Fanzine

[Zeke]

I think it's a NYJ curse. Its the price we pay for all the fun. Read the blogs of past attendees and you'll notice that lots of people get sick during or after the event... even a concussion or two...

New Year's Jam 08

Sunday (cont)

After Circle Comp wrapped up, I pounded a banana to combat the cramps
that I was already feeling, then dashed up to the suite to take a
shower before a line formed. The view from the hotel was really nice:


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrxCg_6dl5w&fmt=18[/youtube]
It was already getting dark out, and Age
and I hadn't done any sightseeing on the trip yet, so we cabbed out to
Navy Pier to look around. The last time I was at Navy Pier was at
Worlds 99, watching the freestyle finals. It was a little trippy
being back there again...ghosts of freestyle past.

The pier looked pretty dead. Inside the building, there was some cool
museum-like displays of stained glass art. It was only when we got to
the second floor that we discovered that the building was far from
abandoned. There was a humongous convention hall which was hosting
"winter wonderland." I saw the biggest xmas tree this side of
Rockefeller center, as well as rides, vendors, a skating rink (!), and
a big area for people to sit and eat. Here are some videos to give
you a sense of scale.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGY1Hq5wP60&fmt=18[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVNcMLhJM44&fmt=18[/youtube]

We had fun walking around, seeing the sites, though my legs hurt badly
enough at this point that I had to sit down frequently. One of my fav
exhibits showed Santa Clauses from different countries, and described
the different holiday traditions. Very cool. We had a churro and
some fresh-squeezed OJ, and eventually Mike and Emily came and picked
us up. Big thank you to Mike for driving us all over the place during
NYJ. That was so helpful.

We get back to the suite and find there is a huge stack of eggrolls,
which are still hot. I get in a game of Scrabble with Reile, his
sister, and Age. We watch a national geographic special about
elephants as we eat and play. Finally I make it down to the shred
room. My legs are blown out by this point, but I really want to
compete in request contest. I watch a lot of shred circles, play some
4square, and drink some beer. I particularly enjoyed watching one
circle with Clavens and Suderman. Here are some standout runs:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_FJAU-F-C4&fmt=18[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhyNlpd7ncM&fmt=18[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMQq2A79SNQ&fmt=18[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcVZuD1wSjQ&fmt=18[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRKQ-5DY-2c&fmt=18[/youtube]

Request starts really late, but I'm in no hurry. I warm up a bit, but
my body is telling me its over before it even begins. I remind myself
that I will never have to do more than 2 tricks in a row, and that
makes me feel better. Request begins, and there's lots of joking
around. There are so many of us, that after each turn we have to
huddle back in in order to hear the next set of combos. In the first
rounds I challenge myself by hitting a bunch of requests flipside.
Then, we finally get to a combo which involves fairy set. I don't
even remember what it was, but I didn't have confidence I could hit it
in 3 tries, so I opted for the other option: stepping ss osis-gyro
mirage. Not that hard right? For some reason though, I got nervous,
and started thinking to myself: "maybe I should plant on the gyro
mirage to make it easier...no, that's not cool...but then..." I
decided to go for it true gyro, but all that thinking must have
distracted me, because I dropped the stepping ss osis on my first try.
D'oh! Second try, I actually foot the gyro mirage, but it goes off
my toe funny and I miss the handcatch. Third try, my zoom set isn't
good enough, and just like that I become a spectator and not a
participant. Oh well. I had fun, and I'm glad I got to compete.
Eventually the field is whittled down to just Johnny, Clavens, and
Evan. I'm amazed as they proceed to hit some ridiculous combos just
to stay alive. It's a lot of fun to watch.

We go back upstairs, and I think I check out pretty early.

Monday

Monday I wake up and my legs still feel trashed. I know right away I
won't be playing any footbag that day, and that's fine by me. The
plan is to do some sightseeing in the morning and get back in time to
help judge Sick 1 and Sick3. Age and I cab it out to the Art
Institute, and meet up with Erik Chan a little later. It's a weird
experience for us DC people to have to pay for a museum, since they're
all free at home (as is the Zoo).

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIooilT9Qzk&fmt=18[/youtube]

The last time I was at the Art
Institute was at Worlds 99, and I remember spending an entire day
there. This time, however, my legs won't allow that.
We check out a lot of French art from the 1800s, and I'm excited to
see some Honore Daumier sculpture. I take a bunch of pictures which
have served me well as desktop backgrounds for my laptop at home.
We take a break and eat lunch in the Institute's cafeteria. There are
several different stations where you can get food, much like a
university cafeteria. This sets the stage for one of my trip
highlights. As I am standing in line at one of the stations, 3
Japanese ladies queue up behind me. I overhear one of them say to the
other in Japanese: "what I really feel like is soup, but it looks like
they don't have any." The other nods and empathizes with a "yeah..."
I turn around and say in Japanese: "actually, they have soups over at
that section of the cafeteria" and point them in the right direction.
They are really flustered for a moment, and then thank me before
shuffling off to get their soup. It made my day. Lunch itself is
quite good too. I got a fancy roast veggie sandwich that was
excellent, and we had some almond bread pudding for dessert. It was
also nice to talk to Erik.

After the art institute we walk around Millenium Park for a bit, which
is nice. It's not that cold out, so its a pleasant walk, and we spend
a lot of time taking photos and videos at this large metallic bean:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zttos7siTTk&fmt=18[/youtube]

We eventually decide to go back to the site. We get there just as
they are cleaning up. I ended up taking third place in Circles, so I
won a Footfighter bag and a copy of Eric Chang's DVD demo.
Considering there was no entry fee for the event, and I didn't expect
to even make it to finals, I was very happy with my haul. I help CIC
break down the event site, and then wait with everybody in the lobby,
so we can all walk to Chinatown for dinner. As we wait, we decide to
take a group photo. The infamously rude security guard Reynaldo tells
us we can't sit on the couches, even though we were paying guests. In
his defense, some players put their feet on the table when we were
told not to, but he was still out of line with how he treated us. I
got some of his tude on film:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l27EzH8ZAkE&fmt=18[/youtube]

While the whole scene was unpleasant, the real bummer is that it made
security crack down on us, which I think made it harder for us to find
a night shred spot for the final night. Because of this, I didn't get
to say some farewells that I wanted to.

We all made the trek down to Chinatown for dinner. It's your typical
dim sum set up, with big circular tables with a lazy susan on top.
Here are the people at my table (bad quality):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdGY1WsKwOk&fmt=18[/youtube]

I think all the vegetarians ended up at the same table, which worked
out well because we shared our dishes. There was a lot of
camera-viewing at the table as we waited for food. Clavens passed
around his camera with a photo of him and Eoghan lying on a bed, and
said the title was "Eoghan's first time." Then he passed around
another foto of Dave's face looking like it was screaming, with Dave's
shirt off. I proposed that THAT photo should be called "Eoghan's
first time," and Dave proceeded to laugh so hard I thought he was
going to pull a muscle. I showed people the video of Honza's ankle
blowing out, which was a gruesome hit. At some point Waylon comes
over, and proposes a toast for Ted F, who couldn't make it due to
health reasons. Very sweet gesture. Unfortunately, during his first
attempt he ended up spilling his glass of water over Eoghan and Evan:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfuKIGNHZY0&fmt=18[/youtube]

Second try went better:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NR0lURIgrFE&fmt=18[/youtube]

After dinner people got bubble teas. I had some of Age's, and it was pretty bad. I got the impression though that it was a matter of knowing what to order. Like, some drinks are probably good, and if you were a regular you'd know which ones.

We walk back from Chinatown, and one aggressive homeless guy follows us the whole time, making conversation with us. It's funny to me because he's obviously was trying to shake us down, and I could see that working if it were a small group of people, but there were 25 of us. He follows us all the way to the hotel, and says things like: "I'm a walk in with you all." Really? I wonder if even he believed that. Poor guy.

We get to the hotel, and part ways with the homeless guy. Unfortunately, hotel security now hates us, and hassle us from the second we get into the building. They ask for room cards and everything. It soon becomes apparent that we won't be able to sneak in a shred there, so we go to Reile's house to relax and hang out. We play some Scrabble and I have some good beer, and then on one of my trips to the fridge, I see a stuffed animal on a table. It's a monkey, and apparently it's been used as a chew toy by Reile's dog...and I can't resist the temptation to play footbag with it.

More later.

[C-Fan]

Today is January 18th, which means I've lived in DC for a full year now! It's been a really good year too; I finished grad school, played some of the best footbag of my career, got a good government job, and got a cool girlfriend. It's good to be out of school, in a job with a career path, and living in a real city again.

I started 2009 off with a killer head cold, and only started feeling better last Monday. So after nearly a 3 week break, I finally got in my first shred of 2009. And man did it feel good.

I went to Maryland and played with Age at the UMd campus. It's still winter break, so there was nobody at all on campus and we got a good spot. I took my time warming up, but even that was fun. Man did I miss playing.

I guess the informal plan was to skool spins and just hit some tricks and have fun. Spins didn't feel that good, but then, they never do after I take a break from the game. So in that context, they could have been worse. In a nice surprise, my flip pixies felt really good, and my stamina was better than I expected. I was doing stuff like hitting 3 flip pixie tricks in a row in a string, and drills like this first try:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5h3akzL4h8&fmt=18[/youtube]

Other highlights included:
*Tying my paradox drifter record. I would have broke it if I wasn't counting and choked.
*Pixie ss illusion x2
*DDDx4. I probably shouldn't risk stuff like this, since that side is my weak knee.
*Spinning whirl bsos. There was a while last year when I was really comfortable with scorpion's tail on my strong spin side. Now that I'm trying to lay off that down double, I think I'll try and replace Scorp with spinning whirl on that side.
*Double pickup-dlo-ss dlo-merkon. I just liked this combo.

I also hit 2 tricks that got me pretty pumped up:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_IXSGchyJM&fmt=18[/youtube]

and:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB_fcq2trlk&fmt=18[/youtube]

I remember hitting both of these tricks for the first time something like 4 years ago in Tokyo, but I don't think I'd hit either of them since then. I think that if you haven't hit a trick in over 4 years, it should count as new again.

I took my time stretching when I was done, but we'll see how I feel tomorrow. I'm hoping to start working out in the gym again starting tomorrow, and to play once a week until it gets nice out again. The plan is to get my stamina and strength back in the gym, and to get my skills back during my sessions.

[Muffinman]

Cool.
The first time I heard that song was in Dan's video. In that section was Sunil, Lon, and you (doing a huge, long flyer run?) And while I'm commenting on music, any time I ever hear that song you do your routine to I smile thinking about you. Well, particularly in Rock Band, since I don't listen to the radio or anything. You've got a pretty infectious peppiness.

[C-Fan]

You've got a pretty infectious peppiness.

What a nice compliment! Thank you.

Sort of a non-footbag post, but I felt like getting some thoughts on paper.

Health: I'm still feeling the lingering effects of my cold (still feels weird when I swallow), but I'm definitely getting better. I played well on Saturday, and I didn't feel any soreness or pain in the days that followed, which seems like a good sign. I worked out in the gym on Monday, and though my stamina and strength have decreased, it wasn't as dramatic a dropoff as I feared. I'm going to work out a couple more times this week, and play footbag this weekend. I'm confident that I will work myself back into game shape by March.

Footbagger near-misses: I feel like over the last week I've interacted with lots of random footbaggers, but didn't get to play with any of them. Jon S had planned on coming to town for Inauguration, and I was excited to show him around. Sadly, he had to cancel last minute. Rob Creel actually DID come to town for inauguration, but our schedules never were able to line up. Most random of all was last Thursday when I got a call from Sunil of all people. He was in town interviewing for a residency for when he finishes med school. I met up with him for dinner, and had fun catching up with him. I asked him if he still had the fire for footbag, and he said that he did; he just doesn't have the time. It heartened me to hear that. I'm in my 12th year of playing, and my love for the game is as strong as ever. While I know that's a good thing, I do sometimes catch myself looking around and wondering: where are all the players I grew up idolizing? Why are there so few players my age? It is reassuring to know that while many people DO drop out of footbag because they lose interest, many others fall out of the scene because of time and life issues, and not because they lost passion for the game.

Footbag video: I spoke with Aidan, and she still has a copy of my dropless finals routine from East Coasts. Hopefully I'll get a copy of it when I visit in March. It'd be nice to have copies of all my dropless routines.
People have also requested Age release video of my blurry flurry with the original sound in it, so they can hear my reaction. That should be pretty funny. I also gave her footage of my first ever blurry flurry, which I shot on my digital camera. My reaction is even better there. I'll post it here when Age releases the vid.

Inauguration: I went to Obama's inauguration yesterday. It was really cold out, but the sun was shining and there was optimism in the air. Age and I walked down to the Mall and watched Obama get sworn in and give his speech on a jumbotron. It was exciting to be there for that moment, and feel the energy of the crowd. I also felt really lucky that I am living in DC when this happened, and was able to walk to and from the event without having to brave the metro. Maybe I'll post some video in here later.

[C-Fan]

A couple days after Inauguration, I fell sick again. I have totally different symptoms, which leads me to believe that I caught something new, and didn't just relapse. Whatever the case, it sucks. January is almost over and I've been sick nearly the entire month. I've played footbag once this month, a figure which doesn't look like it will change. Wow. I can count the number of sessions I've had since mid-October on both hands. Also wow.

Can't wait til I finally heal up and can start playing again. Back in October I was saying that I wanted to take a month off the sport. Now I feel like I've taken off the entire winter. Be careful what you wish for.

[Ian Brill]

Hey Ken,

I hope you feel better soon. I was wiped out all of December and part of January. Now when I kick my stamina is wretched, but I think my legs appreciate the rest. Every time I play I seem to have enough strength to hit new moves (knocking on wood.) I hope the same for you.

[C-Fan]

Still no footbag, but I thought I'd get some thoughts down here.

1. Went to the doctor yesterday and learned I have a strep/staph infection on my tonsils. Got started on antibiotics, so there's an outside chance I might even be able to sneak in a session this weekend. While I won't get my hopes up too high just yet, at the very least it feels good to know I'm actively taking steps to heal.

2. I took the online test for Jeopardy! on Tuesday. It's only offered once a year, and it's the first step in the whole audition process. It sounds pretty random whether or not you are invited to a live audition, but if I am I will go with my G-Units so I can show off footbag when they ask you to do something interesting. If I ever did get on Jeopardy and I didn't know the answer in final jeopardy, I'd probably write "footbag.org."

3. This has been the worst week of winter weather in DC this year, and it hasn't even been that bad. It was nice seeing snow on the ground again, and knowing that I don't have to walk uphill through it. I'm guessing we'll have one more month of winter before things start turning nice again. Very manageable.

4. On a similar note, I've noticed that it's getting dark out later. Like, I'll be going home at 5:30, and the sun is still setting. Even though there's snow and ice on the ground, and I've hardly touched a footbag in the last month, I can't help but get a little excited that spring is around the corner, and in a couple months I'll be racing out of work to play footbag outside on weeknights. That's an exciting thought.

5. Here's a random list of tricks, combos and drills I'd like to hit in spring:
*TATW o-i, in shoes.
*Spinning mobius
*tripwalk-pdlo-toe blur rpt.
*spinning ducking clipper-mobius
*spinning whirl-blizzard/blurry drifter/stepping tricks
*link 2 cool spinning tricks in a row. Any of these would be great: spin whirl, scorpion's tail, spinning swirl, vortex, gdlo, mobius, dsc.
*get flip spinning/gyro osis consistent, and do them bsos a lot.

[Ian Brill]

When I was 16 I got strep and mono at the same time (smoking cigarettes, not eating enough). Sometime during those two weeks I learned how to do legover, and atw. That pretty much cinched enough of a foundation for me to get serious about footbag. Which is good, because I literally put on twenty pounds those two weeks.

[Frank_Sinatra]

That reminds me, footbag was once the answer to a video clue (maybe even a video daily double? Oh be still my heart) on an episode I saw. They had the two younger people who do the video clues kick a crotched bag around, the clue was basically "What we are doing is called..." and all the contestants answered "hackysack".

Yep, I tell really good stories.

[C-Fan]

Yay footbag!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAQVOTCtiYQ&fmt=18[/youtube]

Today was super fun. I'll blog in detail later.

[Muffinman]

I kept waiting for the pdx mirage, and I was so pleased to not see it. I actually got giddy at the flip pdx mirage Very wicked run, Ken.

[C-Fan]

Really nice weekend. I'm feeling a good bit better, though still not 100% The big news is that I got in a session on Saturday. Only my second session in the last 33 days. Yipes. Legs feel pretty achy today, but that should be expected, given how out of shape I am. I also did some stuff with my bad knee that I probably shouldn't have, but I don't think I did any real damage to it.

Went to University of Maryland to play with Age. We played on a white racquetball court, which looked really cool. I felt like Ahren G on Aggressive Grounds. The floor was pretty slippery though, which made me pretty conservative with my spins. I tried a double spin early on and lost my footing on the second spin, so I abandoned most of my spinning goals for the session.

The session got off to a good start for me. I messed around with flip superfly, which is a trick I don't remember hitting before. I may have hit it in 04, but if I did I certainly never mastered it and who knows if it was clean. Anyway, yesterday I hit it cleanly and on camera (which is why I know it was clean), which was satisfying.

5. Here's a random list of tricks, combos and drills I'd like to hit in spring:
*TATW o-i, in shoes.

The next part of the session I dedicated to trying TATW o-i. I brought one Quantum3 with me, since I find GUnits chunky. The fact that I've hit TATW i-o in Quantums gives me confidence that I should be able to hit it the other way. I had a few very close looks, which gives me hope I'll get it in the future. I think I'll wait til my legs are in better footbag shape, and my knee feels stronger before I try it again though.

5. Here's a random list of tricks, combos and drills I'd like to hit in spring:
*spinning whirl-blizzard/blurry drifter/stepping tricks

After messing with TATW for a while, I worked on spinning whirl. One of my spins has become a lot stronger in the last couple years, and last year scorpion's tail became somewhat reliable on that spin. Because that's my bad knee though, it was one of my goals for this year to see if I could make spinning whirl a consistent replacement. I was encouraged by this session, as spinning whirl felt very consistent, and I was able to do a lot with it. I just need to make sure that it doesn't hurt my knee. I have some knee soreness today, but that could be due to TATW attempts, or just because I'm out of shape.

Here are 2 highlights:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBeGAM1nd5I&fmt=18[/youtube]

and:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJkHg6l9NhM&fmt=18[/youtube]

I kept waiting for the pdx mirage, and I was so pleased to not see it.

Off of my left foot clipper, my 2 most reliable bails are pdx mirage, and osis. They're about equally easy for me. In the past I used pdx mirage more often, because I can get back to my strong toe with only one BOP. Off that osis, I usually do an infinity to get back into my rhythm, which is 2 BOPs. Yeah, I can do osis to ducking/barfly/torque, but recently I've come to prefer that pdx mirage. Given how viscerally people seem to hate seeing me do that pdx mirage, I figure I have 3 options:

1. Turn that pdx mirage into pdlo.
2. Start bailing to osis
3. F* the haters and keep doing it.

In all seriousness, I'd been meaning to mix it up more anyway, so I'll cut back on that bail. When I looked over all the runs I shot yesterday, I noticed that I didn't use it a single time, so this shouldn't even be a hard adjustment.

I'm gonna give my legs the rest of the week to recover, but hopefully I can hit the gym a couple times to help get my stamina back. This coming weekend I'll be in NYC for my friend's funeral, so hopefully I'll be able to get in a shred too. If my knee feels good, and the floor is OK, I'll try and hit some of my spinning goals (link two cool spinning tricks, spinning mobius, etc).

[C-Fan]

Fantastic weekend. I went to NYC for the funeral of a friend from high school, which would seem like a downer, but instead made me appreciate being alive and having such good friends. The weather was great, I played footbag, and I did lots of fun things.

I got into the City pretty early on Saturday. I killed some time in a bookstore by looking at a Banksy book, then met up with Bruce at a diner. I had a chocolate egg cream, which is a traditional NYC drink. I don't think I'd had one since before I moved to Japan, so at least 7 years. The taste made me feel like I went back in time to when I still really considered myself a New Yorker. It was super nice out, I'd guess somewhere in the 50s, which made for a pleasant walk to the dance studio.

People trickle in slowly, and despite my best efforts at self-restraint, I kinda rush through my warm-up because I'm so excited to play. We ended up with a really good turnout: Bruce Dole, Josh Penney, Drew Martin, Pascal, Greg, and Ben Cook, who is NYFA's newest member. Waylon also was there, but didn't play due to injury. On the bright side, that freed him up to film a ton.

I started off the shred by trying to hit a bunch of my challenges, and made some good progress. I hit a few, hit the components of some, and gained some confidence in my spins. I also had some very encouraging looks at pixie flurry, which is a trick I had never tried before. I'll try and hit it next session. This weekend I'll try and hit some more challenges on film, and combine it with last weekend's stuff into a small challenge vid. And by "I," I mean Age.

Here are some non-challenge highlights:

*swirl war, midstring, first try
*My first mantis in about a year. First try.
*Big Apple. I always get a thrill when I hit this in NYC. When I started playing footbag in the late 90s, it always bugged me that nobody from NY could hit Big Apple.

Overall I just had a fantastically good time. I was in better shape than my session a week ago and I laughed a lot with NYFA. I only did a handful of strong pdx mirages all session (like, 3 in 2 hours) and only after things I found hard. But more than anything, I spun a ton. Pretty much all of my highlights involved spins, and I spun a lot on both sides. With the exception of pixie flurry, I'm going to really make a conscious effort in the next few months to have all my highlights involve spins.

[Sporatical_Distractions]

Nice Gyro egg Ken!

That banksy book is great. I picked it up from a bookstore last year and unforunately, the stank moisture of my bathroom has ruined the pages.

Keep shredding. I always enjoy watching your vid hilights

[C-Fan]

Thanks Kevin! It's always nice to hear that other people enjoy reading the blog.

The weather in DC has taken a welcome (though fleeting) turn for the better. Yesterday it was 68 degrees out! We're in the middle of February! In another nice turn, my boss let me out of work 45 minutes early. Hmm...spring temperatures and early dismissal? Ya think God was trying to tell me something?

I literally ran home from work, got my shred gear on, and ran to my shred spot. Just kicking to warm up felt amazing. It was my first outdoor session since November. That's pretty amazing... outdoor sessions as late as November and as early as February. It's nice to finally live someplace with a warm climate.

I got about 20 minutes into my session before a guy came up and asked to hack with me. He had a sandmaster and could do some stalls with his right leg. I taught him clipper stall and he hit one, which was pretty cool. I got a couple people's emails during the session, so hopefully I can organize some weekday/weekend shreds once it gets consistently nicer out. Figure that'll be about a month from now. That doesn't even seem that far off either, since I'll spend the last week of February in Phoenix, and the first week of March in Denver.

I didn't film my shred, because I played alone and didn't want to worry about my camera. I also didn't want to waste any time either. I spent the majority of the session working on spins and my spinning challenges, though I also put in some time practicing the components of the FTB drill. I got through half of it pretty easily on my strong side, and on my weak I kept getting tripped up on the spinning clipper-blizzard link. I think the drill is definitely hittable for me; the biggest challenge will be the PSW-ripwalk in the middle.

I also practiced reverse swirls on both sides. Flip really sucks, but I'd like to get it up to speed. Overall I played extremely bothsided today, which made me happy.

Highlights:

*Rev swirl-drifter repeat
*On two occasions I hit vortex bsos. Flip vortex felt really good. I think my spinning whirl practice on that side is paying off unexpected dividends.
*On two occasions I hit rev swirl double bsos
*Inspinning clipper x2.
*Spinning butterfly-spinning clipper-spinning osis rpt.

I also had some suuuuper close looks at spinning osis-gdlo. I think I should be able to get that one sooner than later. It gives me a good excuse to practice my flip spinning osis, as well as my zooming.

Towards the end of the shred it was dark out, but it was still warm enough to play in shorts and a t-shirt, so I played under a streetlight. I recognized how lucky I was to be playing outside on a weeknight, so I milked it for all I could. So much fun.

Here's a video from last session, since I don't like making vid-free posts in my blog:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tqc3IA4U1A&fmt=18[/youtube]

[Max Power]

Thanks for posting those clips ken. It's always nice when you come pay NYFA a visit.

[Reid]

... though I also put in some time practicing the components of the FTB drill. I got through half of it pretty easily on my strong side, and on my weak I kept getting tripped up on the spinning clipper-blizzard link. I think the drill is definitely hittable for me; the biggest challenge will be the PSW-ripwalk in the middle.

Yeah. the hardest part for me is the ps whirl> ripwalk, sometime spining out of the ducking butter, and then of course the endurance.

[zeroman13]

What is the FTB Drill?

[Reid]

ripwalk>drifter>pwhirl>blur>smear>dimwalk>ducking butterfly> spinning clipper>blizzard>double legover>toe whirl> pswhirl> repeat.

[C-Fan]

Had a nice shred with Age at University of Maryland on Saturday.

Highlights:

*rev swirl-barfly repeat
*spinning osis-gdlo
*GDLO bsos on two occasions
*double spinning osis midstring first try

ripwalk>drifter>pwhirl>blur>smear>dimwalk>ducking butterfly> spinning clipper>blizzard>double legover>toe whirl> pswhirl> repeat.

Yeah, I like that drill because it works lots of fun links and concepts on both sides. I try and do half of it each side at least once a session. Here's my attempt from Saturday.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0YgpOBEuCI&fmt=18[/youtube]

Thanks to everybody who has given me challenges so far.