Didn't meet the Hoff
Here is my report of the weekend:
Friday 21st of October
Woke up with my alarm at 5:30 am. Very very tired and wanted to immediatly go back to sleep. Luckily I had thought ahead the night before and was woken up again at 5:45 am. by my second alarm! Got up shower, final packing etc. Caught taxi to airport. Slept on plane. Arrived in Sydney only to find that it was cold, windy and raining. Meanwhile in Hobart it was supposed to be a hot sunny day. Actually it was warmer in Hobart at 6:00 am then it was in Sydney at 9:00 am. Dyalan was a little late but it was ok. Went to Guido's and met up with Ken again.
This was our first opportunity to work on our doubles routine, which was fun and we got it basically down. Ken was keen to go kick I think, but I'm glad I forced us to go through practicing it a few more times and it felt fairly solid by the time we left. We went to a shopping centre somewhere and had lunch (sushi and icecream for me) and found a cd with our routine music on it (we were supposed to find a non burnt cd).
We then went to a park near The Marketing Store building and played frisbee. These photos are not from that time but this is a good opportunity to post them
Frisbee was lots of fun. We then went to the TMS building which is marketing company in charge of the demos and met up with Kate who is in charge of things. We got some shirts and bags and stuff. Also some free cereal - both the milo cereal and some "cheerios". The milo cereal is actually very nice. We also got some free cans of bundy rum and cola. We did a demo for Kate and some others - just showing them what we'd perform on stage and Ken and I also played Kate and some other guy in table soccer (we lost). Ken realised he wasn't really allowed into the building because of his hair...
On the way back to Guido's we past a bunch of guys circle kicking and stopped to play with them. It was actually hard finding a park but we did and literally ran over to play with them. Ken and I were a little drunk at this stage. They'd just kicked their bag over a fence. Dyalan got their bag for them and we kicked for a while. First just normal circle kicking but working our way up to blowing the minds!!
It was fun.
Then it was back to Guidos for food and sleep!!
Saturday the 22nd of October
Hard to wake up in the morning but we managed it. Dyalan came over while we were getting ready to go, then Guido arrived, fresh from a night at a hotel for his 3rd aniversary with his girlfriend Marisa (who is also very nice). We headed off to the demo - which was in with in walking distance. The plan for this demo was to take things very easy and we basically succeeded. There were thousands of little kids who we played with. I also hit 69 for the first time on video and it was very sweet looking!
We also got a chance to go through our routine in front of a crowd for the first time and it went ok. Phil and Daniel also turned up and had a kick although I didn't see much of it since I was demoing. There was a karaoke thing happening right next to us which played "who let the dogs out", "bob the builder", "toxic", "Absolutely Everybody" and a high five song. So those 5 songs were played over and over for 4 hours. At one point the woman running the thing said "if you want to request a song to sing, we have over 6000 songs to choose from..."
I was glad to get away. After the demo Dyalan, Guido, Phil, Daniel, Daniel's friend, Ken and I went and had a beer. Guido then went home while the rest of us played four sqaure. Daniels friend won the first game and I controversially one the second
Phil and Dyalan then headed off and Ken, Daniel and I had a shred. The kick went well and was fun although I can't really remember any highlights.
That night we watched the footage - especially our demo - and prepared for the next day!!
Sunday 23rd of October
We woke excited, ate and prepared and left. We had VIP parking at the event and parked in spot number 69 in honour of my glory the day before
. After finding the milo stand and getting some stuff together we tried to find the place we were performing at. An official girl working their gave us a "map" but while walking off looking at the map we realised it had no map on it. We returned and had a nice chat to her and discovered our venue! It wasn't the main stadium but still a cool spot. We tested out the surface of the stage and spoke to the guy in charge. We then headed back to the Milo tent and warmed up. We had a light kick and went through our routine for the last time. This last time went horribly. I was very concerned. We then headed back to the main stage for our demo. We got to hang with some other celebs and continued to warm up. Ian Thorpe came by and I think enjoyed watching us...
. We also got to speak to the guy organising the Sydney FC demo for next week and a cute back stage helping girl.
We did our demo. First I was interviewed and the guy asked some ridiculous questions like "do you have your own bags". Anyway our routine went fantastically well. I had 2 drops in 3 and half minutes and I think Ken had three. They were all insignificant drops too. Ken hit the fearless section at the end (phoenix>ps whirl in sync) twice - missing the que for the shuffle section before the fearless section. Apart from that minor and hilarious mistake it was definitely an awesome demo - maybe my best routine to date - especially considering how little time we had to put it together.
Needless to say the crowd loved it. We then headed back to the milo tent and kicked as well as playing with kids for most of the rest of the day. We also headed back to the back stage area at regular intervals to get free stuff and to talk to the cute girl pictured above. We had our photo taken with Vanessa Amorosi who is a famous Australian singer (Absolutely Everybody, Shine) who I didn't particularly like until I learnt that the song shine was originally entitled "die" and had the lyrics
Everyone you see
Everyone you know
Is going to Die
Her manager told her to replace the word "die" with "shine" and the meaning of the song changed with it. Still she gets my respect for that song
While doing the demos we set up some traffic cones to stop people from walking past us but they continued to do so anyway which was annoying but we realised we were getting paid for it so put up with it. Both Ken and I played really well with long runs and hard moves. We finished off at about 4 and went to find Guido who was drinking. We realised at this stage that we could get free beer with some vouchers backstage so I went and got some more...
We drunk a bit, gave away the rest and went home exausted but having had an awesome time. I think we were in bed by 9 or 10 pm.
Monday 24th of October
Woke up at about 9am I think - having had a good sleep. Still felt tired. Dyalan came over and we headed to Uni for a kick. Also kicked with another guy whose name I forget
- I was playing badly but killed a lot of flies. Also 8 unique atomic shuffle I think - which is close to my record too I think. Actually maybe it was only 6. Ken was playing well as usual and hitting some nice runs and moves - diving paradox torque into a run, rev swirl to blurry blender. Some other stuff.
Then we headed the airport and I flew home - sleeping on the first plane, during my stop over in Melbourne and on the second plane. I'm going to go bed now too!
All in all it was an awesome time. There are lots more photos here:
http://www.footbag.org/gallery/showset/845
Complete with silly captions. Next weekend should be equally fun and now that we've learnt about the full coolness of back stage, the qld and vic foxtel bash demos should be awesome!
Anyway I don't have to be up until 4 pm tomorrow (although I'll get up earlier) so it should be ok. Peace y'all.
