Thanks a lot, Ken! I sucked in routines, but I was kind of happy about how I played in Open Circle.
I feel like doing a Write-Up!
Saturday:
I woke up at 6 and my room mate, Matt, and I ate some waffles and prepared to head out on our journey. We got in our cars and picked up George , Ryan, and Ivan at the Rec Hall. George rode with me, the other guys rode with Matt. Then we went to pick up Nathan at his place. We grab Nathan and we head out to New Jersey.
After a 3 and a half hour drive, we pull into a park and spot the first signs of footbag! NET PLAYERS!!! Nathan and I spotted Dan Greer and yelled stuff at him and he yelled stuff at us. We pull in further to the pavilion where I see a bunch of people dancing around with little bags! AWESOME!!!! The first person I spotted was this shorter, shaven-headed guy with a gnarly back tattoo… OH FUCK… IT’S MARK MONISTERE! A good handful of players including Mark Monistere, Jackson Raap, Mark Bull, Jim Hankins, and Jeremy Mellor, all came over to talk and say hello and whatnot. It was so cool finally meeting and talking to Mark Monistere.
After that, we got some Subway and came back to the shred sight, and Matt almost immediately hits his first Smear and screams like a little girl. I was stoked for him
After that, everyone kicked with everyone. I met some new guys that I’ve never met before like Jordan Alejandro and Mikie Etlinger. Both of them were add cool. Both have very promising styles. Mikie was learning Gyro Mirage and I tried to help him with his flip Spinning. Jordan is a beast with his Pixie shuffle. I was pretty inspired by that stuff.
I was so excited to see all my old friends, especially Jackson and Jeremy, since they were my students. Both guys have really promising skills. It was crazy seeing both guys shredding, since Jackson could string maybe 4 tiltless since I last saw him and now he was getting near 10 tiltless with a lot of guiltless mixed in. He also become MUCH more moth-sided. Jeremy, the last time I saw him, he had the occasionally butterfly and pdx mirage and stuff like that…. The kid was hitting Phoenix and Smear and Ducking Clipper b2b… AL WITH A BUM ANKLE!!! And he’s only been kicking for TWO MONTHS!!!!! At one point I asked Dan Greer how long her thought Jeremy had been kicking for… Dan replied “6 Months” then I told him it had only been two and he replies something like “Another Vasek?” or something like that. I think he might be right. Keep your eyes on Jeremy Mellor’s (Catopillar on modified) blog. Oh and for teaching him all his basics and getting him a good start on footbag, he gave me a brand new bag he just stitched. So choice. He’s an amazing stitcher too. Funny side story: I was shredding in a circle with I think like Boatz and some other guys and I was pretty deep in a string when all of the sudden, something attacked me from above! I dropped the bag and ran away grabbing my heart, which was throbbing like madd. People in the circle were laughing like crazy. My necklace had broken and fallen off, and I thought it was an attacky thing. So I looked like a dong-dong.
But yeah that was awesome to kick with both of my old students and all of the East Coasters I’ve met at past jams. So after a little while of shredding with people like John Goode, Doug Tank (He joined our circle, it wasn’t my idea), the PSU guys, Boatz, and some others, I started talking to Mark Monistere again, which ultimately led to him asking me if I wanted to have a private circle with just him. Of course I said yes, and we walked over to a clear spot under the pavilion and we passed the bag back and forth. Just me and one of my all time favorite players… Holy crap, that was like a dream come true. It was in this circle with Mark, where I hit 2 new 5’s, only with Marks encouragement and help. We started doing swirling spinning stuff, and I hit some stuff like
Swirling Gyro Mirage
Swirling Spinning Clipper
It was really sick that he said that I was the first person he’d ever seen hit Swirling Spinning stuff. After a little more shred, we played HORSE. We started out kind of easy, I hit some weird tricks and Mark had a decent bit of them. Then we worked our way up. Mark hit Swirling Spinning Butterfly. So after only a few tries, I hit a new 5 ADD…
Swirling Spinning Butterfly!!!
I was so excited! Then Mark suggested that I try Swirling Spinning Osis. Nailed it.
Swirling Spinning Osis!!!
It was surreal to actually get props from Mark. I’m really glad I finally got to meet him. He’s such a nice guy and he’s been such a big influence on the tricks I practice. I also remember that I showed him Reverse Swirling Symp Mirage and he was pretty impressed. I got props for that.
So after our 2-man session, Jackson joined us for a little while. Then the routines came about. Intermediate was first. I remember Mark Bull was killing his routine. It looked so well choreographed. I really was diggin his routine. Waylon went some time after Mark and he dropped a few times and forfeited. I yelled at him to keep going, but he just walked away. I wish he would have kept going, but whatever.
After Intermediate routines came Open Routines… I was up first! Fuck! I only actually choreographed the first 16 seconds of my routine. Footage will be posted of everyone’s eventually. Everyone else had really good routines. Mine sucked, but I just wanted to make some people laugh. I think it worked.
Anyway, after routines came Open Circle. I got placed in a pool with 3 of the most influential people to me in footbag. John Goode, Jon Schneider, and Mark “Monster” Monistere. Those guys kicked ass. One of my last and best strings, I dedicated to Mark and my girlfriend and surprisingly it worked! I was actually kind of satisfied about how I did in that. After it was over, John shook my hand and told me that I killed him. I disagreed. But low and behold, I came out 3rd in my pool! That was upsetting to me, because I didn’t want to admit that I beat John, but also exciting, since this was my first time placing higher than just last place in Open Circle.
After comps, we all shredded a bit more. I remember I was in a circle with Mark, and Jeremy called my name and told me to watch something. He hit Phoenix like 2nd try! I ran over immediately and gave him HUGE props and yelled and stuff. I had never even seen him do a pixie set before ECC, let alone duck that shit.
The PSU new guys were having a great time kicking with all the new faces. I popped in and out of circles with those guys all day.
After everyone was tired out and hungry, we were about to get in our cars and head to the hotel to take showers. Mark stopped me and asked if he could use our shower before dinner. We said it would be totally cool. So he rode with me in my back seat along with Jeremy in the front. Mark said how awesome it was to actually be in my car, and I said how cool it was for him to be in my car
We all talked about footbag things and how long we had all been playing for and how we got into footbag on the way back to the hotel.
When we got back, we checked in to our hotel, which was super sick, by the way. We all got showers then headed out to this fancy restaurant that Jon had reserved for us. Apparently this was where Spike n Shred was held a while back. Anyway, we all got dinner. I sat in a student sandwich. Jackson to my left, Jeremy to my right, and Matt to the right of Jeremy. Our table got a bunch of calamari appetizers and I split a bangin eggplant parmesan with Matt. Did not regret it.
After dinner, we took a chunk of bread and a few of us played, “What’s the coolest trick you can do with this chunk of bread?” Doug, Jackson, a few others and myself were playing. No one won. Hard bread is hard.
After dinner, I took Toolan, Doug, Jackson, Matt, and Jeremy on a never-ending beer run. That’s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 people… My car only has 5 seats. So Jackson, Doug, Jeremy, and Mike took turns riding in my trunk and I gave them their fair share of speed bumps, sharp turns, and last-minute breaking. Apparently, where we were, they stopped selling beer at 10… We started our search at 11. We stopped at a few different places with no luck, but then we figured we’d stop and get gas and ask the guy pumping our gas. He was foreign and didn’t speak a lot of English, so I tried to speak slowly and comprehensible to him. I asked him, “Do you know any bars that sell beer?” He looks at me very confused and replies, “You like alcohol?” Then he points us in a direction of a beer distributor. When we drove away, the fuckers in my car started laughing. Then I realized that what I asked sounded so dumb. “Do you know any bars that sell beer?” Wow. Major win, Nick. So we went to one last spot where that guy pointed us to, but with no avail, so we retired to our hotel, while some others went to the bar. In our hotel room it was the PSU crew, Jackson, Jeremy, and John Goode. Since we couldn’t get beer that night, we pretty much just had madd snacks that night. Pretty chillin.
After a while, we went to bed. Then Doug and Mike Toolan came back from hanging out at Bruce’s watching some Ninja movie that Boatz was so excited for in the beginning, then fell asleep 5 minutes into it
When Doug and Mike got back, Doug tried to grab some of his belongings on the other side of the room.. But while doing so, he accidentally did some high stepping onto the foot rest part of George’s chair and flung George forward, violently waking him from his slumber. Then we all fell asleep.
Next post: Sunday's Write-Up...
Which means my work is finally paying off 
Glad you caught me hitting that one. 
@ myself.
