Been real busy lately looking for and applying to jobs. I've hardly been playing at all this last week, but that could be a good thing. I find it's usually good to take a bit of a break after a tournament, and I feel like I deserve one.
Yesterday,
January 15th 06, I had my first real shred in like 5 days. There was a real cold wind outside, so I figured I'd try playing in my garage. Bad idea: I dropped the bag once, and the panels which touched the floor INSTANTLY turned black. It was incredible. No way could I play there. I felt my mental game start to slip... 4 days without a serious session (my last shred was interrupted by little kids), and the one day I want to play, is like the only day in the year when it's bad playing conditions outside.
Undeterred, I put on some gloves and went out, and through sheer force of will, kept my mental game in check and ended up having a pretty good session. More than any of the tricks or combos I hit, I felt happiest that I was able to stay calm mentally and enable myself to have a good shred despite bad conditions.
Going into the session, my only goal was to continue working on flip flurries. I'm definitely still getting used to the mental work behind the trick. I have to keep reminding myself to think of it the exact same way as my strong side. Sometimes, I find myself thinking about the 2nd dex, and when that happens, you're doomed. When I focus on just getting the plant foot down quickly and going for the final legover, the move takes care of itself. I think I made some progress on it. By the end of the session, I had hit it BSOS on four occasions. The last time was the most satisfying, as I threw in a pixie spinning clipper in the sealing combo
My work with flurries was scattered throughout the session. I had a lot of disparate highlights... I was looking for stylish bsos links and strings, and when I got tired I'd go for big tricks of mine I hadn't done in a while. Like, I hadn't skooled frantic set in about half a year, so I wanted to make sure I could still do them. For a change of pace, and so I buy more time to work on job apps, here is a list of my session highlights.
*Frenzy both sides.
*Blizzard-smear-ss swirl bsos
*pdx drifter-pdx whirl-pdx drifter-pdx whirl-pdlo-dimwalk-ripwalk-ripwalk-diving butterfly-some other stuff midstring, without planning it out.
*Pixie blender bsos, first try!
Where did that come from? Nice surprise, but definitely kinda random.
*alpine leg-blurriest-ps whirl, but the last trick dropped off my foot.
*Pixie spinning eclipse again, atomic diving ss mirage again, pyro mirage again, all pretty easily.
*Inspired by Pat Tallon: Darkwalk-stepping whirl-pdx torque to start a string.
*alpine leg-swifter to start a string which included flurry, blurry whirl, and some other 5s
*A nice string that started with pixie spinning osis, then had fog, flurry, pdx torque, some other stuff.
I listened to David Bowie on my iPod throughout, which may have been a factor in my keeping mentally level throughout. Life on Mars, Rebel Rebel, Young Americans, Ziggy Stardust, stuff from that period.
Towards the end of the session, I decided I'd work on whirr a little. I had never hit it clean before- all my attempts that I stalled were pretty clearly thin. I never really held out much hope for learning the trick, since it seemed so hard to clean. But after seeing Jorden and Pat Tallon hit such undeniably clean whirrs in person at NYJ, I figured I may as well give it some more tries. I thought of it in a bit of a weird way, but had some success. I'd do a clipper, then without putting that foot down, I'd try to whirl with the other leg. This would give me a whirling set, giving me the first dex uptime, then I'd just whirl on the way down. Using this method, I hit my 2 best whirr attempts ever. One of them may have actually been clean... it felt clean and looked good from my angle. But I've met so many people who hit it thin, and say it "felt and looked good" to them, that I really don't want to claim it without seeing it on video first. With my luck getting filmed, who knows when that will be...
Anyway, I definitely made some progress on it. I don't want to push it too much though, since that's the knee that was having problems a month ago.
So overall yesterday was a good session. Hopefully my schedule will clear up some this week, cause I don't feel like taking much more time off footbag. Then again, it looks like CSS won't happen for me, so I'm in no rush to get back into top form either.
I also hit ps whirl-duck butter-pdx torque-ps whirl, which felt cute. The move of the day was pixie paradon, which for some reason felt really strong on one side. I didn't put it in combos, but I was throwing them randomly midstring all over the place (on one side). I hit it bsos once, just so I wouldn't feel as bad about doing so many strong side. 
Whatcha gonna do though? I wish I had a revolution sandbag on me... the kids had fun though, and at least now they are aware that there's a lot more to "hackey sack" than they had thought. Their chaperone was a quiet high school kid, who showed interest in footbag, even after the little kids left. I taught him toe stall, told him about .org, and arranged to meet up with him again, so hopefully something good will come of that.
I also hit it strong side, which felt cool. For me, go-go mirage is a pretty hard trick, so I was very stoked to hit it both sides in a session. 
