Back to the trip. Thanks in part to my (lack of) navigational skills, we got a little lost once we got into Pittsburgh, and therefore showed up a bit late to the spot. When we got in, we spotted a sign with the SCF logo, where each letter is a silhouette of a footbagger in a pose that roughly looks like one of the letters. I posed for a photo next to the sign, where I kicked a bag and held out my arm such that I looked like the "F" silhouette. In the middle of this silliness, the museum curator in charge of the event caught me posing, and asked me to do the pose again so she could take a picture
We get downstairs to the event site, and there are already a bunch of people there playing. I share some "hellos" then get changed. I'm nervous and excited to play with everybody, because this is my first event where I'm strictly limiting myself to my new style of play. I'm fairly certain I didn't do a single atomic set all day, no stepping 5 add tricks, and probably less than 10 stepping tricks total. For the most part I stuck to my plan of only doing spins and downtime components like whirls, drifters, dlos and torque. To my surprise, I was also throwing whizz variants in easily, despite not having practiced them at all. The part of my game that was most disappointing, was that despite all the work I had recently put into perfecting GDLOs and vortices, they were completely unreliable and unconfident on Saturday. That said, my spinning felt decent on both sides and I had some good flow.
It felt a bit weird going to a footbag jam and playing in a completely new style. In the past I've gone to tournies and shown off a new element to my game (say, toe spinning for example), but those were always just additions to my old game. Because of this, I always had the mental and physical crutch of being able to lean on elements that I knew I was good at. This time around though, it was different. It's not like I'm adding spins to my old game, so much as I'm abandoning my old game altogether and replacing it with spins. I'm pretty much abandoning sets altogether.
The weirdness stems from the fact that with my old game I considered myself an open-level player, and so did others. That brings along with it expectations of playing at a certain difficulty level, having strings of a certain length, and mixing it up in interesting ways. Right now my spinning game (and hence my overall level of play) is much closer to intermediate than it is to open. I am aware of the fact that I am building a new style for myself and I'm OK that I'm essentially an intermediate now, so I've recalibrated my expectations of what constitutes a "good" run for me. Other footbaggers, however, I think still expect me to play at my old level, and therefore did not know what to make of how I played. I can recall one instance when I did a 15 or so contact run with lots of spins, and after I dropped Flash said: "that was a promising start." I had to sheepishly explain that in my new role as an intermediate spinner, that was about as good as it was going to get.
Don't get me wrong; I'm not going to start competing intermediate or anything, and I'll still take routines seriously. In terms of circle play however, the days of big tricks and fearless are in the rearview mirror for me. I did a good job of spreading myself around the circles and playing with everybody. I also took lots of breaks to teach footbag to the kids and parents who came in the room to learn. Most of the kids looked to be between 6 and 10, and they were fun to teach. I really think the ideal age for kids to start footbag would be 12 or 13, but the goal of the demo wasn't to find the next Takumi, so much as to play with kids and expose them to something fun and different.
As time wound down, I made it a point to check out the museum itself. I went with Age and Jack Lentz, and was impressed by most of the exhibits we saw. The exhibit I enjoyed most was a mock-up of the set from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. I had forgotten that Mister Rogers was from Pittsburgh, but that explained how they were able to get so many props from his show. I swung on the porch swing, I played with the traffic light, and I checked out the fish (but I couldn't feed them). It was a nice trip down memory lane.
Once the event ended we got some food then met up at Matt Beall's house, where we pretty much just drank beer and chilled out. We get some pizza from a local pizzeria which has "Wedgies" on their menu. Sweet. One nice highlight from the evening was that Aidan brought her camera over, and I was able to get my dropless East Coast's routine on my flash drive.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XukKkX1MCgE&fmt=18[/youtube]
It was my first time seeing it in 6 months, and other than the embarassing number of strong side pdx mirages, I was very happy with it. I liked the song and the choreography, and considering that I was MCing the event, I was surprised how ready I was mentally and physically for it. That said, I'd like to do a dropless routine with less than 5 pdx mirages total, sometime before I retire from comp. Given how easy it's been to phase out pdx mirage in my shred game, this shouldn't be too hard, though dropless routines are really difficult.
Sunday morning I say some goodbyes and then get breakfast with Ian, Vince and Age at a nice cafe. I eat a good cinammon bun, the music is excellent, and there's a good vibe in the air. I give Ian a hug and we hit the road.
Big big thank you to SCF for setting this up, and all the hospitality. It's always a pleasure to hang out with you guys and play. If any of you make it through DC sometime, you know you have a place to stay.
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Anyway.