Fanzine

[C-Fan]

Gah, much as I love the Hotti Gotti phenomenon, it still creeps me out seeing that face at the top of my blog page. *shudder*

I don't know what Il Divo is, so I probably haven't been listening to it. I've been playihg to a weird mix of stuff lately. Some Kinks, some J-Pop, some Tupac. I never liked Tupac, but he's growing on me a bit.

My last couple sessions my mental game hasn't been that great. I think it's some stuff outside of footbag that I'm stressed about, that kind of intrudes on my sessions. So today, I made it a point to be very diligent about keeping a level head while shredding. There was a constant, annoying wind blowing the whole time, but I did a decent job of tuning it out.

I went into today's shred just looking to play, and not even practice for CSS. But then I had such a good run-through of my Shred30, that I decided I might as well hit my Sick3s. Shred was the highlight for me today. I hit my whole combo through the 30th contact, then handcaught it. I was stoked, because in the past I've only really planned out the first 25 or so contacts, so if I did manage to go flawless in comp, I'd improvise and throw a couple fives at the end. But after thinking about it, I realized that it's a bit of a waste to max out uniques for 90% of the run, and then leave the end up to chance. Today was my first time doing a full-length (I think... it's possible I may have had time for one more trick), completely planned Shred30.

Another thing I recently realized, is that if your shred30 is completely unique, it becomes much easier to calculate: just double the adds, and that's your score. Add ratio x Uniques = Adds, if the run was all uniques. Only when you drop or repeat tricks, does ratio x uniques end up having a lesser value than the add total. Cool eh?

So today's shred30 would have scored me 224 points. That's a whopping 18 pts higher than my current comp record. Even with a drop, I should still break 206 if I stick to my plan. Sick 3 practice went OK. My combos need to be a little more consistent, but I think I will be able to pull off something when the time comes. I also hit a new Sick3, for my first time, which I will keep under wraps until CSS is over.

Regular shred went OK. The combo I was most excited about, was getting drifter-spinning clipper-blender... BSOS! A nice surprise for sure. I also hit flurry to ss dlo on both sides, but kept dropping the bsos attempts. Flurry-ss dlo-dimwalk-flurry to open a string. Flip flurry felt decent as an opener today. Pixie blender and pdx blender using diff blenders in the same run. Alpine atom again.

For some reason, I decided to skool furious set today, and had a lot of success with it. It's very strange, hitting furious set requires that I think of completely differently than I normally see it. In my mind, I think of it like a quick barrage, but if I try it that way, I can't hit it. I have to think of it like a stepping set, followed by a knee kick to my chest. If I keep my back straight and think of it like this, I get a workable set. I hope I can make this motion more automatic in the future. I did hit and seal a very solid fury today, which was a highlight. But mostly I worked on janiwalker. I hit janiwalker out of the following tricks today: ripwalk, dimwalk, parkwalk, ducking butterfly, and legbeater. I also got this combo midstring: ripwalk-jani-ducking butterfly. My last jani highlight, was starting a run with jani-pdx drifter, then getting ripwalk-pdx drifter using the other drifter in the same run.

My janiwalkers have enough height on the set that I don't think I'm cheating the butterfly, but they're still not good enough for me to step out of. Hopefully that will come with practice. I'm going to be careful with furious set though, since in the past I've had injuries due to executing it improperly.

Soooo excited for CSS! Hopefully I'll get some blingy jerseys before then, so I can be the player with the best style at a tourney that has Pete, Lon, Jim, etc attending

[C-Fan]

January 28th, 2006

Been a little bit down lately, but I'm forcing myself to play footbag. Today I worked on getting longer strings, which is a little tricky given my practice space is pretty small. I get paranoid I'll run into the bbq or a post. Since I was working on longer strings, there wasn't much in the way of highlights, except for a run where I got matador and blurry whirl BSOS. I think it's very possible that it was my first time getting matador bsos.

I worked on CSS stuff, and had 3 good run throughs of Shred30. Never got it dropless, but it all felt more automatic, and I recovered from mistakes and drops pretty well. I think those 3 goes would have broken 206, but I didn't bother to count any of them. I also hit my Sick 3s again, but in a reversal from my last session, I hit the alpine leg one real easily and quickly, and the toebius one took me forever. I played out of the alpine leg one with a cute tripless combo: alpine leg-fog-paradon swirl-ducking butterfly-fog-smoke.

[C-Fan]

I really miss my Tokyo crew. I miss the whole Japanese crew really. Watching Kenzo's new joint made me so happy and so sad at the same time, it's kinda hard to explain. I still read the Japanese forums, though I hardly post there. Today I read that Takumi has hit gyro swifter and gyro blurry drifter. I really look forward to the next time we play and he kicks my ass, or when we next compete at a tourney together and he whups me.

Gonna use CSS as a way to stay motivated. I just wrapped up another job app tonight, so tomorrow I'm definitely going to shred. I'll keep you posted if anything interesting happens.

Sometimes, I wish there was a plain smiley. On my Japanese cellphone, there was a smiley that was neither smiling or frowning, it just looked at peace. I could use that smiley now.

[Anz]

<- plain smiley

[C-Fan]

Thanks Anz. Still, that guy looks a bit apologetic. I don't like his eybrows. My plain smiley in Japan looked at peace.

Life is getting better. Finally heard back from a job yesterday, although it was pretty preliminary. Hopefully something will come of it. Still, it was nice to get a response of any kind from all the places I've applied to.

Yesterday (Jan 30th, 06) was also nice cause I got in a serious shred. It had been a while since I got in a good one, and I think I really needed it.

My Sick3s went OK. It's still taking me a little longer than I'd like to hit them, but I think my practice is paying off some. Hit the toebius Sick3 without too much difficulty. I also hit: alpine leg-fog-paradon swirl-ducking butterfly-blurry whirl-blurry whirl-fog, which was a very cool surprise, since I feel more comfortable linking blurry whirls in the other direction. I hit food bsos, and hit a real solid pixie spinning clipper in the same combo. Flurry bsos, and nearly food bsos in the same combo. Smear-dimwalk-blur repeat to a small string with some 5s. I hit alpine leg to blurry torque twice; the second time I had a fog and pdx blender in the seal. Dimwalk-swifter for my first time. Alpine leg to swifter. I also hit frantic butterfly to flip food, but I couldn't seal it. It was annoying, cause the stall on the food was solid as hell, but I couldn't risk chasing the pdx mirage without stepping into the pebbled garden. That place is an ankle tweak waiting to happen, to say nothing of the impending cactus doom that would follow a bad spill.

My only new trick of the day was a goodie: blurry flux! I was surprised, since it used mostly weakside components. Hit it solid, and dropped trying to go for bsos, even though I had never hit it either side before. The other milestone of the session was being able to hit stepping sets out of janiwalkers. I've been skooling jani a lot on one side, and it's improved, but while the final butterfly had gotten better, it still wasn't controlled enough for me to step out of. So I had hit stuff like WHAT?! and mullet out of it, but I couldn't ripwalk out of it. I always believed that being able to step set out of a trick was a sign that you had hit the last butterfly legitly. So yesterday it was a big milestone for me to hit janiwalker-ripwalk, and then bsos blurry whirl in the seal.

Shred30s felt pretty good too. Had a couple one-drop run throughs, which would have scored around 210.7. So even with a drop, I can still set a new personal record, provided I stick to the gameplan. That's a good thing to remember.

[Jdigges]

Props on blury flux man! thats a sick trick. its such an awesome feeling when you hit a good 6 for the first time, and then almost BSOS it. i didn't that with blurry torque. hit it first time flipside, and footed it on the other side in the same string.

[C-Fan]

Didn't play yesterday cause I was so busy with job stuff, but I did play today, as well as 2 days ago.

2 days ago (January 31st)I played despite a nasty wind that threatened my mental game. Managed to keep it together though. I don't feel like writing much, so bare bones highlights.

*atomic drifter-ducking butterfly-fog
*smoke bsos first try, with bl. whirl-ripwalk and tomahawk (other pdx whirl) in the sealing run.
*ripwalk-spinning butterfly-pdlo-dimwalk-spinning butterfly-duck butterfly-blur-blah blah
*Both of my Sick 3s on my 2nd try. Maybe all my work is making them more consistent.
*Decent Shred30 run throughs.

Today (Feb 2nd)was kind of a sad session. I played in an NBA jersey I just got off eBay, and it worked fantastic. Well ventilated, didn't get in the way, and looked cool. The sad part of the session was when my Lesh bag busted a stitch and vomitted its life onto the basketball courts. The bag had been on its last legs for a while, but it was still sad to see it go finally. I really loved that bag. Thank you Team Russia. I should buy another from him. Once my Lesh bag died, I figured I'd use my mini-Abshire for the rest of the session, but soon enough that bag started spitting beads from both ends Some days, it's just not worth waking up.

That said, the session was OK. I kinda had to force myself to play though, which is rare. Still, adds on the shoes. I had a few good run throughs of Shred30, with just one drop. One time, I messed up a ripwalk, but toe stalled it. Later, I realized that it would be counted as 2 adds, which is way waaaaay better for my score than having it count as 0. I'm really understanding the flow of my Shred30 these days, and if CSS was held tomorrow, I'd be real confident. We'll see how my 10 days in Spain before the tourney affect my sharpness.

Deep janiwalker-ducking butterfly-ducking butterfly-pdx blender to start a string. Flurry bsos. Both Sick 3s relatively easily, one of them on my 2nd try or so. Alpine leg-blurry torque-pdx blender. Probably cause I saw Honza's Sick3 from Helsinki the day before. Got a few decent runs in. I think I play more genuine than my skill level. If I put in a few more BOPs, I'd have longer strings. The Rochester vid Mosher made sort of reflects that... I think my string was something like 17 contacts, but no BOPs.

I wonder how warm the CSS venue will be. It'd be fun to play in my new NBA jerseys, but maybe that'll have to wait for a warmer weather tourney. I'll try and play tomorrow, hopefully I'll find something which will spark my interest and get me out of this funk.

[brian relly]

The venue is well-heated... it's quite temperate really. Like it's as warm as any other indoor venue, though it's kinda chilly towards the front because we usually have the doors propped open all day.

[C-Fan]

February 3rd, 2006

I didn't plan on playing today, cause I had a shin splint in my left leg. I dunno, when I have splints in both legs, I don't worry, but when I get it in just one, it makes me nervous. My game isn't THAT one-sided. In any case, I decided I'd shoot hoops today instead of shred. In the morning I shot hoops for an hour and worked on jumpshots. I made 108 shots from free-throw distance or further, in about 50 minutes, taking breaks.

When I got home, I DLed Mads' 33 feet video, which I enjoyed so much, it inspired me to get in a session.

I played in a normal shirt, which felt huge. Lately, I've been shredding in KoloSport shirts or NBA jerseys, which fit snug and don't get in the way. I managed to ignore the big shirt, but at first it felt like it was made from a pair of MC Hammer's pants.

On the whole I played well. I was due for a good session. My Shred30s felt pretty solid. I hit it once with a slop, and no drops. Had a one drop run through. Today I only tried for one of my Sick3s, and I hit it on my first try! That was a nice surprise. It was nice to get my CSS practice out of the way quickly, since it freed me up to just play for fun.

My average runs were pretty good. A little bit short, but with good variety. I was forcing myself to throw spins in my combos, and it went well. I hit some nice new links, and even a new trick today. Can't ask for too much more from a session. Onto the highlights:

*vertigo, both sides. Hadn't hit either in a while, but I sealed both today without too much trouble.
*barfry-blur-legbeatdoh! My first time stepping out of barfy.
*barfry-fog-smog-dimwalk-blurry whirl-blur. My second time stepping out of barfy
*atomic drifter-ducking butterfly-blurry drifter. I bsosed the blurry drifter and threw in a blurry whirl too.
*alpine smoke. My new trick of the session! I sealed it with a run that had blurry drifter bsos.
*jani-barfly, both deep.
*Using flip pixie, I started a string with smear-smudge, and then later in the string I hit smear-smudge-smog-pig using the strong pixie.
*diving pdlo
*pdx tap-ss dlo-smoke
*ripwalk to flurry... BSOS! It was only my second time ever hitting flip flurry midstring, and ripwalk-flurry is a pretty rare link for me even on strong side. So this combo made me smile.

I really needed a good shred. I'm so thankful for footbag, it's such a necessary and wonderful part of my life

[Jeremy]

Wow, I hit alpine smoke for the first time today. You beat me by a day

Nice work but a little weird since we've hit new moves like that before.

[C-Fan]

Weird. I think the reason I had never hit alpine smoke before, is because pixie diving is so much more natural for me (on that side). I've hit stuff like pixie zulu torque and whatnot before alpine smoke, but pixie ducking is becoming a lot easier lately.

Today (February 4th, 06) I had a chance to get in a group shred, so naturally I jumped at it. I hadn't played with other footbaggers since the Rochester Jam at New Years, so I had to play. I played pretty hard yesterday, and my left shin was still a little splinty, but I figured I'd be fine as long as I didn't push too hard.

There were 4 of us at the shred, which is an impressive number for Arizona. Mike Jauss, Johnny Baldwin, myself, and another shredder from Phoenix: Josh. Josh actually posts on Modifed, zeroman13 or something. Holla!

I was most impressed by Mike today. I'd only played with him once before, and that was 2 months ago. It's obvious he's been skooling a lot since; his consistency was way up, and he played much more confidently and bothsided than last time. I was really really happy to see him playing like that. I gave him some more tips, which I hope he can use as well as the last batch. Smears, dlos, dimwalks, ducks, and butterfly rakes both sides.

Josh seemed like a nice guy. Very clean stepping set on one side, and very clean dives on one side too. I don't know how happy he was with his game, but I thought he was playing well. I can see him improving very quickly if he plays more with Mike. Johnny had a bad start to the session. He hasn't been playing much lately, so he was a little frustrated with the rust that developed on his game. Towards the end he slowed down, and was playing better.

I was happy with my game. My splint didn't bother me much, and I fed off the excitement of playing with others. I warmed up pretty fast. We played with a nice Lonn bag, and I gotta say I really enjoyed playing with a different bag. My mini-Abshire is on its way out, and it gets annoying when you have to end a session early to patch it up.

Within 5 minutes I felt warm enough to try my Shred30. To my surprise, I hit it dropless on my first try! Only 28 contacts, but it was solid, so even if I did non-unique BOPs for the remaining 2-4 contacts, I'd still probably break 220. Just those 28 contacts would score 212, which I'd be very happy with. I hit my Sick 3 a couple times, but the paradon dexes felt a little thin. I decided not to press the issue, for the sake of my splint, and cause the floor was a bit slippery. I feel pretty confident with the combo. Once the CSS stuff was out of the way, I had fun just going for long combos. Had one combo that went for 40 or 50 contacts, but on the whole I think I was getting around 20 good contacts per string.

I had a run with food bsos, where I started the string with flip food, then had something like 15 good contacts, then hit strong food. Most of the time when I try to bsos a trick, the contacts between the bsos trick aren't that interesting, and I bsos them close to each other. So this bsos felt real nice.

No new tricks this session, but I hit a lot of good tricks I don't normally do. Vertigo. BS bed. Zulu pdx torque. Oh wait, I hit blur to toe tomahawk, which is probably a new trick. I'd hit pixie tomahawk, pixie zulu whirl and pixie diving whirl before, but never just vanilla toe. I also got atomic drifter-ducking butterfly-blurry whirl, which felt like a good seal for that trick.

Overall I just really enjoyed today's session. Playing with others really is a win-win situation for everybody. It pushes me to play more consistently, and people can ask me for tips. Hopefully I can get in another session or two before I move out of Arizona.

Oh yeah, thought I'd mention it here first: I'll be out East Coast during the second and third weeks of March. So NYC area around the 10th, and then up in Boston (looking at you Slapdick ) for a job interview on March 14th.

CSS soon... exciting.

[slapdash21]

i'll be waiting

i have been playing SO much lately, so if you do show, i intend to be shockingly better since the roch. jam, as i pretty much already am strikingly better. ok! enough ego-stroking (?dick-slapping?)

dude, you are the shred 30 master...i want to keep seeing that score rise!

[Tjuggles]

Ken, you are good at footbag.
I wish I could have kicked with you more before you left Japan

[C-Fan]

At least you have people to kick with in Japan. When I got there, there were no guiltless shredders in the country, and the handful of tilting players didn't even play in circles together or give each other props. Now, there's a guy in your town who can hit janiwalker to bedwetter both sides!

Speaking of top Japanese shred, I was just looking at the Japanese forums, and saw some of the stuff Takumi has been hitting lately: alpine surge, alpine bigwalk, gyro barroque, and barefoot triple ATW. That's mah boy!

I left out a couple details from my last session, so I might as well post them while I'm here. At one point, Mike was asking me about general advice for doing longer strings. I pretty much told him to just focus on breathing and slowly start putting more and more non-BOPs into his runs, and as that becomes easier, start linking the non-BOPs, and as the consistency keeps going up, he can start doing harder and harder links. To illustrate this, I did a run where I kept upping the difficulty bit by bit, and after doing easy links of non-bops (like ripwalk to pdx whirl or whatever), I hit pdx drifter to ripwalk bsos on my first try, which was a nice surprise. At another point, Josh requested I show him Ripped Warrior. I hadn't done them in a while, but I ended up hitting it BSOS, getting 3 in a string. Johnny jokingly requested b2b, and I took the bag and got it within a few tries. Only my second time ever hitting Ripped Warrior back to back.

I leave for Spain in a few days. Part of me feels like I need to take advantage of the nice Tucson weather while I can, but I also need to do lots of other work too. We'll see how it turns out.

[C-Fan]

Didn't play footbag the last two days because I've been busy with planning my East Coast trip and getting job apps out of the way before I leave Tucson this weekend. The time off was probably a good thing all told, considering I had shin splints. Still, I really missed playing.

Went to the basketball courts today (Feb. 7th,06) where the wind was just killing me. I normally throw up 2 or 3 airballs max per session, but it was super-gusty today, and after my 10th or so airball in the first 20 minutes, I pretty much said f* it, and focussed on footbag the whole time.

Basketball may have sucked today, but footbag went really well. I played with my Ilja bag the whole time, and I really liked the way it handled. I'm still a little afraid it may become too big, but at least it wasn't rolly today. It sat and set real well. I was real glad I could use it the whole time, because my mini-Abshire is really on its way out. It also felt good to hit multi-dex tricks and tricks with hard windows using a normal-sized bag. Hitting paradon swirls and janiwalkers with a regular size bag is harder than with a mini, so playing with my big Ilja today problem-free felt reassuring.

I only did a couple run-throughs of my Shred30, and they went well from the start. One run-through in particular built my confidence, since I adjusted well on the fly. Like, I messed up a stepping butterfly and hit stepping clipper instead, but I didn't panic. I just stuck in the stepping butterfly a few moves later, so if anything I picked up an extra unique. My confidence in my Shred30 at the moment is very high, but again, those 10 days in Spain (cold winter, no practice space) could easily knock down my consistency before CSS.

My Sick3 also felt good today. I hit Alpine leg-fog-paraswirl on my first try, which surprised me cause it was with the Ilja. I hit it again later, on my 3rd try or so. I should be able to hit at least one Sick3 in 7 tries.

As for regular shred, I went out without any goals. My splints didn't bother me, but I also didn't want to do anything to annoy them either. Alpine leg to blurry drifter felt cool. Parkwalk-jani on my first try was nice. Pdx whirl-drifter-pdx torque on both sides, but not bsos. Jani-barfly-barfly-duck bfly-duck bfly-pdx drifter. Jani-pdx blender, but I planted on the blender... still, it was solid, and I had flurry in the seal combo using the other barrage. Paradon swirl-pdx torque felt really good and deep. Not sure if I had hit that combo before...bsosed the pdx torque. Spinning clipper-blur-dimwalk repeat was a good drill that worked lots of weak areas in my game. Flip pixie actually felt pretty reliable today. I was hitting lots of flip smudges, so I decided to try for flip pixie egg. That was one of the few basic flip triple dexes I had yet to hit, but when I hit flip smog for the first time a couple months ago, I knew I could get pig too. Today turned out to be that day: flip pig for my first time, which I bsosed.

The combo that I enjoyed the most today was this: smear-tripwalk-stepping mirage repeat, to dimwalk-blur repeat, to dimwalk to 5 or 6 contacts of ducking butterfly. So 3 flip pixies in the combo, and the whole thing came real naturally. I was only planning on hitting the first 6 contacts, but then the rest just flowed. The other combo that got me pumped today was alpine legbeater to janiwalker! That's one of my styliest fearless links to date. I sealed it with a run that had pdx torque, fog, and blurry whirl in there.

Felt real good to shred today. I leave for Spain in a few days, so I really want to get in as many good outdoor shreds as possible before I depart. I'm pretty happy with where my game is at at the moment. I'm still getting new tricks and combos, I've got good consistency with lots of fun tricks, and my combos are of a decent length and have good variety. Gonna savor it, cause once I get a job I doubt I'll be able to play this much.

Gonna try and sneak in a session tomorrow.

[brian relly]

FYI, 5 tries.

[C-Fan]

OK, very good to know. Thanks Stephen. I feel pretty confident with my CSS stuff these days. I'll only compete in Shred30 and Sick3, cause money is tight, but I'm going to shoot for podium finishes in both events. That could be very hard, considering the comp, but if I set a personal best in both events and place 4th or lower, I'd still consider it a victory.

Got in a much-needed shred today. It felt like I hadn't played in a few days, but according to my records, I played the day before yesterday. Still, I was really itching to shred. Yesterday, the last of my eBay NBA jerseys arrived, and they both looked good for footbag. I decided to try out my CSS shred equipment today, so I pulled out the new G-Units I used in Rochester, and switched in my insoles and everything. In Arizona I've mostly used my old Australian G6s, cause they're so beat to hell and dirty I don't care about them getting dusty. But I figured I should get in at least one practice session before CSS using the shoes I'd take there.

Today's (Feb 9, 06) shred went really great. My shins didn't bother me much, and I think I identified the culprit: too much furious set practice on one side. That in mind, I took a laid-back approach to today's shred, and things just flowed nicely throughout.

The new G6s and NBA jersey worked great. I immediately felt like I had more support in the shoes, and the jersey didn't get in the way at all. I also used my Ilja bag throughout, and it treated me well. Like my last shred, I practiced my CSS stuff early, hit it quickly, then just played for fun the rest of the session.

Keeping in mind the 5-trick-limit, I hit my Sick3 on my 3rd try. I also hit it later on in the session with little trouble. I think the Ilja bag sets better for the paradon swirl. Shred30 also feels a bit more consistent with the Ilja. Shuffle is a little harder, but the downtime 4s all feel more solid. I hit the first 28 contacts of my shred dropless to a handcatch. I should practice playing out the last couple seconds of the Shred, but today I knew that those 28 scores 212 pts, which would be a new personal best. Good to know I can hit my Shred and Sick3s perfectly with the stiffer, newer shoes.

I'm gonna write the rest of my session highlights in the general order of how excited I was about each one. Maybe more interesting than the chronological order.

*food bsos.
*Jani-duck butter-duck butter-pdx drifter. In general I laid off furious; I just hit this to see if it was still there.
*flurry-tripwalk-blur out of nowhere.
*Parkwalk-ripwalk-food both sides, but no sauce.
*frantic butterfly both sides. Both frantic sets looked nice and deep today, which was a cool surprise considering I never skool them anymore.
*fairy butterfly-tomahawk, and then later in the string I got spinning butterfly-spinning osis bsos. The string wasn't very typical Ken.
*atomic blender within a couple tries.
*Reverse swirl-blender, then pdx illusion-dimwalk repeat in the seal. I just like that first combo.
*food-pdx drifter. Cool link, but I think I planted on the pdx drifter.
*inspinning clipper bsos, first try. Enjoyed that because I never inspin.
*barfly-flurry-parkwalk-ripwalk-barfly-pdx whirl-ducking butterfly-ducking clipper-pdx drifter... some other stuff. Barfly-flurry may have been first time for me, which is weird considering I've hit blurriest to flurry before.
*atomic drifter-drifter-drifter-pdx drifter-drifter-pdx drifter to start a run.
*A run with frantic ss butterfly and flurry all BS in OS! I started the string with flip frantic ss butterfly, and hit my strong tricks pretty easily, but when it came time to bsos the flurry, it was my weak flurry. To my happy surprise, I hit it! Midstring flip flurry is still a big deal for me, so this was a very satisfying double bsos.
*A run with blurry whirl bsos, a flurry, and spinning osis to pdx blender. Oh yeah, the first trick of the string was sailing ss dlo.

So no new tricks today, but I just had a lot of fun playing. Playing with good equipment is such a joy. I never got frustrated during this session either, and I overall felt real strong throughout. I hope I can play this well at CSS. I leave for Spain in a couple days, so I'll try and get one last outdoor session in before then.

[david]

your good.

[Jdigges]

awesome links man. so your likin' that ilja bag eh?

[C-Fan]

Yeah, funny how things work out. Up until last week I was sure that I'd trade my Ilja at CSS or over the internet, but now I'm really liking him. There's something special about playing with a bag you won at a tourney. I guess both my bags fit that criteria.

On the subject of bags, yesterday I got the coolest PM from a loyal blog reader. Somebody read my blog and noticed my lack of good bags lately, and out of the blue wrote to me: "hey, do you want me to send you a bag I stitched?" How cool is that! That really made my day, really blew me away. Footbaggers are the kindest of people. I won't mention any names here, just so y'all don't flood this stitcher with requests for free bags. What a sweetheart.

I leave for Spain tomorrow, and even though I haven't started packing and haven't finished my job apps, I decided to get in a shred today(Feb 10, 06). It was a little strange playing in my beat-up G6s, after playing in the crispness of the new pair yesterday. But the looseness suited me, cause I was aiming for a very light session.

The main goal was to hit my CSS stuff to further imprint it on my muscle memory, but I had confidence that that wouldn't take too long. Sure enough, Sick 3 gave me no problems; I hit it twice, both within one or two tries. Shred30 went pretty well too. I really need to work on the last few contacts though. I hit the first 28 no problem, then hit a butterfly and a drop. Just the first 28 by itself scores 212. But if I do a butterfly and a drop after that, my score drops to 210.7 That's interesting. Hm, and if I do the first 28, and tack on just a butterfly, my score is 214. Hm. I guess I should aim for the first 28, and then only go for easy stuff after that. I was going to try and throw in another five, but maybe I should just repeat a butterfly, then do something like pdx illusion. In any case, I should practice the ending after the 28th trick.

I didn't shred too hard, so my highlights aren't that spectacular. Drifter-blender bsos was cool, because that's always been one of my favorite combos to see. (flip)Parkwalk-drifter-spin clip-spin butterfly-spinning osis to start a string. Had another string with spin clip-spin butterfly-spinning osis using the other spin, and then spin clip-spin osis on the other side.
The biggest surprise of the session was when I started a string with atomic blender, and then I got pdx blender bsos in the seal! Atomic blender is still rare for me, and pdx blender bsos I've only hit a few times, so to get them in the same string without planning it out really was a pleasant surprise. Finally, the combo of the day was: atomic drifter-WHAT?! That just felt super styly. I'd love to hit that on camera... maybe I'll get it at CSS.

I leave for CSS the day after I get back from Spain, so I should probably pack for CSS today as well. Man, I wish I was going to CSS tomorrow. No idea about internet access or practice space in Spain, so maybe the next time I see y'all will be in Denver! Looking forward to it.