The Darkshredder's struggle

[Darkshredder]

And I'm back.

And it's a glorious return as well! Though it'll most likely mean that the first time I play I'm going to play entirely way too hard and blow a gasket in my knee - even if I'm playing alone. We'll try to go to slow.
1) I found a few exercises to do to get my knee fixed as well (finally) so I'm heading off to some sporting goods store to get some weights at some point in the next couple days.
2) I need to get these quantums off my feet. Seriously they're really starting to get to me. I mean they're a fine shoe, but they break down worse than lavers because the material stretches out so much that your feet start slipping one and the other when shifting your weight. And no more traction. I mean there wasn't much to begin with. But walking on tiled floors in the shoes I actually have to be careful.
3) Still have my Aiden bag. It's amazing. Needs to be cleaned, though, now that I think of it. I'll do that today since I'm pretty sure I'm going to be out playing.
4) Dominik - well leaving my Polish friend two things are certain about him: a) he needs to leave Ireland. It's not right for him. b) footbag is missing out on a very talented player. He's probably not going to continue playing now that I'm gone and it's a real shame. By the time we left, he was hitting whirls and had a flip pixie as well as a controlled stepping set on one side. Pretty amazing considering I only met the kid in October and he could do legovers and the fastest double dexing leg in the country.

Anyway I doubt I'll be posting at modified much really but I just wanted to reassure some people that I was still here. Again. And this is a message to Mosher (if you're still reading, tom) that I'm going to be in Kingston to visit Chris QUITE A BIT (mostly to skate) this summer and I'm looking forward to a few sessions with the KFM. So watch out.

pT

[mosher]

haha funny, I was reading it then I started to tune out on the last little line or two and then I decided to go back and read the bit I skipped and it turned out to be where you said "if you're still reading, tom" haha spooooky!

I don't live in Kingston anymore.. but um.. maybe I will be there visiting sometime when you come by. Keep me posted.

Also, chris wanted to buy a bag from me for you, but then he didnt show up to buy it and I moved away..

[Pyroman924]

Welcome back! Will you be coming to Worlds?

And how were all those bike rides through the Irish countryside ou were excited about?

[Darkshredder]

Heh didn't realize you were moving away. Was Chris? Anyway, I'll definitely let you know when I'll be making a trip up. I'm also planning to go to Toronto and a few other random places in Canada because, ya know. . . it's Canada.

Hey Alan! Yeah about the bikeride. Kinda got lazy. In a way. See instead of riding a bike everywhere a bunch of friends and I would take a couple days and pick a direction and just walk out and pitch a tent until we either got threatened to leave by a flock of angry (but ever so fluffy) sheep or until we reached a larger village. Village = better than walking and looking at sheep. I DID get to play on a hill near this rock shrine thing in Dingle just before it rained and I've played on random castle ruins so mission accomplished.

Played with Greg yesterday. "I'm out of shape. . . as usual" was the quote of the day. "My knee hurts. . . as usual" was my response. He's not going to be working this summer. Going back to school in NYC maybe to learn craft jewelery making. So he said he wants to play a lot of footbag this summer like last. That should be awesome.

Soo a trick update for me? K.
1) frigid stuff. "cool" stuff hit with the technique is freezing a dyno and figid osis > pdx mirage. I can occasionally get it high enough to almost duck and sometimes I'll set it right so I can toss it to the other side of me with infinity or clipper or legover or something.
2) phoenix was hit a month or two ago along with pixie diving butter and pixie ducking osis (diving osis). I don't practice it nearly enough though.
3) ripwalk back to back record is up to like 6 or 7.
4) footed pixie ss torque but I wasn't really trying so I just tried a couple times before laughing it off and passing the rock to Dominik.
5) MOBIUS!?!?!? once. Yesterday. Greg told me to fuck off.
6) almost vortex. . .

that's all I can remember now. Not much though. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Ireland sucks for playing lots of footbag.

sincerely,
pT

[Darkshredder]

Summerly quick update -
I've been sucking the past three sessions I've had. Making me kinda mad. I'm getting used to playing with lavers again. They're nice, but much stickier than the quantums and it's taking me a while to get my pixies and fairies to the un-Pat-like consistency I was getting really excited about during the last couple months while I was schooling like nuts in Ireland. But back to the States and I'm back to lavers. So no real good updates I suppose other than me being kinda down about my game. I almost hit blurry whirl back to back pretty easily the other day and I'd like to get into food processor. Atomic is looking pretty good which is a nice surprise, as always. Nukes are looking pretty descent lately and are the only things worth bragging about lately since I'm so close to hitting sumo bs and all the basic combined nuke stuff (i.e: nuclear ss pickup/legover opp. pickup/legover , ss mirage, ss illusion)

some tricks that I'll be working on in the next little while:
1) reactor bs
2) food p
3) sumo bs
4) flip flux
5) flip mobius
6) void
7) vortex
getting some fun old tricks back up to par

hitting new tricks is once again put onto the backburner for me at least for the beginning of the summer because I've got a good string length for me, but I need it a little longer for comfort. Overall - I'm pretty happy still with footbag and me, just not the last couple sessions. Hopefully tomorrow will be much better. I need another epic session to really lift my spirits. It'll come. I know the bag won't let me down.

pT

[BenRea]

i had a feeling you were going to post in here...i was waiting.




I'm glad to see you have better skills than me, so you can teach me things, i am heavily in need of a mentor for footbag. nice stuff. hard to believe those are basic tricks, .

Hopefully we will both try to impress eachother and have an epic session, im going to bring my video camer, deffinaltey.

cant wait to shred. peace.

[Darkshredder]

hello MODIFIED!
- Session with Ben Rea today in scenic Fayetteville's New English TownCenter Pavillion. It's a bit nicer than the mall parking garage and I didn't get kicked out. Ben and I have more or less established that the No Skateboarding sign out in front of the pavillion will say No Hacky Sack by the end of the summer. That's my goal, at least.

It was a fun shred, but I wasn't too happy with some gliches in my strings. For some reason my right butterfly wasn't working and I would drop at the most inopportune moments. And pixies were pretty shoddy. But meh. . still a lot of fun. Hit some new things, which gets me really stoked about what could come out of this summer's sessions.
frontside blur. I've hit it before but it was hit after only a few tries to get the pogo element down.
stepping ss rev guay (rooted) and farside. Strange concoxtion which I tried and Ben said he had been trying it the other day.
real sketchy blurry rev. whirl
footed spinning whirl - I'll hit it tomorrow. It's not far at all.
stepping farside symple butter. bs (bsos? Can't remember. Ben?)
zulu clip again. this time a bit cleaner than when I hit it for the first time a week or so ago.
stepping ss. osis > ripwalk > hand catch. My sick 2.

I had one or two pretty smooth and stylie strings in there but I can't remember them - never do - so I won't even bother. It was fun and I hope by tomorrow my knees will be done swelling so I can shred hard again tomorrow.

. . . FOOTBAG!

[BenRea]

yea dude, BSOS, you skooled that shit up!

[Pyroman924]

Show-off. ; ) We'll have to shred at Worlds if you're going... are you?
Though I wasn't the smartest of sorts about Footbag tricks and such back at the YEAH Jam, it sounds like you've made some leaps and bounds up in Ireland! Sorry to hear your knee is still bugging you though.

Also, when will we see some Ireland pictures eh laddie?

[Darkshredder]

heh actually not TOO much has happened since YEAH. I can do more ripwalks back to back, my spinning is a bit better bs (thanks to the YEAH sessions, actually) . Otherwise I'm more or less the same ol same ol. I'd like to go to Worlds since it's pretty reachable. But no plans have been made to go yet. I don't know maybe I'll surf the threads and see if I can tag along with some RFA people or whatnot. It'd be fun. A bit huge for me but hey - it'll be in some crazy place across the globe probably next time so we'll give it a shot if funds allow.

pictures? Um. I'm pretty sure some of my Irish friends took pictures of random times over there. I don't really take pictures of things myself. I hate being photographed and I tend not to take any myself. But I'm sure they're out there. I'll see if I can get a hold of some. I think I broke out the bag one day in my friend Kevin's flat when we were doing one of our movie marathons and my friend Orla really liked footbag and I'm pretty sure she took a picture of a flapper stall or something that night. I'll do what I can to dig stuff up.

ah Sundays. Let me count the ways I HATE THEE! Stores (barnes and noble) close early and nothing on TV but awful overly censored and cut movies. Alien vs. Predator back to back. Mmmm now that's what I call a waste of a summer afternoon.

But what's this over the horizon!? Could it be? YES! IT'S FOOTBAG!

legball twisting #2 with Ben. Some good times were rolled and the rain held off - not like it would've mattered and in fact a little rain could've been nice.
GOOD THINGS (READ if you want) -
- My strings are getting back to where they were once. Longer and more expressive of which tricks I like. I was back at double dexes off and on and came dangerously close to down double down with not TOO much effort. I bet I'll enjoy that trick when it gets dialed. I think next time I'll school the flipside. I'm getting pretty confident on my left. Oh and spinning whirl was close, but it turned into spinning REVERSE whirl. That's significantly easier obviously. And Ben told me to try stepping atomic, something I'd say I should even consider attempting at this point but it was kind of fun to try. I tried it on both sides, but found I have a strongside on my flip stepping side. It cleared the atomic dex and rose another maybe 3 inches over the knee. Guessing if I school it for a couple weeks I'll get a set from it well enough. Buuut. Yeah. Not sure why I'd ever want shooting in my bag of tricks. . . yet.

hm. Thought I'd write more in this one. Oh well. Had some fun, kinda wanted to play a little later before the sun went down but no dice because I accidentally fell asleep and I'd rather not destroy myself so early in the summer. That can come later.

legbreaker > hatchet > void
blurriest > pdx dlo > tripwalk
what!?!? > pixie symp. whirl > superfly
scorpions tail > inspinning pdx torque > pdx grifter

[mc]

are you coming to montreal?

nice session updates.

[Darkshredder]

Dude to be honest I'd love to go. I didn't even know there was something going on in Montreal till I peeked at the RFA blog a day or two ago and then asked Ben about it and he confirmed the dates for me. I haven't been too into Modified as of late except to write these little updates. I can't, though. My buddy Chris is coming down from Kingston and we're going to kill ourselves on longboards going down the hills of the cemetery I work at. Because we haven't been able to do that since last summer and I won't see him much this summer. But anyway, yeah I was thinking I was going to make a trip through Canada and more with a few of my friends at some point relatively soon. I'll be going to Toronto > Montreal > Kingston > Vermont > ? > Syracuse > END. So it was really kind of sick irony that there's a jam up there this weekend.

Some updates:
1) I might have rabies. I was playing with a random cat on the street and it was all fine and dandy till it got a little TOO playful and scratched and bit my arms. . . twice. And I'm feeling a little weird. That happened yesterday. Fun stuff. We were joking the entire day yesterday that if my eyes suddenly turned red to run away from me because I'd be likely to run after them Dawn of the Dead style, trying to take chunks out of their neck. Or eyes.
2) I fell on my right leg jumping from a tree at the Onondaga Lake Park near me with a few other professional tree climbers and it hurts. A lot. And then my friend and I collided while on longboards. Well - I collided with HIM because he was too lazy and overconfident that he would be unscathed by the encounter. Pff. I showed him! He left the park that day, but not without spilling blood himself.

So I'm a little sore, a little sunburned, a little rabies-infested, but I should be okay to shred somewhere in an hour or so once this chinese food is digested safetly.

some possible outcomes of this session of lonesomeness:
1) spinning whirl bs (bsos?)
2) spinning symposium reverse whirl
3) matador bs
4) blurry drifter bsos
5) get better at tomahawk . . as in hit it more than once every week.
6) double dex practice. I'm not even setting a goal for this because I know how I've been playing lately and um. blah. I'm expecting to play my hardest nevertheless.

[Darkshredder]

waching! It's my birthday it is!

And sadly it'll be the first birthday since those circle-kickin' days that I won't spend a chunk of time playing with the little 32-paneled pal of mine. No, as I PMd Ben, I'm taking a break for a couple days till the weekend so I can reflect on some tricks and find my shoe goo so I can patch up my Aiden bag. It has a couple little holes in it. First time since December so that's gotta count for something. It's seen a lot of action. Just not in this country.

But I played yesterday. Badly. But some stuff was managed with a sandbag.
pixie whirl bsos in a guiltless string and very controlled. Moreso than it has before.
spinning symp. reverse whirl (second try)
flip catacomb (w00t?)
two very spinning and ducking intensive runs. Very Chan-stylie. I felt rather proud of them. Too bad I can't dish out DLOs like Erik. That'd be nuts.
gravedigger bs ? ? ben you'll have to see it to believe it this weekend. Hope I can hit it again for ya.

in general I'm feeling like my string length is getting back to where it was when I was in Ireland in quantums. Which is a good thing because I was kinda getting sick of dropping so many times on infinities. . .

EVENTS for Syracuse : :
1) This weekend - The Taste of Syracuse. Footbag and multicultural foodstuffs galore. Who knows. Maybe Chris will shred with us. And I'll call Greg. It'll be Syracuse Legball Champions united.
2) Next weekend - The Greek Fest. About 1.34 minutes from my house. It's this nice little tented event where you grub on some gyros and other food items that have too many k's and v's in the name to be pronounced by our english TONGUE (Polish people might be able to grasp it). It's the first place Greg and I met at a few years back when I was a wide-eyed circle kicker trying to get better at atw's and legovers.

. . . more to come.

- The Management

[BenRea]

props on spinning symp rev whirl!!!! ha, nice man

also, gravedigger! i knew yyou would hit it, i told you that one day to hit it pogo...now you need to try that!

sounds like a decent shred except for the fact you have to use a sandbag.

i'll give you a 32 of mine to hold on to for a while next time i see you.

P.S.- i nearly hit Void

[mc]

happy birthday buddy! I hope I can make it to syracuse, or you can make it to rochester some time this summer! You should consider a trip to buffalo for thursday in the square. That's only 2 hours from your house, and you could crash in rochester on the way back.

Think about it...

what birthday is this now?

matt

[Darkshredder]

heh nice on void, man. I've tried that a couple times ever since I saw chris dean hit it back to back, as he WOULD DO! The style! She hurts! I'm pretty sure if I spent a little more time on it I'd have it. It's more of those shred>shred>shred>oh wait. void? Hm. drop> void> drop> void> drop > clipper > drop > meh. . . > shred > shred > shred. I'll try it a couple times tomorrow at the Tastey Syracusian Blockparty 2K7.

frontside grave digger? psh. You're the trick hitter, sir. . . not me.

Matt - I'll check for the thread for more information on this thursday in the square but I'll at least consider it. I'm stuck working a little sooner than I usually do but I'm itching to take advantage of my boss' lax attitude on calling in "sick" (in footbag's name no less!) I still have your number so I'll call you with what's up unless you've changed it. PM if so. I'd really like some more shred time with ye. But if I can't make it to Buff. then I'll definitely make it to Rochachesister a couple times definitely. And our humble little dump of a city is always open to the RFA with crash space available at my place if need be. I just need to toss a coffee table aside.

So no footbag today. Worked and then had to take care of a friend of mine who had been kicked out of his house last night. He walked from his house to mine over the night and got to my front door as I was waking up to go to work. Kinda bizarre. So I told him he could stay while I went off for a while. Came home and we skated for a while in my old high school parking lot. I did this pretty sweet bert slide where you crouch on the board and stick out a leg in front of you and then just lean in and be prepared to slide. I've seen videos on youtube where people do this going like 40 miles an hour and drifting around a corner. Crazy. Blew some minds with that one - meaning my old gym teacher who recognized both of us and came over to talk to us and ask us why our skateboards were so big. I hate looking exactly like i did back in high school. The teachers recognize me from a mile away. Sometimes a good thing. More often than not : a bad thing.

So anyway we've got the Taste tomorrow. I'm about to call Greg and tell him he needs to get down off his "I'm too cool for footbag" raised platform he brings around with him. Nah that's not true actually. He just racks-a-discaprin and the fact that it's a harder game to him than it is for me (which is saying a lot) is making it hard to keep going. I understand completely. I lost count at 305 how many times I thought about stopping this "footbag". "Just stop pretending you can be physical and get back to writing and being uninteresting." That's what I told myself. But somehow through it all, so many times now it makes it even MORE worth while, I recite to myself an epic braveheart-esque speech and I begin to laugh at all the poor saps who think that catching a hack in the crook of the neck and flying clippers are the pinnacle of the HOBBY. Pff. Hobby. It's so much more than that. But I don't need to explain that to any of you. Just thought I'd go on a rant for a quick second.

To be back on topic. Looking forward to getting some heavy freestyle down on pavement tomorrow. Thanks, Ben for lending me a bag. Sandbags are kinda lame at times and this one is even worse. It's so light. So bad.

Alright this is too much. I've gotta go. I was about to go on another tangent but stopped myself. Later fellas. Thanks for reading the long post.

[Darkshredder]

forgive me, father for I have sinned. I did something I vowed I would never allow the world to face. . . me shredding without a shirt. I know. . It's terrible. I'm surprised the skies didn't open up right then and then and vomit celestial bile on me. But at least I wouldn't have had a shirt to get stained.

Though an ugly chud like me has no purpose doing so, there is a definite plus to the shred. It's like you're lighter and can torque the body more.

Well I was playing off and on today. Probably like four hours in total. I went to the skatepark to shred but then it rained after a while and I had to pack up. Then I went home, watched The Eraser, had a bite or more to eat, and then went to this old playground where I could be alone and surrounded by trees so no one could see me. I went to the local skatery shop and bought some shoe goo for my Aiden (sp?) bag that has two tiny holes in 'er. Fixed that up and was able to shred pretty much business as usual. Again, my strings are getting back up to par and the two shred sessions I had were pretty good. Vortex was hit both sides again which was very cool. I like that trick much. I think I'll start throwing it into strings now so it can get schooled more naturally. My whirls were very on today. I was hitting hatchets all over the place and out of nowhere and I hit every pdx I threw out (just about anyway) - even when I wouldn't plan on it and the bag would be way the hell out there and I would have to do one of my signature sprint the 100 meter dash and leap into the air and yell out something as I flail my legs in the proper form or close to it.

Oh and I was thinking today: the "spinning whirls" and stuff I've been trying to tighten lately aren't spinning whirls. They're spinning pdx whirls. Correct me if I'm wrong, valued readers, but what I'm doing is something like this: right clip set > outspin > whirl with the left leg dexing and the right clip catching. Pdx? I'm pretty sure because I thought spinning whirl was like gyro whirl - with almost a half spin or something - only you plant the setting/dexing leg when you spin. I could be very wrong about this so please someone snag this one for me and respond one way or the other. It doesn't really matter too much to me. I've never really been a stickler for add counting or nuthin'. It's more just to better my grasp on spinning logistics in the game.

Anyway - I'm going to go stretch and wash my bag. It got a little dirty on the field of battle.

peace.

[Matt K]

Spinning Whirl and Spinning Pdx. Whirl are interchangeable.

Spinning implies Pdx. when applicable, or just Far.

[mc]

hey, props on vortex and hatchet. I hope you can make it to a thursday session in buffalo!

matt

[Darkshredder]

Hey thanks Matt. Hatchet isn't really a new trick. I hit it last summer like two days before I left for Ireland. It was a nice going away present. But I don't really practice it a lot and I only think about it when I get a really deep and fast head dive going before my foot jumps at the chance to do one. And vortex - wooo man was I happy when I hit this a couple weeks ago. And it was real nice to hit it two more times in said session. I'll have to spew it out for ya next time we shred. I'm almost positive I can make it to at least a couple Thursday in the Squares. I figure it starts at 5 and I get out of work at 3:30. I can just pack my things in the morning and leave right after work. I'll get there with plenty of time to shred till the sun goes down. Not sure if I can crash there or in Rochester after the sessions, though. I don't think I can take off more than a couple Fridays and i'd like to use them for my random trips to Boston, PA, and Canada. But hey, I'd see it as well worth it playing in Buffalo for hours and then slipping away back to Syracuse. I'm sure Ben would be more than happy to do the same when school ends for him. Either way I'm really excited for that.

Today rained quite a bit. Work was cancelled because of it so it was a nice long waste of a day. I really wanted to use it to find a nice dry spot and shred all day but things kept getting in my way, doing errands for my parents and not finding ANY shred spots. Kinda sucked. But that's alright - I watched a movie and listened to some music. MUSIC!
wish I could play guitar
wish I had my mp3 player so I can shred with music again without running out the car batteries or my laptop batteries.

------ non footbag rant ahead ------
SPEAKING of music. I feel I have more or less come full circle in my music evolution, in a way. Bear with me because this is kind of a stretch but it's also quite amazing. I came up with it the other day. So the first CD I ever bought a loong time ago was the Batman Forever soundtrack (lame, I know. .. ) and there was a song called Smash it Up by the Offspring. Besides Kiss by a Rose (Seal. . ugh. I knew all the words to this song. Still do actually) this was my favorite song. I didn't know why. It was like nothing I'd ever heard of before. It was punk . I cleaned the slate, though and went through my many music phases:

pop > 90s alternative > hard/classic rock and pretty much anything from the 60s and 70s (circle kicking) > jazz > 90s pop punk (Green Day, NOFX) > and then? BAM! REAL PUNK ROCK! Bad Religion came to my attention > trance and west coast hip hop (footbag. . . ) > weeeird jam bands and strange music phase. > ska punk > heavy metal and symphonic metal. Machinae Supremacy, Finntroll, All That Remains, Children of Bodom. > and now I have arrived once again to a new kind of phase. Old Punk. Like Sex Pistols, The Damned, Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Adicts, etc. stuff from the 70s and 80s. Real nice. Along with some metal and ska it's the only stuff that gets me moving anymore. I love it.

where was this all leading? Why just the other day I picked up a Damned album at the local record store and SHaZaaAm! What do I see, but Smash it Up, originally done by The Damned and covered by The Offspring! Quite possibly the first song I ever felt the need to learn the lyrics to.

Well anyway I thought that was really cool. I've been listening to the song nonstop for the past couple days. If I put out a video every again it'll most likely be to this song. It'd work for footbag. I've given it a lot of thought the past 48 hours.

-------- footbag related -----------

k I'm going to go find somewhere that has lights and dry pavement and play for a while. Later.