in the spring.

Footbagwise, my paradons are ever strengthing; plus I'm starting to hit pixie tricks midstring without pause. My dragons are looking good. I hope to improve my mirages and pdx mirages to the extent that I can hit my newest idea for a sick 3 for me: dimwalk>pdx mirage>paradon. My ducking has been disappointingly off lately. Umm, I'm threatening to hit a decent stepping set, any session now. I'm close dammit. I may conjure an atomic set too. We'll see.

So that's that for now. I'm all right. I love you guys and I'm glad to be back to the forums.

[david]

im glad you are ok. i met you in jersey and made the connection that you might not be ok. thanks for posting.

[footjam_heger]

I'm glad that you're okey too rob!! crazy hurrican!! wowww!!

[Mathochist]

This evening I conducted my first shred session at LSU and I'm hella pleased with the results. I joined one Jordan who was playing by the UC. We had played at Jazz Fest and it was good to show him what I've been up to. With Jordan as my witness, I hit my second torque, after all this time since Jersey and totally clean. Larson joined us shortly thereafter. It's gonna be great getting to play with him regularly. He's been hitting some gyro stuff, and almost hit mobius for me. He has hit it though. I almost hit swirl BSOS, but the second one was the. That still represents an improvement in my swirls. What I'm most pleased about from the session though was that I hit ducking osis both sides. I just hadn't tried them before. I'm almost hitting zulu butterfly too. For some reason that's even more natural to me than ducking butterfly. Props also go to Larson for hitting fairy butterfly. I have a lot of leveling off to do in terms of both sidedness and consistancy before I start shooting for fairy sets, so I've got quite a bit of respect for them. Ok, so this post rambled a bit, but it's for posterity and all that so, yay posterity.

[Mathochist]

Larson and I are continuing our sessions; man, that kid's an addict. He plays more than I did per week in Prague, or close to it. Seriously. His latest deal is ducking pdx drifter, his 2nd 5 add. He claims mobius but hasn't hit it in front of me yet. My latest schnazzinesses were illusion>paradon, mirage>paradon, and smudge. I'm also training my left side. Heck yea.

[Mathochist]

Just in case my life wasn't wacky enough after this katrina ordeal, rita came to play. Now I have no complaining rights as I was merely inconvienced while some people's houses flooded, again. But there was enough of a storm and scare in Baton Rouge to disrupt LSU football. Now, I'm not much of a sports guy. Also, I barely count as being an LSU student. It doesn't matter who you are though; if you live in Baton Rouge, your life is directly affected by LSU football. I guess what I'm getting at is, the consequent alteration of my schedule is leaving me with less time for footbag, but I haven't let that stop me from playing more than I should.

I'm not sure if it's still obvious that I've been dying to hit ripwalk, but I just plain old couldn't step to it. Well I did. Larson, who is still trying to get stepping, pointed out that on videos he'd studied in trying to understand that set better he noticed that there was a point at which both legs came off the ground. So there's often a little jump off of the new support leg. That new mindset had me hit it, and I'm stepping semi-reliably now. Blur to come.

Ripwalk and torque were two moves that I'd wanted long before I hit them, something of my nemeses. Now that I hit them, I have good reason to go back and drill those fundamentals and get me as both sided as I ought to be. No, I mean it. I'm gonna.

Err, umm, except yesterday, when I started toying with atomic sets. I'd been told recently to wait before trying those, but I'm ruthless like that. Sure enough, I can now hit a respectable, fully uptime atomic set, and got my first legbeater yesterday. Now I want atom smasher, and the fact that both atom smasher and blur are hard for me, not because the sets are hard, but because they require my weaker mirages to be locked on, serves as a hard hitting reminder that I need to DRILL THOSE FUNDAMENTALS!

[Mathochist]

Nothing exciting happened today in my session. Just drills. 2, 3add moves. No big whoop.

OK, then in the inevitable ballsy portion of the session, I attempted flail and kicked my own knee in mid-air. Meh.

[Mathochist]

Great session today. I forced myself to spend a whole hour of my session warming up with just kicking by whipping out my net bag. That's always a great way to drill those ever necessary fundamentals. It was so effective that when I switched to my freestyle bag an hour later, I hit a new 4 add: spinning butterflyer. Old school TOTT1 style. I did some general spinning drills, in both directions. I came up with a fun flapper drill: Outside kick>far flapper>same outside kick>far flapper rpt. I drilled my weak leg with butterflies and pickups. And I rewarded my hard work at the end of the session with some much merited attempts at atom smasher. Larson was present, though not playing with his currently weak knees. But he was 'round to witness and verify my successful bajillionth attempt at atom smasher. Totally clean. I'll definitely continue to school that one. I was in such a mood that I even tossed around a few seriously close stabs at flail. The dexes were super clean; I just couldn't get the set foot back into place in time. That's coming soon no doubt, though. I was too close. After that, it's Dolomite City. Damn yea.