The Darkshredder's struggle

[mosher]

Hey Pat,
How's that bag I made?

You were the only one at GRASS that got a bag that has my current stitch.

Though since then Ive changed my fill.. still, you got the best bag I brought to GRASS.

Hope you're still shredding hard man.

peace

Tom

[Darkshredder]

oh you know I'm shredding hard, Tom. I try to shred for at least an hour when Syracuse stops acting like Florida and being all 94 degrees. Fridays and Mondays tend to be very hard to get out and do anything. But when Sundays roll around I really try to do something with footbag. . Since it's Sunday.
Yeah your bag is excellent. Now that I think of it I'm probably going to wash it today. I'm glad you could part with it. Thanks.

So I didn't mention in my last post just how awesome my torque seal was. You see - I hit it and the osis was toward the front of my foot so the set from it was very awkward and low and bad. But I did get it up and slid sideways and did this little breakdancing twirl thing and caught it about an inch from the ground. The coolest catch I've ever done. But since it was kind of a lame way to seal a torque I'm going to try to hit it cleaner later today. Maybe on flipside too. I need to really start working on doing a few more things flipside.
-Update maybe later if I can shred at the Balloon Festival-

[Darkshredder]

My arsenal I use normally (not everything)-
2 add :
clipper *
atw *
anti clipper *
(reverse) guay *
illusion *
mirage *
legover *
pickup *

3 add :
butterfly * infinity *
(farside) refraction *
dyno *
toe drifter
datw * (out to in)
(farside) osis *
(reverse on strong side) whirl *
pdx mirage *
pdx illusion *
(in and out) spinning clipper *
gyro clipper *
simple butterfly
merkon
barrage
terrage
smear *
smudge
pixie ss clipper *
dimwalk *
parkwalk
fairy ss clipper
blur
blizzard
symposium bubba
symposium mirage *

4 add :
paradon * (just got flipside tonight)
double overdown
pdx drifter
ducking butterfly
(in and out) spinning butterfly
gyro (simple) butterfly
(in and out) spinning osis
ducking osis
pixie diving clipper
maverik *
pixie osis
torque
ripwalk *
blurry osis

-A summary of my repatoire as it stands tonight. If I forgot something I'm sure I'll correct myself. As a "new news" thing I played for like 5 minutes tonight. It's too humid and I couldn't start until after dark. And the mosher bag has a small opening in the stitching and it's letting out a little bit of the smaller filler. Tom? Anything you suggest? It's a slow leak but I don't want to fool with it until I check in with you. I think I'll PM you if you don't get this.
So yeah. That's where I stand now. As you can see, I've got a lot of work to do this summer. .

[Darkshredder]

just got back from a two hour session at el shoppinge centre. At least I think it was two hours. probably about 2 hours. I stopped because I bent over to pick up the bag and when I came up I felt like I had been kicked square in my undercarriage. So I leaned against a wall while people stared at me and I tried to stop seeing spots. All was well and I decided to call it a day. Few good things came from it. Such as:

1) pdx whirl (flipside very well and my "strongside" not so much)
2) footed butterfly swirl (could have already been under my control by now)
3) footed pixie drifter (smog?) which was nuts.
4) had a few cool strings that looked rather suave -
- toe drifter > far osis > back spinning butterfly > pdx mirage > string
- whirl > symposium ss mirage > DOD > string
and a few tiltless strings which were pretty long for me. Greg P promised he will try and show me how to "calm down" when I play so that I can keep the bag legtwisting for longer. The problem we both see in me is that I'm in the Shred 30 mentality where my legs want to hit the biggest things I know and then bail to an osis immediately.

My flipside clipping ankle was off kilter today. Otherwise I'm sure I'd be able to hit a strongside drifter and a flipside torque. Oh! Which remindes me. I sealed a much cleaner torque today. That ankle just won't heal from-what was it - like a month ago when I twisted it trying flux (heh).

[mc]

yo pat! glad you're still playing... about that ankle, keep stretching it, mine was out of commision for a while after trying grifter (same kinda dex as you). if you stretch it a lot, it will probably improve.

keep it up! say hi to greg.

[Darkshredder]

You'll see him at Funtastik along with a few more of us. We've come up with a few sessions in the near future where we will be filming. Two of us can easily edit the video and post it on modified. I left a message with Chris Dean and said that he should seriously consider coming to Syracuse for a little bit to shred with us. The invite is open for all the RFA people (not sure if it's all that worth it for Aric and Steve since they live farther away).

I tried to think today what the world be like if footbag or longboards hadn't been invented. After much deliberation I have carefully come to two possible conclusions: A. I would invent both of them myself at some point anyway. B. I would have had a lot more time to write and hone my creative writing talents and that'd probably be my substitute. Nevertheless, it would be a world I would rather not take part in. Boring.

[mosher]

Hey, is the hole a bleed hole?

like.. between two hexes?

There should be like.. 20 of those.

[Darkshredder]

Yeah I guess it is a bleed hole. Well alright then. No fabric holes though.

I didn't really want to post until after a major session but I guess I'll update a little bit. K so I've been hitting lots of stuff I've been meaning to get down finally. Like drifter bs and torque more fluidly. I also footed smog like four times two days ago. If I play tonight (definitely) I'll more than likely hit it. I've also been trying to be more spinny and both sided when it comes to gyros. Hit gryo mirage bs and almost bsos (off the foot with the second time) and am DANGEROUSLY close to gryo illusion. I've done the ol' paradox whirl a few times solidly and have footed it on my good side .

Some things I'm really working on now and am pretty close:
barfly (oh man soo close)
flip DOD
flip terrage
flip sidewalk
flip blizzard
ducking and diving mirage
spinning illusion

Oh and I guess I'll just add a little bit of emotional thought. I'm getting really paranoid about shredding in public places all of a sudden. There are these random groups that always laugh and I know they're laughing at me. I just know it. I don't know why. Short shorts? Maybe. Torrents of sweat pouring off my brow? Perhaps. Either way it's making me want to play less and less in places that have water and food and good times.

PEACE

[Darkshredder]

fun 2.5 hr session with Greg. And this dish comes with a side of humor!

So I get to our designated zone and I'm kicking around waiting for Greg to show up. Then it happens - spinning osis was hit and then sealed with a crazy far-reaching toe kick. My polish bag (which I've now named Boll Weevil) lands safetly on top of a ledge that belongs to a laser tag place. The ledge was about 20 feet high. . . . So what do I do? I throw my shoe at it for about 5 minutes and then realize - woah! I might have something in my car that can bail me out of this sticky wicket! So I travel the length of the parking lot back to my mobile only to be discouraged greatly. I didn't have any tape or anything like a pole. But what did I find? My longboard and a window ice scraper! So I grabbed my chuck taylors and used the lacing to tie the scraper to the trucks of my longboard. Needless to say this idea, however clever and resourceful, failed over and over again. . . for about a half an hour. Then out of nowhere comes a guy I used to kick with and he tells me he's got a hockey stick in his car and it should be able to reach it. So he grabs it and comes back and BAM! I easily reached the ledge and boldly rescued my poor bag from its dusty keep. Greg showed up about 2 minutes after I got it down and gave the stick back to the guy.

Highlights -

Greg - flagellan at least 3 times
footed eggbeater
ps mirage
footed fairy ss whirl? ? ?
back-spinning clipper (new)
fairy legover (new)
da da curve (new)

Pat - drifters are coming along bs
footed barfly again (bs)
footed pixie ss whirl
maverik > infinity > diving butterfly > spinning pdx mirage > drop
flip sidewalk (new) (one of my goals)

We're going to be putting out a Syracuse Footbag video pretty soon I think. Just as soon as Berrett and Paul get their acts together and start playing when I play. I've got a good feeling about this.

[Darkshredder]

Getting back into modified since college is starting soon. Not too much has changed this summer which is a little disappointing. I guess my style is much cleaner and I've dialed almost all I do tiltless almost to the point of boredom (but never quite reaching that point). I was pushing myself to play every day just before now so that I can slack off and rest while I move into Siena College and get all that squared away. The last solo session I had was yesterday and I had to call it off about 40 minutes short due to lack of goodness. But anyway I guess I could update the new trick list since I looked at the last few posts and I realized they're kind of out of date:
Well for one I can hit smoke now (pixie drifter). Just a few times.
Whirls are going on both sides. I've hit pdx whirl just barely bsos and 1/3 times I can hit whirl bsos. So I like that.
Last night I was thinking about stepping set while listening to Weird Al and I think I've reached a new way of thinking about it that I can tag along with what Jorden Moir said about how to set it up. So I'll slap on the lavers in a few days and check that out. My right leg is far more retarded that ever before and my training for it to pixie well enough is going mighty slow. Oh! But this was interesting. Apparently I'm close to an atomic set on both sides! I almost hit atom smasher a few weeks ago! Sooo I guess it's just pixie and fairy that hate to work. I just can't get them.

Alright well that'll pretty much do it.

[Darkshredder]

Very Early morning shred in long pants -

I was at a townhouse party bananzaa at the Siena campus this morning and was bored out of my mind. There were about 1/4 of the people that were there the night before and I was pretty much the only coherent person within the compound. There was a boombox next to a lightpost that was blasting some easy hip-hop (always good for osis-based shred for me) and so I decided to break out the sandman. It only took about two minutes before my roommate had a crowd of about 12 people circling around me asking me to do the sickest thing I can do (a torque in long pants is not what I'd call do-able for me) so I did some stuff that blew their minds (legover > clipper > diving butterfly) and thus began my 3 hours of fame. Quite a fun time. Got people aware of the game so that's a plus. My roommate and two other guys we hang out with said they'd try footbag. One of them looks almost like Lon Smith and another kind of like Mike Anello. Should be good. I've found a campus that's pro-footbag.

Quad shred #1 : Which I just came back from. After a warm-up that took way too long and took away most of my energy, I began skooling pixie and atomic. Pixie clip rpt. I think I got a new record of 4 or 5 (meh). Some real interesting things I was trying were blender bs, atomic ss mirage bs, and blurry osis bsos. Of those, I DID hit blender on my weak side and sealed it with a catch. I managed to hit atomic ss mirage bs after about an hour of trying it. As for the blurry osis bsos, nadda. I can hit it bs but bsos is just about a half an hour away from being hit and I was feeling sick by the end of the session. I'll do it tomorrow. Gryo mirage and pickup are coming along alright. I'm trying to work them into bsos strings (since they are now both fairly consistent if I can get the gryo set alright on any given day). Surprisingly, I'm for some reason losing track of the ease at which I could usually backspin (even while listening to James Brown's Best Of!) but I'm sure it's just a minor slump that'll correct itself in a day or two.

end log.

[Darkshredder]

A rather forced session was had today. I was thinking about footbag and strings all morning as I was trying to do work and then I made myself play after all was and read and done even though I was pretty cold and not feeling in the mood at all. But I found a nice sunny spot on the side quad, put on some DJ Shadow, and did a very methodical warm-up -> shred. All the stuff I can't do was practiced today so no real nice strings were had and I won't pretend that it was overwhelmingly exciting. But it was both a sobering and pleasing session.

1) I'm trying to revamp my pixie style and it's so far having a nice effect on my strong-side. The fact I can't shuffle with pixie has me rather upset and I'm trying frantically find a way to do them as consistently and as well as possible (obviously). So what I'm trying to do is not whip my leg over it lazily after I set the bag up. Instead, I'll try more to pull it off to the side. This will be aided by the fact that I will no longer be setting in front of me. I'll try to set it up as straight and close as possible, almost so that it looks like it'll hit my setting knee and be slapped to the ground. So far, this mentality has helped me hit a new trick like smoke as well as give me plenty of time to set, spot, and prepare for a pixie whirl which I was trying either yesterday or the day before.

2) It's high time that I learn swirl and reverse swirl. As a result I hit both today. Swirl bs and reverse swirl on my strong side and rather sloppy. Not unclean. . The dex made it. . But I think it hit my leg about three times before finally stalling on the back of my instep. A cool thing happened when I did a swirl one time, though. I hit the swirl and it shot up toward the back of me and I didn't know where it was so I did a gryo motion and completed a muted pickup (barely looking at the bag itself).

3) It's been about four months since I last hit reverse whirl and I thought I'd skool it a bit. What a strange move. After getting the relative hang of it I tried to go through the motion of reverse whirl > whirl > pdx whirl.

4) The toe inspinning video made by the hackrifice folks made me laugh and think. So last night and today I was attempting my toe inspinning. I've done t-i clipper bs, t-i bsos, and very nearly hit t-i mirage. It's fun. Makes your head inspin but it's fun.

5) No more double dex for me. Paradons, barrages, delusion. . . all this can wait. I've decided I really REALLY need to just get back to my own level and get good at pixie and stepping and atomic. All the sets I know I can hit stuff from.

6) In socks I was trying to do the a rooted xbd toe set. I got one or two good sets up before my feets started to hurt and I realized I've still got 40 more pages to read in a really dull literature textbook.

7) Reflecting back on my progress as I was stretching after the warmup today, I realized that at this point last year I could maybe do legover > legover > mirage > atw > drop and I could hit a pdx mirage about 1/10 times I tried it. Farside legover was a heavenly thought at the time that I had been working on since I knew how to do a legover. I'm hitting whirls bsos, drifters midstring, blur blizzard sidewalk and spinning, gryo, ducking, and diving. It makes me more pleased with myself. There a bunch of people here on modified that have improved much faster. But that's fine. I suspect this game will be in my life for another decade and I'm in no rush apparently. I complain about my progress way too much. I should stop and just play the game.

And the struggle continues. . .

[Darkshredder]

Day 3 of not really being able to play at all. . . sucky.

Okay so last night I had a full stomach when I tried to play and also it must have just not been my day. But today? no excuse. I have an empty stomach and am free for like four hours. Perfect. But I go outside and it's a rather gusty day as well as being ridiculously hot and humid. I hate playing in the humidity. Just slows you down and drenches you with way too much sweat even after playing for 10 minutes. So I tried to play for 40 minutes and then gave up after 39.59 minutes. Nothing. No highlights.

Talked to Chris Dean today. He cleared things up with blenders. Crispy blenders are fine but they are unique from downtime blenders. So I'll just have to skool both. And he assured me downtime consistency will come.

On a lighter note, I got a toy from the early 90s that I never had when I was a kid. Dr. Dreadful's Freaky Food Lab. It's kind of like Creepy Crawlers in that you create spiders and centipedes and all that out of goop and then play with it. But with the food lab. . . You eat whatever you make! So you can have monster brains in a cup! Spiders! Monster skin! Oh it's quite amazing. I'll have to set it up later today.

[Darkshredder]

two hour session - half in half out of the Siena Athletics Facility (the future site of my winter shreds).

"almosts" highlights:

1) ALMOST twirl
2) ALMOST tap down bs
3) ALMOST ducking osis bsos
4) ALMOST ducking illusion bs

hit highlights:

1) blurry osis bsos
2) toe inspinning clipper > merkon

I also looked at myself in the mirror when I do my stepping set and realized two things a) I need to pull my left leg up higher to get the set off and b) that I need to be more "explosive" as they say on my flip stepping. All in good time, I suppose. I was stoked I almost hit atomic ss butterfly and atomic opp butterfly . Oh yeah! I was fooling around with some crazy stuff like peeking and double peeking and the hyper set. Hyper ss butterfly will come. Very soon. And I'm also working on some silliness for clipper > opp clipper and infinity runs.

[Darkshredder]

Post KICKASS post -

Absolutely kicked ass. I had a great time at this event. I give it an A+. I'd like to thank Tom Mosher for being a great host and making a ridiculously splendid weekend come to be. This was bigger than the effect of the printing press. . . by far. AMAZING.

So anyway. I had a great time again. Didn't get enough time to hit the goal tricks: scrambled eggbeater and blur bsos. BUT I hit a few strings that got props all around. Kind of wish I hadn't worn my legs out the days before the comp. so that I wasn't playing all fresh. I wanted to show the RFA members some progress in string length in particular but it really didn't happen to my liking. Oh well. It worked out well enough at least shredding with the likes of Chris Dean and Paul Agostinelli and Matt Cross. They continue to be cool.

So to summarize? My legs hurt. I like hot tubs. Subway bacon melts serve as both breakfast, lunch, and dinner (and give free refills on drinks from the fountain). Tips on atomic and stepping set were given (thanks). Tomorrow will be recovery for the legs. Finally met Johnny Sudderman and Nick Laroche sat in my back seat (in his words, because a BAP memeber has been in my car, it'll be cooler than it already is and I will get better at footbag. Good. Good.). . I think the most important lesson learned this weekend would be that Canada has much better candy than the US.

[mosher]

Thanks for coming Pat, and BIG thanks for helping me drive around the shirts, the keg and the sound system.

Glad to see you've made so much progress with your game, keep it up!

[Laroche]

Hey man, I had such a great time hanging out and shredding with you. You busted some large stuff and all us MTLers were pretty impressed by that kid from NY who can wreck it.

Peace!

[Darkshredder]

a strange time after KICKASS -
k so the first bad thing comes with a story! So sunday afternoon I left the Holiday Inn after I said bye to Mosher and a few others and had to walk to my car which was about three blocks up. Then I walked to the apartment of my friend Chris which is about 6 or 7 blocks (give or take. . it was a looong walk). Chris and his roommates were not at home to give me my backpack and lavers (I wear a pair of black leather lavers that I don't shred with). So I swore for a little bit, stood out in the cold for a second. . . and walked all the way back down to the parking garage (Mosher's block) to get my car and leave. It was about half-way down the blocks to get my car that I realized that I had my room key and college ID card in my backpack. First bad thing: I can't get food and my roommates have to keep the door unlocked .
Secondly - I came back and didn't have any homework to do. And honestly I had a genuine black out between the time I checked my emails for class information and when I found myself watching the San Fransisco Footbag Jam video. So I watched a few more, giving into the temptation.
A short time after that, actually I talked with my friend Nick Davis from high school who dropped away from hacking because for some reason he thought it would be selling out to progress with me in the wide world of Footbag. . . And he's starting to see just how cool of a game it is. I'll work on him and soon he'll want to play for good. When we were just circle kickers, it was me, Nick, and the aforementioned Chris that were the best at kicking the silly $3 crocheted bags of years past. So it pissed me off to no controllable level when Chris and I learned the mirage and around the world and Nick goes, "mmmm. . nope." and stopped altogether. Very cool though. I'm excited because I'll be able to keep him motivated and we'll be able to play when he comes up during breaks. He goes to Virginia Tech and his family moved to Texas (not cool). I have a sinking feeling that he'd be much much better than me much faster. But hey. It'll just rock to see someone else from my crew who can shred.
k this is a really long post. I don't generally do this. There's more that can be said about today and yesterday. In a nut shell, my legs are feeling 200% better today and I'll be able to shred hard tomorrow; my abshire mini is really breaking in well and I love it; and now I'm off to Walmart with my roommate to go and see what we can waste money on. . .

And to Tom and Nick who just posted. Thanks a lot for posting, guys. It's awesome when I come to the blogs section and don't see two darkshredder tags on this blog (alongside the title. . which I should change). I'll get ever better for the next time we shred. Next gathering shall be very cool. I'm looking forward to it.

edited a day later instead of posting anew : this game is hard. It's really really hard. I'm wondering how far simple determination and practice will get me. Questioning this will only lead to me not progressing so it's useless. If footbag was as popular as baseball or basketball or any of the other conventional sports, there would be a lot more Vaseks; the line of beginner and advanced would be so insignificant. But the community here is so small that I get to play with some of the best in the world and can have their messenger names. This is both good and bad. I can learn from them in more ways than people could learn from Micheal Jordan but now it's hard for me not to compare myself with them and to question why I can't be that good RIGHT NOW.
Monday, Wednesday, Saturday : 2 hours of practice
Tuesday and Thursday : 3 hours of practice
Sunday depends on how much homework I have. . . usually 2 hours.

[Darkshredder]

A quick post: I was just wondering if anyone has any suggestions as to what a nice schedule would be like in a window of about 2 - 3 hours for skooling and shredding. This is what I've been thinking but I'd like to get someone else's opinion. PM if posting in this blog offends you or something.

30m warm-up strings. basic tiltless and BOP drills.
30m pixie sets and runs mixed with mid-string pixie ticks (15m each side)
30m fairy sets " etc. (15m for each side)
30m atomic set practice
30m whirls, pdx, blender practice. (10m strong, 20m flip)
30m stepping set practice

spins and ducks are done so often even when I'm standing in line to get a cheesey gordita crunch from taco bell so I don't think I need to really practice them hardcore yet. I could be wrong, though.

[Darkshredder]

played for 30 minutes today after not playing for quite some time. I hate those divots where you have no ambition to play. I was in a fog for a while and just didn't want to even leave my room. There's something about playing solo that just gets to you after a while. What sucks is that I've lost all the momentum I had coming out of KICKASS with fairies and atomics and still learning stepping and all that. The legs - sooo slow.

This is also probably going to be the last post for this blog for a long time too. It really doesn't accomplish much at all and people don't seem to respond (again making solo play hard). But I'll get in touch with the Digges brothers and I guess there's another person in the Albany area who is always looking for someone to play with. Gas prices the way they are, I don't really see a lot of out-of-area shred for me.

I'll continue my 5,6 day regiment (starting now) and the playing will continue for me. Looking forward to Chilly Philly and all the other NE competition fun. Worked too hard to quit now. And soccer, however really fun (especially in the snow), can't compare to footbag. It'll try but it'll just get kicked in the face and told to sit back down with the video camera and record the shred.