Probably the only shredder of all fLemmings

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 27 Jan 2007 07:45

Argh! I missed the noob kid (and notably his payment for a footbag) yesterday due to some trouble with the mechanics of my bike

.
Anyway, I suppose the future of the local footbag club (if there will ever be one) doesn't lie in the hands of kids who have to be home 15 minutes after school.

Anyway, I started kicking at the meeting place hoping he would still show up but no luck. Because of the drizzle I moved further in 'the hood' looking for a shred spot that would keep my dry. And I found a not-so-bad one just outside the gym in the bike shed!

100% exposure and a pretty good session too. I had been working on redialing my torques and blenders and it showed, as I sauced them easily. Also reskooling legovers has been fruitful, I hit another toe challenge: smear>plo repeat (easily). I may get my desired 10 toe uniques sooner than expected.

On a different note, I had my last exam today and I'm more likely to CRASH than to shred right now.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 31 Jan 2007 05:02

pixie x 21. Damn I'm good.

Kicked only 50 mins this week so far.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 01 Feb 2007 04:37

Man, did I have a weird session yesterday. I went over to the smallish b-ball pitch around the corner and kicked for not even an hour. Halfway through the session this cutest little like 7yo girl comes over to watch me play. She keeps watching me for about 10 minutes (even my girlfriend can't stand looking at footbag for that long!) and... well... basically she just watches me even though I invite her to kick along a few times (= what most kids die for). When I ask her something she doesn't reply but just nods. Eventually she leaves to wheel her bike around the street.

Not much later she comes up to me again. Same routine. I ask her if she wants to kick too, she declines the offer with a nod. After like every run she takes a few steps toward me, until I'm practically squished against the side of the pitch. After having stood well within my holy 1.5 metre shred radius for a while she takes off again with her bike.

When I'm about to leave, she comes up again. At this point I'm getting a little uneasy. There's no footbag to watch, just a 23yo guy struggling to get his sweaty legs in his trousers. So I tell her I'm leaving by saying "Till next time" as light-heartedly as I can. She nods. I get on my bike, at which point she laughs and starts to run after me. When I turn the corner of the street I ask: "Aren't you supposed to stay there?", cocking my head toward where I think her house is. She denies with a nod. "Okay, but I'm really going now". I pace up with my bike while she keeps hopping after me, so I gather some more speed and wave back hoping she'll return wherever she's supposed to return.

This may sound a lot more eerie than it really was.

Anyway, bottom line is: weird kid stuff tends to happen to me when I kick (see numerous entries in this blog).

And oh yeah, the shred was normal. Nice run length and the regular tricks.

On a different note, I'm reading The Catcher in the Rye and I'm enjoying it like a madman!

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 01 Feb 2007 04:49

Oh and check out what came flying all the way from Michigan into my letter box this morning!

Yeah!

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 07 Feb 2007 02:56

Oh and check out what came flying in the mail the day after that.

I haven't played any footbag on account of this race machine

max · Post by **max** » 07 Feb 2007 06:12

Wim, probably the fastest speed-machine in all of Flemings

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 08 Feb 2007 03:20

I wish

! There are some pretty badass racers in Flanders. I think the Flemish are (even more so than the Italians) the most cycling-minded people on this Dirtball.

CIC flurry · Post by **CIC flurry** » 08 Feb 2007 06:55

I loved that story with the little girl. I can totally picture it.
Catcher in the Rye is a good book. Just don't kill anyone after reading it like those other guys; lol. I was supposed to read it in high school, but I really read it like last year.

dazza · Post by **dazza** » 08 Feb 2007 07:38

"...and with this bike Wim was able to out-race all the girls who chase after
him, and he lived on happily ever after."

as soon as youre finished with catcher in da rye, do your self a favor and
pick up a copy of "franny and zooey", also by salinger !

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 09 Feb 2007 08:08

Hey thanks all for the input!

Wow, I had no idea Salinger inspired some guys to a kill frenzy! Most of the time The Matrix and a host of violent video games get the blame for that

The reading tip has been noted

, once I finish reading The Color Purple

Random shit: Crazy breakdancer

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 15 Feb 2007 09:19

Today I had my first 35 minutes with the bag in over two weeks, so I didn't accomplish any great deeds. In fact, I think I dropped my first 5 or so butterflies

. My muscle memory (if any) sucks! After some time I managed to do a few runs of about 15, which isn't too bad.

Yesterday night my girlfriend and I rewatched the first 8 episodes from Lost straight, which means a good 5 hours of Jack, John and Kate. Afterwards I felt quite lost myself.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 17 Feb 2007 09:07

It seems I'm getting back into footbag a little. I figured I should as I have some demos with the Brussels club next week and another one early March.

I tried to kick for a while yesterday. Already there was some noticeable improvement in control compared to the day before. Then again the only way is up.

Somehow managed to get yet another kid to freak out over footbag (I was going to say: despite the current mediocrity of my game). Set up a meeting/bag sale with him on Wednesday next week only to find out a while later that I'm out of town that whole day. And like all kids he didn't leave an e-mail address or cell phone number, so I know a kid who's going to be really disappointed next Wednesday. I hate being unreliable, but yeah

.

It seems to get increasingly easy for me to impress people with my hack skillz. Maybe my style is boosting self-confidence or something (haven't checked on changes in a while) cuz it's definitely not the tricks I'm hitting that got better

.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 22 Feb 2007 01:22

All demos in Brussels were cancelled so I did end up kicking with the noob kid again. His name is Ilias, he's 10 and he's amazingly cool. He can break dance. He's cooler than me dammit, and I've been on this planet learning how to be cool for over twice as long as him!

Anyway, I find that kicking together with a kid diverts my attention from my own game (kids talk a lot), thus leaving me very unsatisfied after a session. I need a thorough work out sesh soon.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 17 Mar 2007 00:12

I don't kick much these days. I'm still 'into' it though, unlike during my last break from footbag around this time last year. I dream of combos and epically long runs sometimes

. Besides, spring's here (didn't have much of a winter BTW) which tends to get me pumped for shred.

Anyway, the last time I played was at a demo in a high school some 30 km from Brussels. That was about 2 weeks ago. I did a write out with positive and negative remarks on our Brussels forum and I thought I'd just share it here as well, so as to let my avid readers

know I'm alive and kicking (well not quite but my intentions are good).

-----text copied from the Brussels forum-----

Positive:

+ Ju, Seb and me got to kick together, which we hadn't done in a very long time.
+ we represented not only ourselves but of course the sport of footbag, and quite some people were enthousiastic.

Negative:

- The demo itself. Worst case scenario. We get in the spotlights in front of the crowd, the music starts, at which point I realise they are not playing the James Bond song I had selected (or any James Bond song for that matter), but some ridiculous monologue from a Dutch stand-up comedian. I walk over to the DJ to ask what's going on. He assures me that's the 'song' he has been given for our demo. I'm getting a little nervous to keep the audience waiting. Meanwhile, Seb and Jul start doing some tricks and the audience seems to like it, so I think: maybe I should get over the music fuck up and just shred. So we shred to the stand-up comedian.
I soon realise how wrong I am. What I should have done is tell organisation to swap places with the next act to give the DJ the time to find the right CD. But having little experience with this kind of trouble shooting I naturally didn't.
I know we would have fucking BOMBED the audience had we had the proper song (or any song for that). As it is I felt pretty frustrated and angry afterwards. I mean, we had been living up to this demo all day long (actually more than just that day) and then to get thwarted like this... I felt utterly ridiculous to be shredding to this monologue. The worst part however is that the audience probably got a pretty stupid conception of footbag. I don't know.
The organisation told us we 'coped well' but frankly that's not good enough for me.
- I fucked up our little introductory syncro as a result of the musical confusion
- and the first run. I was so mad/confused/messed up I just started rippin' when we had explicitly said to start easy with tiltless. Sorry Jul and Seb.
- Seb rightly pointed out there was no reference to the BFC before or after the demo, which is a pity because people who would like to become involved in the sport have no point of reference to turn to. Mea culpa.
- We were at the spot from noon because there was a rehearsal scheduled at 13.30h. I somehow thought this rehearsal was very important, so I had assured organisation the BFC would be present. When 1.30 came around, there didn't seem to be any need for footbag rehearsing. Bad communication I guess, but the fact is we were present at 13h when in fact we weren't due on stage until 22h. This negative remark is somewhat swiped out because Jul, Seb and me got to shred together all day, which was cool.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 04 Jul 2007 07:02

Work for school and work for school have caused yet another frighteningly long absence from the boards. As always when I come back to modified, some things have changed and some haven't.

You read right by the way, it did say "work for school and work for school".

The first "work for school" refers to my teacher training, a one year programme that I finished (I hope; didn't get the results yet) just last week.
The second "work for school" refers to a temporary job I took on in March at a high school near Brussels. Man, I seriously underestimated full time teaching! Anyway, I survived and in many ways it's been a "good" experience for me.

Things finally settle down now, which means I can again devote time to fun but completely useless things, like footbag! In fact, I tried to get my fifth-year pupils pumped for footbag by showing them a video with a.o. their teacher kicking it. I think I've been more or less successfull in doing that. I have a mailing list with about a dozen addresses of people who wanted more information about footbag. Cool!

I've sent them some useful links and I've set up a shred session tomorrow in part for them, to let them experience the sport 'in real life'. But if no one turns up, which happens, it'll just be a good old BFC shred with Jul and me.

I don't know about the rest of the hemisphere, but here summer hasn't been very promising so far. April was tropic, sure, but since the holidays started about ten days ago, it has poured down at least once a day. Still I hope at least one pupil (ergo potential 'fresh blood' for the club) shows up.

And oh yeah, as for playing footbag. Last week, when I thought: "hm, if I want to show off next week for my ex-pupils, maybe I better start reskooling my basics". I dusted off my footbag box only to discover that my favourite and by far best footbag, my beloved Footfighter, had mysteriously gone missing

I searched the house but to no avail.

A few days later, when I picked some other bags from my box for my first session in months, I had more or less come to terms with the idea that I'd probably left it at the demo I told you about in the above post. So I decided to make the best of my return and slipped on my lavers to find out there was something in my right shoe. I shook it, and out popped a footfighter

. Oh joy! It had been there all this time, under cobwebs and all.

I then kicked for about 25 minutes. Reskooled some 2s, stringed some 3s and 4s. Did 18 osi, which was my best run

So what else have I been doing these last few months except work? I've ridden about 4600 km so far with that race machine I posted above. And probably around 6500 with a bike this year.

max · Post by **max** » 04 Jul 2007 07:47

shit Wim.. 4600 Km??
That's quite some distance there.

Glad to hear you have some more time these days. Hope to kick with you soon!

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 05 Jul 2007 07:23

Yeah I ought to work out because I plan on doing some races this summer after about 10 years without races

. In fact I'm starting next week!

Had a sweet session today with Jul. We played in front of the 'Japanese Tower' in Laken, a Brussels suburb. Speaking of a good workout. 45mins of biking>1.30h of shred>45mins of biking certainly qualifies. But still Laken is a lot easier for me to get to than the centre of Brussels!

As for shred, obviously I felt a little rusty, but I did manage to BSOS some good 4s like blender, spinning butterfly, possibly torque. Hit a PS whirl and matador,... the usual tricks but consistentcy was nowhere. On a brighter note, spinning clipper is now a bail for me although I've struggled with spins for about a year in 2005.

I don't know where footbag is going for me. I kick occasionally nowadays and that feels good.

Jul · Post by **Jul** » 05 Jul 2007 12:50

Yeah Wim

It was great to see you

and i think the most important thing with footbag it's pleasure so don't stop shred if you enjoy it

IRIE

Hope see you soon

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 19 Jul 2007 14:42

Set up another meeting with the above dude ^ for tomorrow (in fact today - I should go to bed!) evening.

Hope the turnout is not just the 2 of us, although it looks like it b/c Max can't make it and Seb seems to have been abducted by aliens. Or so. Anyway, I can't reach him.

Which reminds me. The first X-files film is going to have a sequel with the original cast (i.e. 'Fox and Dana'). Why the hell am I mentioning geeky trivia in my blog? Well, anything x-files related gets me pumped with teen nostalgia, that's why.

Wim · Post by **Wim** » 13 Sep 2007 11:18

Dear blog,

What happened? I had to go and look for you way down the third page. You should have given a yell or something!

Anyway, I've shredded 4 times in the last two weeks, which pretty much doubles my total number of sessions this year. Needless to say, my game is far from uppie-tuppie but I'm having fun most of the time I'm kickin' and that's the main thing. This evening I went to the parking lot of a sports centre in a nearby town (that has become my nÂ°1 outdoor spot). Nice evening sun, a cool breeze, ahhhhhh. My spot was taken when I got there though. More precisely by some old farts (no disrespect) at their weekly game of jeu de boules. Anyway, they drew an end to their match and they split about 15 minutes later, so in the end I did move to my favo spot. I was hittin' okay things, considering my absence from footbag.

-29 osi (personal best 36 or so)
-34 BOP (PB 84)
-7 rips (half my PB)
-atom smasher x 3.5 a number of times, which ties my personal best

The Brussels scene has had a major reinforcement by the name of Mitko from Bulgaria (also on the boards). He will be studying in The Hague in the Netherlands for the next two years and he seems super motivated to come down to Belgium every once in a while. In fact he already did and I was more than pleasantly surprised by his game. I think he would be an asset to any scene, and certainly to ours. Solid and extremely varied guiltless, tripless and fearless combos. Very creative also. And oh yeah, also a nice guy, but that seems like a default characteristic for a footbagger.

He also gave me some pointers on my clippers which, had someone been around to tell me the exact same thing 3 years ago, might have caused dramatical changes in my game. It's basically about the position of my feet. I tooled with new clipper positions today and obviously I need to adjust my whole body position to it, but already I feel that this may be the thing that kept me from a dramatical explosion of my game a few years back. I'm saying this because back in the days when I had about 1.5 years of footbag experience, I had the distinct feeling my game was stalling (excusez le mot) in spite of the countless hours I spent trying to improve. Obviously my game did improve, but the progress I made did not seem to reflect the time I invested in the game. And I really think things like my clipper position (something I wasn't aware of before) may account for that. So thank you Mitko.

If there's any news, I'll keep this thing updated.