Fanzine

[C-Fan]

I should start focusing on making my Gatesman video for the Joulukalentari.

I’ve started on this, and it’s shaping up well. The footage I have is great, and I like the song I picked. The challenge is just making the images go as well with the music as possible. The weather forecast for the next couple days is cold, so hopefully I can tear myself away from Team Fortress 2 enough to finish this up before I leave town for Thanksgiving break.

This weekend had some pretty frustrating logistics in terms of footbag. Friday was gorgeous out during the workday, and when I got out at 4, it was still shreddable weather. Sadly, I got stuck in traffic, so by the time I got home it was too dark and cold to play.

If the weather’s good enough this coming weekend, I think I can break it then. If not, maybe over Thanksgiving break when I go someplace warmer. .

Saturday’s high was only in the mid-40s, but it wasn’t too bad in the sun if you were moving. My legs felt good, so I put on a long sleeve shirt and went out to warm up. I was feeling very good with my fearless, so it was therefore a crushing disappointment when my camera battery died in the first 5 minutes of my session. Ugh. I decided to not waste the weather, and got in a session anyway. It was actually a bit of a mixed blessing to play without the camera, since that freed me to work on the fearless links at the end of my combo that had been giving me trouble. The forecast for Sunday was warmer than Saturday, so I felt optimistic I could film the next day. As it turned out, the forecast was wrong. Sunday was way colder, with highs in the high 30s, maybe touching low 40s at the best times. Stubborn guy that I am, I decided to play anyway. Played in a hat for a while, but that kinda threw me off on my ducking tricks. Once I warmed up though, I was able to play pretty normally. I just couldn’t take extended rests between turns, since I’d cool off in a hurry.

I mostly worked on getting 10 fearless, but also threw in some regular runs so I’d stay warm and not get frustrated. In good news, I hit 10 unique fearless on video! When the 10th trick landed on my clipper, it felt solid enough to try for another 5. Yet during that instant, my brain did some very fast mental calculus and decided to play it safe. The last few sessions had shown me how hard it was to get to ten, and while it would have been cool to push to eleven or twelve, I also realized it was getting colder out. There was no guarantee I’d get to ten again that session, so rather than try for more, I played it safe and banked the combo by sealing it with an osis to a short run.

Overall I was pretty happy about the ten fearless combo, for a few reasons. While I didn’t break my fearless record, matching it at age 31 nearly 5 years after the last time almost felt like I was setting a new record. If that makes any sense. I was also happy, because yesterday’s combo was vastly different from the one I hit in Jan 07. Five of the tricks were different from last time, and none of the links were the same. Finally, I’m also happy because the combo I hit leaves me optimistic I can expand on it. It’s not like I pushed my limits and barely made it to ten. Thirteen or even fourteen contacts are clearly within reach.

So what next? I think my plan is going to be to rest for a couple days, and then sporadically work on fearless over my next few sessions. Wednesday I will probably get out of work early, and the forecast looks good. Then I have 3 days in good weather for TG, where I can hopefully make time for footbag. I’m probably not going to dedicate entire sessions to fearless, but if things are flowing well I’m going to shoot to break my record. Beyond breaking my record, I will also try to make the combo a little different from the one I just got. If I’m successful, I’ll make a vid clip when I get back of any and all combos I get of 10 or more. If I don’t manage to get to ten again over break, I’ll just release vid of the ten I caught on film yesterday.

In other news, my knees are feeling better. .

Why do I tempt fate by writing stuff like this? After shred yesterday, my left knee started feeling bad again. I only did a couple of PSWs on that leg during the session, but I bet that had a lot to do with it. Also probably doesn’t help that I’ve been playing on asphalt the last week. I need to find a gym with carpeting or hardwood to lessen the impact on my feet. I think I’m also going to put in a new pair of insoles soon.

Here’s a short vid of yesterday’s runs in the cold. As mentioned above, I’m saving the clip of 10 fearless for a vid I’ll release next week.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc9gwIts1oE[/youtube]

Happy Thanksgiving modified!

[Jazzkid]

love the video, the links and the selection of fearless....

It sucks about the knees.....I find that even in units with good form still the concrete beats us up.....I am about to look into getting mats and just shredding on them all the time.....shoes, bags, knees will last longer.....

[C-Fan]

Thanks for stopping by Mark. I completely agree with you about concrete and G-Units being a rough mix. I’m still using my beat up pair of Units, but I think the asphalt is wearing them down even more. Glad I’m not using my new pairs on it. Still, I really need to find a better outdoor spot, and also figure out what I’m doing for a winter indoor spot.

Part of the reason I haven’t joined a winter gym yet, is that the weather in Denver has let me get away with putting it off. It’s too cold and dark to play on workdays by the time I get home, but weekends are still playable. Over the Thanksgiving break it was in the 60s in Denver, and I got in sessions on Wednesday and Sunday while I was here. In between that, I was in San Diego with my girlfriend’s family for the holiday. I didn’t contact any players in SD since I wasn’t sure of the family schedule, and I wouldn’t have a car. I did manage to sneak in two outdoor sessions while I was there, but it would have been a logistical stretch to have worked out playing with the locals. Saturday was sunny and in the mid 70s in SD, but family events precluded me from playing. I snuck in a long-pants session at the airport though, which means I played 5 days in a row. Not bad for late November.

With the exception of the airport shred, I spent the other 4 sessions working on fearless. Counting the session before that, I now have had 5 sessions in a row where I managed to hit 10 fearless each time. While I’m proud of that accomplishment, it’s definitely taken a toll on my legs. I’m going to take the rest of this week off to heal up, and hopefully the weather next weekend will let me play outside again. I know I can break my current fearless record, but at this point I don’t even know that I want to. Trying to get to ten fearless can be super-frustrating, and I don’t think it’s worth the physical and mental effort. My goals were to get 10 fearless on video, and to set a new record, and I’ve achieved both this month. I’m ready to move past it and work on stuff that will actually make me better prepared for Worlds next year.

Working on fearless strongly reminded me of when I was working on beasts. In both cases it was critical for me to get in the right mindset, and focus on all sorts of details you wouldn’t normally think about. Mostly energy/breath management; rhythm; and that difficult balance between focusing hard on each trick, but also not losing sight of where you are in the combo. One of the big challenges I had with beast combos, was expending exactly the right amount of energy on each of the first two tricks. I found that if you put too much energy into the first trick, you often could get the second trick but not the third. 10 fearless was similar to this, in that if you don’t regulate your energy in the first 4 contacts, it’s possible to get to 8 or 9 but you’ll likely fall short of ten. Another similar challenge I encountered with fearless, was that being slightly off with any trick was often enough to mess up the entire combo. For example, say the following link was part of my planned fearless combo: fog-darkwalk-blw-blw. I found that if the toe stall on fog was a couple centimeters off, I’d almost always still be able to dive the ensuing open diving set. But usually this meant the darkwalk was slightly off balance or late, in which case I’d either miss the step on the blw, or I’d scrape out the blw but be unable to step out of that one. It was like each tiny mistake would have a ripple effect that’d mess up the combo down the line. Because of this, I’d get pretty excited when I’d make it to the 8th or 9th contact, which in turn presented another mental challenge.

I plan on making a short vid of my fearless combos soon. First though, I need to wrap up my Gatesman video, since it kicks off the Joulukalentari. I should be able to get that done today.

Oh, and based off what I’ve read on Facebook, it sounds like Stride is finally sending out checks for their contests. I haven’t heard anything yet, but I’ve got some phone leads which I’m acting on. It’ll be sweet to finally get the prize money, just to get some closure on it all.

Here’s my token blog video. Filmed at the San Diego airport, as I was waiting for my flight home:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=karfx_5XbMs[/youtube]

[sen]

I really enjoy reading your thoughts on the game. Like your last post about Fearless and Beasts. Thanks for that!

[C-Fan]

Thanks, Tony. I find that writing down my thoughts on how to achieve goals that challenged me (like dropless routines, throwing a tourney, or beasts) helps me better comprehend and internalize how I ended up achieving them. I put them in my blog with the hope that they might be of use to readers who are trying for similar goals. On a related note, sometimes I’ll revisit an old goal, and it’s often helpful to me to have a reminder as to how I approached a problem in the past.

Haven’t played footbag in ten days now. Feels more like ten years. The time off is mostly by design, as I try and give my legs a rest. The last few years I really haven’t had an offseason, which has been tough on the legs. I went to Chicago NYJ in 08, 09 and 10, but I’m ending the streak this year. I plan on getting in two sessions while I’m in NYC the last week of the year, but that should be a lot more laid back than going to NYJ. There’ll be no competition, and while I hope to play OK, I’m mostly just looking forward to hanging out with friends. My overall goal in terms of time off, is to try and take close to two months off from footbag. I played pretty regularly through Thanksgiving, so the plan is to take almost all of December and January off from playing (I’ll allow myself 4 sessions total during that time, including my shreds in NYC). While this seems almost impossibly hard, I think it’ll be easier if in January I join a gym and start playing basketball regularly.

Taking time off has been aided by the weather. Last weekend was too cold for footbag even during the warmest part of the day, and during the week it’s too cold and dark by the time I get out of work. The forecast says we may hit mid-40s this weekend, which is borderline good enough to play (long sleeve shirt and no breaks). I’m tempted to play, but it’ll really depend on the weather.

My most recent goal in footbag was to hit 10 unique fearless on video. Happily, I was able to achieve this a few times. I planned on making a video with these clips, but in the course of reviewing the footage it really struck me how similar all the combos were. In some cases, two combos would contain almost all the same moves, just in a different order. Are they unique? Technically yes. But it bothered me how similar they all were. That’s partially a casualty of convenience; certain links are comfortable for me, so building my fearless combos with them was the easiest way to get to ten. The other reason all my combos came out so similar, was that I hit them all in a very tight timeframe. I hit all my combos over the course of 5 sessions, spanning something like 2 weeks. If I had worked on fearless six months ago, it’s very likely that the combo would have looked very different. For all these reasons, I decided to make a new goal for myself: hit two more combos of 10 fearless, but make them as different as possible from the combos I currently have. I think it’ll be a good challenge, and if I’m successful it’ll make my fearless video a lot more visually interesting. If I fail to get to ten with a new combo, then I’ll just release the combos I already have, which isn’t a big disaster either. But I wanted to put my challenge in my blog, and also let you know why I haven’t made my fearless video yet.

In good footbag news, I won a pair of g-units on an e-bay auction. They haven’t arrived yet, but I’m optimistic about them. The cons of the shoes are:

• They are UK size 7.5. I wear US size 7.5. Depending on which chart you look at online, that means they will be between half a size too big, and a full size too big. Given how hard it is to find Units anywhere close to my size, I decided to chance it. I figure best case scenario I can make them fit, which will extend my playing career. Worst case scenario they are too big, in which case I’ll sell them to another footbagger.
• The shoes aren’t new. That said, the auction claimed they were only worn a few times when this guy went clubbing, and in the photos they only look lightly scuffed on the toes. The soles look completely new.
• Shipping was $31, since it’s overseas.

The pros of the shoes are pretty good though:

• They look pretty new, especially the soles.
• The auction itself only cost me $18. So the total price tag including shipping was under $50. That’s pretty good for an almost-new pair of Units.
• They aren’t an ugly color scheme. They are the white ones with blue soles, and the little blue “L.A.” logo on the heel.

Hopefully I’ll get them in the mail before xmas, and they’ll be playable for me. If not, I’ll likely put them up for sale on the forums. Either way, it’s likely a footbagger will get to use them for footbag, which is where all remaining G-Units should end up.

No new video in this post. But if you want, feel free to re-watch the Gatesman special I made for the Joulukalenteri:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_wLgO4gHxw[/youtube]

[C-Fan]

Haven’t played footbag in ten days now.

I managed to push that streak to 13, before giving in. The culprit?

The forecast says we may hit mid-40s this weekend, which is borderline good enough to play (long sleeve shirt and no breaks).

Sure enough, it was in the mid-40s on Saturday, so I dusted off the Units and played. I found some tennis courts which were still covered in snow, and played on a patch that had thawed out. Since the other half of the court was still snowed over, there was no chance I’d get kicked out. I entered the session with two goals:

1. Hit a Sick 3 for Nathan Pipenberg’s contest.
2. Hit a new 10 unique fearless combo.

Despite having stated goals, I was pretty much just happy to play. It felt like it had been sooo long since I last played, even just doing clippers was a joy. That said, I’m a pretty goal-oriented player, so I started working on the two goals shortly after my warmup. Just for fun, I decided to re-hit Nick Polini’s Sick 3, which proved to be fun. My original plan for my sick 3 was pretty ambitious, as I had never hit any of the three tricks before, much less linked them all. The middle trick was supposed to be toe ducking knee bumping spinning squeeze. This proved to be too hard for me to link in and out of, and then I started worrying that people would argue the knee bump breaks up the trick into two tricks. So instead I changed the middle trick to be toe spinning squeeze, which was surprisingly awkward too (when I spin that direction, I normally set from the other toe). Every few attempts, I’d take a break from the Sick3 and work on fearless. I found this to be kind of funny, since both my goals were so different. With Nathan’s contest, I was trying to cheat myself out of adds. In other words, I was trying to make my combo as difficult as possible while receiving as little credit from the add system as possible (like setting from dragon instead of clipper, toe spinning from the far toe, etc.). With my fearless goal, it was almost the opposite, where I was trying to wring as many easy adds out of the tricks as efficiently as I could. It was weird going back and forth between such different goals.

After several close attempts, I finally nailed my Sick3:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_SQacKQ1S8[/youtube]

I think it has a shot at winning, but even if it doesn’t, I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge it presented, and was proud of what I was able to hit. Once I took care of that, I focused entirely on my other goal:

My most recent goal in footbag was to hit 10 unique fearless on video. I decided to make a new goal for myself: hit two more combos of 10 fearless, but make them as different as possible from the combos I currently have.

Looking over my old combos, I was struck how similar all five of them were. All of them started with the same trick, and there wasn’t a lot of variety in trick selection. So my goal was to hit two new combos of ten, where each combo would have at least two tricks I hadn’t used in my other combos. I also wanted them to start with a different trick.
This proved to be pretty challenging. There are lots of fives I can play out of with other fives, but if the link isn’t efficient enough (e.g. matador-bed), I find I run out of energy a few tricks later. Similarly, there are also some downtime links I’m comfortable with on their own (e.g. psw-spw), but that I have trouble with when they come deep in a fearless combo. After playing around with a few different ideas, I finally hit a new link of ten. It only included one new trick, but it started differently than my other combos, so I was happy. Unfortunately, when I walked to turn off my camera I found I had been beaten to the punch. If my batteries had lasted 2 minutes longer, I’d have a solid, hand-caught new combo of ten for my video. Instead, I’d now have to try and re-hit my combo the next day.

Sunday the weather was nice again, so I went back out to play. Happily, my legs recovered well from the day before. I was worried they’d be sore, since I played hard after nearly two weeks of no exercise. I warmed up my fearless components and made a point not to start filming until I thought it was pretty likely I’d hit something. When I hit my combo the day before, I sealed it with a solid handcatch. Even though I didn’t have video evidence of this combo, I decided that if I got to the same point today, I’d try and tack on a pdx blender at the end. I figured that, on some cosmic level, I already hit the ten combo, so might as well try and extend it and in the process claim a new combo. A few tries in, I had a good attempt going, pushed, and hit the tenth trick. It felt solid, so I went for the pdx blender…and footed it. Urgh! Hitting that would have totally made up for my camera issues the day before. Still, I got my new ten combo on video, even if the seal is a footed five. This also means that I've now pushed my streak of sessions with 10 fearless to seven. I think that's a sign that it's starting to click more for me.

I worked on a couple other new combos, and in two cases I barely missed the tenth trick. Then it got too cold for my legs, so I called it a day. I’m hoping the next time I play I can hit either of these two combos, thereby achieving my goal of getting some variety for my fearless video. It’d also be nice to have 7 or more clips for the video, just so I can slap a song on it and not have it be jarringly short.

the plan is to take almost all of December and January off from playing (I’ll allow myself 4 sessions total during that time, including my shreds in NYC).

Given that I played twice this last weekend, this’ll be a tough goal to meet. If I don’t play at all between now and NYC, and I don’t play after that, I can achieve it. But if the weather is mid 40s again next weekend, it’ll be hard to resist trying for fearless again. It’d be nice to knock out my fearless goals before I go to NY.

In other footbag developments, I still haven’t received anything from Stride, and my eBay G-Units have yet to ship. Frustrating.

[C-Fan]

Change is neither good nor bad; it just is.

My default emotional state with footbag is excited. Normally, I always want to play. There are tricks/combos/goals I want to hit, and I think about them when I’m not playing. There are videos I’m planning to make, routines I’m envisioning in my head, and tournaments I’m daydreaming about.

Lately though, I’ve been in more of a neutral state regarding my attitude towards footbag. It’s not negative at all; I’m not burnt out on the sport or anything. My level of excitement just feels temporarily lowered. My footbag goals aren’t foremost in my mind, and the ones I have are either distant (make routine finals at Worlds) or not pressing (get more combos of 10 unique fearless). It’s kind of a nice mental break, from my default state of constantly chasing goals.

I think this current, more neutral attitude towards footbag is the result of a few things. I’ve been making a conscious effort to cut down on playing during the winter, and I’ve been pretty successful so far. I think this has been the main cause for my mental shift. It’s almost like my brain knows I can’t take time off from footbag, unless I consciously tried to dampen my enthusiasm. I’m pretty confident my desire to play will return very quickly once I start playing regularly again, hopefully in February.

In keeping with my new mental state, a bunch of footbag-related items I currently have going on area also in a stage where they are neither good nor bad, but somewhere in between:

• I finally received something from Stride gum. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a check yet. I got this massive package of legal documents which I needed to sign in the presence of a public notary. Essentially, I needed to prove I am who I say I am, and file all these release forms letting Stride use my video submissions in their ads, etc. I sent it back to them, so hopefully they’ll finally mail me a check next week. Due to taxes, it’ll be less than $1000, but still, it’ll be a nice chunk of change for kicking around a piece of paper.

• My flip camera died this week…and then revived. And then died again. And now it’s working again. During its first death I called Flip to see if my warranty was still good. It’s not. I’ll try and film with it this weekend, but I’m not holding my breath. I’ve already mentally retired it. Cross your fingers I get a better, newer camera for Christmas, otherwise expect a serious dropoff in videos from me.

• A month ago I set the goal of hitting 10 unique fearless on video. I achieved that, and then got it a few more times. After looking over what I have though, I’m struck by the lack of variety in the combos (i.e. they are all comprised of similar tricks/links). If I have any goals now, it’d be to hit a couple more combos of 10, but try and inject some variety into them. This goal is pretty dependent though on my camera. If it holds up this weekend, I’ll go for this. If it dies or the battery goes early, I’ll just play for fun.

• My eBay G-Units are in transit now. For some reason it took forever for my PayPal to clear, but it did, and I’m hoping I’ll get the shoes next week sometime. Kinda holding my breath as to whether they’ll fit. But with as rare as it is to find Units in my size these days, I feel I had to roll the dice and try.

Weather looks good this weekend, so I’m going to play whether or not my camera works.

[C-Fan]

Haven’t posted here in a while, so lots to catch up on.

My eBay g-units arrived, and sadly were too big for me. Online shoe size conversion charts led me to believe that UK 7.5 would be either a US 8 (slightly too big, but workable) or US 8.5 (too big). I was hoping they’d end up being on the smaller side, and they weren’t. In retrospect, I should have taken my current Units and looked at the size chart under the tongue, cause that would have given me the answer ahead of time. *slaps forehead.* Anyway, it looks like I’ll be able to sell them to another footbagger, so at least they’ll be finding a good home. So now my footbag shoe situation is back to where I started: a pair of almost dead Units (mismatched), a pair of almost new Units which I used in competition last year, a brand new pair of units I have yet to cut, and a pair of Quantum3s with the sole coming off of one, but otherwise new. We’ll see how long I can stretch these out…I’m hoping for at least 3 more years. After that, I might be forced to become a net player.

My girlfriend got me some very thoughtful xmas presents, including a new HD camera. It’s as portable as my old Flip, and looks to have a better battery life. I’m still getting used to some of it’s quirks though. Last night I toyed with the software for trimming clips, and it’s a lot more awkward than the software for the Flip. I tried editing the new camera’s clips on the Flip software, and that didn’t work. Maybe this means I’ll be more selective about what clips I keep in the future. The other weird thing about the new camera relates to it’s video quality. If I shoot at the highest settings, I can only film for 1 hour, and the clips are in 720. If I shoot at the medium quality settings, I can film for 2 hours…and the clips are still in 720. What? I should probably run some tests and see if there’s a noticeable quality difference between the two settings, cause that’d make a big difference for how much I can film. The other thing I’m curious/worried about, is whether I can mix clips from my old and new cameras in adobe without adobe freaking out. I guess I shouldn’t worry too much about that, since it’d only affect a couple videos max. So I guess the verdict is still out on the new camera, but even if it’s slightly worse in some ways, at least it works and has a year of warranty on it. My old flip was never reliable, but towards the end it wasn’t even really usable. Hopefully I’ll get the hang of the new camera soon, and start posting videos again.

In Stride news, I still haven’t received the prize check. I was out of state for the last week of the year though, and it looks like FedEx tried to deliver a package for me while I was gone. That could be my check, or it could be a xmas gift from one of my girlfriend’s aunts or something. I need to go find out. In any case, the whole Stride thing has been a pretty big pain in the ass.

The NYC trip was great, and I got to play footbag three times. The only bad part of the experience was during the last session, where we played on top of Bruce’s roof and one of the NYFA players kicked my Waylon bag onto somebody’s porch. That was by far my best bag, and in the two sessions I’ve had since then, I really noticed the difference between it and my other bags. Oh well. While it had a very short career (under 3 months), we had a lot of fun together, and I hit 10 fearless with it a bunch of times.

The two big sessions I had with NYFA were fun. In Colorado I had been playing in my most beat up pair of G-Units, which are very nicely broken in, but also lack any tread at all. Since I figured I’d be playing in slippery dance studios while in NY, I brought my other Units which are much stiffer, but also have much better tread. I think that was a good move, since I didn’t have any trouble with the floor at all. I did notice though that I had a lot more trouble linking 5s than in my other shoes. I think the longest fearless combo I managed was footing 9. Mostly though I just played, and had fun. I hit a bunch of big apples during both sessions, mostly since I was in NY and it seemed appropriate. We had insane turnout on Thursday, with around 20 players total. Tuesday was a decent showing too, and in both sessions there was no shortage of players I love playing with. Matt Kemmer showing up was the biggest surprise, and I was also really stoked that Mathieu made it from Montreal. I think Montreal was slowed by the same challenge that I had: spending all day walking the city doing tourist stuff, and then trying to play for 3 hours after that. Adrenaline and excitement got me through it all pretty well though.

Since getting back to Colorado, I’ve had two outdoor sessions. On January 2nd temps were in the 50s, and on the 5th temps were in the low 60s. That’s crazy. Both days I got out and tried to get 10 fearless on camera again, and both times I failed. I footed ten one day, but no seal. In November and December I had a streak of 6 or 7 sessions where I hit 10 fearless each time, but that seems a distant memory now. I still would really like to get one more combo, just so I’d have more variety in the video I’d like to make. I’m never satisfied. Anyway, looks like we’ll get snow this weekend, so I likely won’t shred/film until the following weekend.

Dates for Worlds are now finalized, which I’m excited about. I’ve been looking at fares online, which are unsurprisingly more expensive than when I looked a couple months ago. What IS surprising, is that the routes aren’t as direct as when I last checked. Before I was seeing flights direct from Chicago to Poland, but now there doesn’t seem to be as many of those. I’ll continue monitoring flights, and hopefully pull the trigger in the next couple weeks.

I’ll close out with a short video clip taken with my new camera. It’s hard for me to judge the quality fairly, since I’ve only really used it when the sun has been going down, which is never ideal light for filming. Anyway, here it is:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfjNCqRjBDM[/youtube]

[C-Fan]

Wow, I posted here only a few days ago, and a ton of stuff has happened since then. Some bad, but mostly good. In no particular order:

• I bought my tickets for Worlds! Despite buying them almost 8 months in advance, they were still pretty expensive. Actually, there were some decently cheap tickets ($1,300 range), but those involved multiple layovers which pushed the total travel time each way to around 30 hours. I ended up paying $1,590, but my trip going out is only 14.5 hours, and the trip back is something like 17 hours. The trip back has two layovers, but it looked like that was going to be standard no matter what. In any case, it feels good to have my tickets out of the way. I also got the time off from work approved, so now all I have to do is make sure I train hard and put myself in a good position to achieve my goals there. Now that I’ve removed the logistics of getting there, there’s no excuses for not achieving my goal. I feel a mixture of nervousness and excitement, and I’m 8 months away. I can’t imagine how I’ll be feeling the week before I fly out. Wow.

• The HD camera I got for xmas is defective. The first few times I shot with it, I thought the blurriness on the left third of the screen might have been due to bad lighting conditions. After shooting with it in other conditions, I came to the conclusion that there’s something wrong with the lens. It’s still within the 60 day return period, so hopefully we can return it without issue. That’ll mean I’ll be without a camera for a while, though I’ll try and replace it with something different eventually. As I prepare my routines for Worlds, I’m going to need a camera, so it’s in the cards. In the meantime, I think it’ll be kind of liberating to play without a camera for a change.

• Returning the camera is probably for the best. The Vado really wasn’t designed for making footbag videos. Beyond the clunky trimming software, the clips it produced do not interface well with my video editing software (adobe premiere). Specifically, the audio would show up, but not the video. After some poking around, I learned that one way around this problem, was by converting all the clips using windows movie maker, and then cutting them in Adobe. Beyond being annoying and adding a lot of time to the process, it also results in a smaller image, since WMM adds a cropping border to the video. So even if I did keep the Vado camera, I wouldn’t be able to make videos as easily (and therefore as often) as before, and the quality would also be worse. That alone is good reason to return the camera.

• I finally got the Stride check! It was a pretty big pain in the butt to register for the site, do all the paperwork, and stay on top of them. But when I finally got the check in the mail, signed it, and cashed it, it was a great feeling. I won one contest with Brian Bear and Gatesman, and won another by myself. So once I split it all up, I got $666 for playing footbag. That’s like my lucky footbag number, cool.

• G-Units. I bought a pair off eBay which were too big, but within a few days of posting them on modified, I found a buyer for them. I’m glad they’re going to end up with a footbagger. In an even happier ending, I saw a post on modified linking to size 7.5 G-Units online, and I bought the last pair! They are the navy and white Yankees colorway, and I snagged them for $45 total, S&H included. At this point I was so desperate, I would have paid a lot even for an ugly colorway that was within a half size of what I wear. To get a cool colorway, in my size, for $45? That made my month.

• I recently got a call from a footbagger in Boulder named Oli, who I hadn’t seen in over a year. He had friends in town from New Hampshire who play footbag, and wanted to get in a session. Due to timing/work obligations, I wasn’t going to be able to make it up to Boulder to play. Happily, they were able to drive down to Denver last night. We couldn’t find a rec center to take us, so we played in my garage. It was a little slippery and pretty dirty, but we had a very fun session. It was a very nice unexpected surprise to get in a group shred on a weeknight. Afterwards we went out for drinks at a bar/arcade, and played old school videogames. Super fun night.

The weather continues to be up and down here in Denver. Its supposed to snow tomorrow, but it might be back up to high 40s on Sunday. I’ll probably have sent my Vado camera back by then, but I might try and resurrect my Flip. I mean, why not? If it fails, fine. If not and I get something good on video, then I come out ahead. I might give a few more attempts at a new 10 fearless, but I don’t want to spend the whole session on that. Last weekend I hit DSC x2, but they were both set too high for my standards, so I might try and rehit it. I know I can do it, since I hit my DSC-DS osis at the right height.

Here’s the video I made of my last session. Maybe I’ll take advantage of my time without a camera and make some vids with my backlog of footage.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I79oLU2YHSs[/youtube]

[g00d33]

Nice, Ken. Good stuff

[boyle]

Cool video Ken, it looks mighty cold there. Nice work on getting the Worlds tickets too. I think once you have them booked in, then no need to worry about the price- you are going and it's set in stone, so you can worry about training an awesome routine.

Nice work also on getting the money from the gum company- sounded like a big pain in the butt- but when you actually get the money I guess the tune changes

[DTank126]

That video wouldve been good if there was one more smog in it....

Nice vid. I really liked the fairy and atomic gyro pickups. Any set from toe that ends in gyro anything always looks so cool to me.

[C-Fan]

Thanks for the comments guys.

Weather here in Denver continues to fluctuate. This past weekend we hit the 50s on Saturday and Sunday, though I was only able to play on Saturday due to other commitments. Monday it snowed, and it might snow today, but then we hit the fifties again next weekend. Maybe even sixty. As long as we keep getting temps in the mid-40s on weekends, I’m going to keep playing. That’s a change from my original plan to take off a solid month or two in winter, but I don’t think my weekend shreds are hurting my recovery. My knees are feeling pretty good lately.

In excellent footbag news, I received my navy/white G-Units in the mail last week. They’re new, they’re the right size, and they look beautiful. More than that, I feel like I just bought myself an extra year of playing footbag, and at $45 that’s truly a steal.

I still haven’t returned my new camera yet, but that should happen this week. I’ve already cleared its memory and put it in its original packaging, and I’m getting all the paperwork in order. Took advantage of the delay and shot my Saturday session with it. Due to the limitations described in my last post, the footage is cropped and a little blurry at times, and that’s why I’m returning it. Still, better than nothing.

It was pretty nice out when I played Saturday, and my body responded with a solid session. I worked on getting 10 unique fearless, but I was also good about messing around with other components while warming up. I think it’s possible that working on completely unrelated concepts (like rakes) can help warm up your legs for other stuff, like fearless. Who knows. Anyway, the good news is that I hit a new combo of 10, so I feel good moving past fearless for a while and focusing on working on other parts of my game. My original challenge was to get 10 unique on video. Once I did, I tried to get a few more on tape. Once I got that, I challenged myself to get 2 more combos but with more variety, and now I’ve done that. The next logical challenges for me would be to try and get 10 downtime fearless, and to break my current record. But at this stage, I don’t have a strong desire to do so.

My fearless challenges were hard to achieve, and I’m proud I did them, but I know they won’t help me much with my goal at Worlds. My short term goal is to continue with my current winter regimen of only playing about once a week, and then to ramp up my training in the spring. I might still mess around occasionally with hard tricks/links, but for the most part my training for the next 6.5 months will be to improve my stamina and consistency. If I work on anything hard, it will be with the goal of incorporating it into my routine and making it reliable. So for the foreseeable future I don’t expect to hit many hard tricks, beasts, or fearless links.

Here’s a video from Saturday’s session. It’ll be one of my last/only videos with the new camera, so please bear with the cropped border and visual quality (upping it to 720 HD helps):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv9kiCBFKv0[/youtube]

During this session I used my new Waylon bag which I bought over New Year's. I initially thought I'd just warm up with it, but even without breaking it in, it was pretty dank. I ended up hitting everything I wanted with it, so I never switched to my other bags. I'm kind of tempted to not use this bag again until a month before Worlds, and then make it my primary bag around then. We'll see if I can fill some of my old bags and use them in the interim.

[C-Fan]

Normally I write my blog posts during breaks at work. This whole week I'm in training though, so it's weird getting home in the evening and then having to catch up on all my internet activity over dinner.

Few new things to catch up on here. In no particular order:

When I first looked at Vegas tickets for the jam, I wasn't thrilled by the airfares I saw. Then I toyed with the idea of going with my gf on a romantic weekend, where I'd just show up to the Jam for a couple hours each day. The advantage there was I found good prices for a package deal where it was airfare, 3 nights at the Luxor hotel, and 2 tickets to Cirque du Soleil. But then my girlfriend had to back out. Now, the airfares are worse than what I originally saw, especially compared to what I was getting with the hotel package. I still want to go to the jam, especially now that so many rare players are going (Flash and Nasty!), but it's seeming decreasingly likely, especially since I'm not getting any answers on the housing situation. If I don't see a good airfare this week or get some interest in sharing a hotel room, then it's likely I won't go. That kinda bums me out.

The weather on Saturday was insane. Temps in the low 60s. Warming up was a pleasure, I never felt pressured by falling temperatures or the sun, and when I was done it was still nice enough to stay outside and read. It was like a perfect spring day...smack in the middle of January. It just put me in a good mood, and my body responded with a good session. I worked on fearless, but I also messed around with some fun stuff too. I tried triple spinning for the first time, which was trippy. I didn't come close, but I think on some level I understand it better. Like, I understand how its possible, that it's incredibly hard, and on some level there's a slim belief that I could hit it if I worked on it and got a little lucky too. The highlight of the session was finally hitting smog-open ss dlo repeat. I never worked at it, but it somehow always seemed like a longshot. Once I tried it though, I managed to hit it within a few tries. Nice to get it out of the way in any case.

I returned the Vado camera i got as a gift for christmas. I hope my girlfriend gets refunded for that in full, since the thing was defective when we got it. In good news, my gf recently won a Sony Bloggie, which is also an HD camera. I tried it out this weekend, and was amazed at some of the design flaws. The camera shoots in portrait mode as a default, but it'll shoot in landscape if you tilt it. This in itself is surprising...who shoots video in portrait mode? Why would anybody make that the default? When you upload video that was shot in portrait mode, it shows the middle third of the screen in a vertical strip, framed by two black bars (see vid below). The real kicker though, is that they put the tripod screw-in on the bottom of the camera...so you can't shoot landscape with a tripod unless you have an expensive tripod that can tilt the screw. Why would anybody want to shoot in portrait on a tripod?!? This was apparently the big design flaw that hurt the Bloggie in ratings. The software that comes with the bloggie is an even bigger disaster. It's like it wasn't even beta-tested... it's just amazing. If an unknown company made this product, I'd be disappointed. The fact that Sony made this...and put their name on it...just wow. I'm embarrassed for them. I'll likely end up keeping the camera though. If I buy a tripod that'll allow me to shoot in landscape, the visual quality is actually pretty good. Editing will be a lot more onerous than when I had the Flip, but I guess that's the price I'll pay.

In other video news, I recently posted my 2,000th footbag video on YouTube. That's got to be a record, right? While not all of them have been edited videos, and the early ones were very low quality, I still feel a measure of pride in having been as consistent as I have in uploading footbag video content to the web over the years. It takes time and effort, and through comments I feel like I've done some small part in spreading awareness of the sport, which I hope counts for something in the cosmic scheme of things.

On that note, here's a video from my Saturday session. I apologize for the framing, but hopefully once I get a tripod that can flip the camera sideways, we'll be back to fullscreen HD videos again.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxdvXrFUuOk[/youtube]

[h0ag3yb3atZ]

props on the new video record. i've watched at least 2/3 of everything you've posted, even before it was in HD.

and again, it was cool to shred with you and to show you what was up with tony hawks pro skater . i hope if i can still play when i'm your age my game is nearly as varied and as interesting.

edit: and i mean footbag wise, if i was you i'd stick to street fighter haha.

[C-Fan]

Yeah, Tony Hawk is definitely not my strong suit. Thanks for the kind words on footbag though.

Mostly good news on my front. In no particular order:

• I sucked it up and bought tickets to Vegas Jam! I mostly used kayak and fly.com to look for tickets, and that wasn’t a fun experience. In both cases, they’d show a decent fare, but when I’d click through, they’d claim it was no longer available. This happened even when they showed multiple sites with the same fare. Felt very much like a bait-and-switch set up. My persistence paid off though, and I was able to finally find direct flights for $298 RT. Considering it’s only a 2 hour flight each way, that’s not spectacular, but at this late stage it was good enough for me to pull the trigger. Now I just need to find and set up hotels, and also work myself into tournament shape. I’ll be there Friday through Sunday, so I need to get my stamina up.

• Speaking of tournament shape, my left knee started hurting again out of nowhere. I can’t really pinpoint any one thing that could be responsible, but if I had to guess I’d say I’ve been too lax with my PT exercises. So I’m going to start being more diligent about that, to make sure the muscles surrounding it are strong. The other thing that might have led to the reappearance of my knee issues, is that I’ve been doing more flip PSWs than usual. That’s because I’ve been working on getting combos of 10 fearless, and flip psw is an easy one to sneak in. I’m pretty much done with fearless now, and if I try for any more, I’ll make a point to not use that PSW. Outside of fearless, there’s no real reason for me to throw that PSW anyway, so it should be pretty easy to phase out. In any case, the knee isn’t bothering me too much, and I don’t think it’ll affect my play in Vegas.

• I decided to stick with the new Sony camera I got, and just buy a tripod that’d enable me to shoot in landscape mode. Looking on amazon, most tripods that fit that description cost around $15-$20, not including S&H. On a whim I went to eBay and entered “camera tripod.” The first result that came back was one of those tripods, for $7.50. It had no bids and the auction closed in 10 minutes, so I submitted my bid and won! It was $5 S&H, and the guy claims he only used it twice before getting a camera that was too heavy for it. So hopefully I’ll be getting a close to new tripod that’d suit my purposes, and get it for only $12.50. I really hope it works, since it’d be a lot nicer to film in landscape.

• While cleaning the house, I found my old fill straws for refilling footbags. They’re just coffee stirrers, but these are big enough that fill passes through them, while still being small enough to slip through the bleed holes. Most straws I found in Denver are either too big to fit into the footbag, or too small to let fill through. So hopefully I can refill some of my bags and make them playable again. My current Waylon bag is perfect, but I kind of want to preserve it for competition, and having other heavy bags as alternatives will help me with this.

• Weather has been very footbag friendly lately. I know February and March are usually the worst winter months in Denver, but I was still surprised by how mild our January was. I even got in a couple sessions in the middle of the week last week, since I was in training and we had long lunch hours. I filmed my sessions on Thursday and Sunday, and made a vid from my Thursday session which I’ve put at the bottom of this post. The best part of Thursday’s session, was tweaking my technique on furious set, and consequently finding my janiwalkers much improved. Sunday’s session I mostly dedicated to two goals: hitting another 10 unique fearless on video, and hitting the 2 combos from Pipenberg’s bag contest. Pipenberg’s combos were surprisingly awkward and frustrating, but I managed to hit one of them. The other, I’m not sure if I can even hit the second trick, but I know I wasn’t even close. Maybe if I planted on the gyro…but even then it’d be rough.

• Over the last few months, my main goal was to work on fearless, and to get a few combos of 10 on video. I’m at the point now where I feel I’ve hit enough to move on from this goal, even though it’s still fun, and I know I could push myself even more. The whole time I’ve felt a little guilty, since I know the fearless won’t help me with my overarching goal of doing well at Worlds. Now that my body is pushing back a bit (knee, probably due to fearless), I think that’s a sign I should move on to other goals. This means I’ll probably start working on longer runs and stamina, and other routine related skills like juggling. Fearless was a fun challenge though, and it was good to get it out of my system during a time of year when I’m not fixated on competition. Now that I’m done with fearless, I guess this also means I’ll put together a video in the coming weeks. I’m undecided if I should keep the video to just combos of 10, or also throw in some 8s and 9s I got too. Thoughts?

Here’s my vid from Thursday’s shred:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEbI5CLT9sM[/youtube]

[sen]

Put all the 10's first and then have 8s and 9s as a bonus at the end.

[C-Fan]

Haven’t posted in here much, mostly because I haven’t been playing much. It finally looks like winter here in Denver, which I actually am kind of happy about. For most of December and January, the weekend weather was usually good enough that I could get in outdoor shreds if I dressed appropriately and picked the right time of day. The past couple weekends though, Denver’s been cold and snowy. I’ve now taken over two weeks off from playing, which could stretch to 3 or more. That might not be the worst thing ever. I really pushed my body hard in 2011, and while Worlds is less than 6 months away, I think I should be erring more on the side of rest. Ramping down from daily to weekly sessions over the last couple months made it easier for me to transition to no footbag at all.

Over the last 3 months or so, my main footbag goal was getting combos of 10 unique fearless on video. While I know I could hit a few more combos, and I also know I could break my current record for unique fearless, I think I’m going to park those goals for now. The only two footbag events officially on my radar are Vegas jam in March, and Worlds in July. In both cases, fearless will be less useful to me than having good variety and stamina. I’m hoping USO happens this year (ideally before Worlds), since it’d give me another milestone to help motivate/pace myself for getting ready for Worlds. All that said, if I’m having a session where I feel fearless is flowing well, I’m not forbidding myself from trying to get one last combo of 10. I’m just not going to make it a high priority anymore.

During my time off playing, I’ve been daydreaming a lot about footbag, and also reflecting on my game. I realized that my footbag goals can be split into two general categories: stuff that I’ve never done, and stuff that I’ve done before but would like to do at least once more. The former category (stuff I’ve never done) is pretty much made up of dream tricks, eventually getting good at net, and making routine finals at Worlds. The latter category includes hosting another tournament, attending another Japanese footbag tournament, getting more combos of 10 fearless, and getting another dropless routine at Worlds.

After giving it a lot of thought, I came up with three dream tricks. There’s always going to be cool tricks I want to hit at any given time, but dream tricks are on a different level than that. A dream trick has to be something that I’ve wanted for a long time, and genuinely wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get or not. I’d put tricks like blurry flurry and spinning mobius in that category, while some other tricks which are cool and hard I would not (e.g. pixie vortex). The three dream tricks I identified were:

• Nemesis. I started playing before this was ever hit, and as a newbie this was considered impossible. Even though a ton of people hit this now, it still seems like a milestone to me. Throw in the fact that I’ve tried furious set for over 10 years now with very little to show for it, and this becomes a very legit dream trick. I was making some progress with furious before my break, so I remain hopeful I’ll be able to get this one day.
• 69. I just like the symmetry of this move. I’m also crap at nuke sets, so if I were able to get this trick one day, it’d feel pretty gratifying.
• Triple spinning clipper/osis. I haven’t wanted this trick for very long, so I half wonder if I can even put it on this list. That said, I used to be horrible at spins, so if I ever got to the point where I could hit triples, I’d feel like I’d made a ton of progress. Of all the tricks on this list, I know this is the rarest, which kind of adds to the appeal for me.

In non-daydream footbag news, there’ve been a couple good developments on the camera front:

1. My new tripod arrived, and it works with my bloggie. I now have the ability to shoot in landscape with the bloggie, which is pretty sweet. I just haven’t had a chance to use it yet, due to my recent break from footbag.

2. I saw a very nice camera on Woot for $150, and decided to pull the trigger on it. It’s bigger than a pocketcam, and looks like it has much better specs. Most pocket cams have memory between 4-8 gigs. This camera has 16 gigs. The last three pocket cams I’ve had only shot up to 720, while this one shoots in 1080. So I pretty much got a camera that’s a step up from pocket cams in terms of specs, for the price of a pocketcam. The new camera should arrive today or tomorrow. I’m excited to try it out, especially since the editing software it comes with can’t be worse than the bloggie. I’m also glad I got a new tripod, since the bigger size of this camera probably wouldn’t be supported by my old tripod.

Weather doesn’t look promising this coming weekend…and probably not next either. With Vegas just over 3 weeks away, I should probably look into getting a short term gym membership. That’d also have the advantage that I can work on my overall fitness and not just footbag, which might be a good way to ease back into playing.

[worldbound]

That is an awesome camera you purchased! I can't wait to see the footage that comes from it. I like your dream tricks, hopefully you can hit some at the Vegas jam!

[C-Fan]

Weather this weekend took a nice turn for the better! Got in my first sessions in three weeks. Felt great.

Mix of good news and not great.

Good news: My new camera arrived! It's smaller than I expected, so it's just as portable as a pocketcam. It looks really good.
Bad news: It didn't come with a memory card! Man, that wasn't even in the fine print. I ordered a 16GB card today, so hopefully I'll get it soon, and I'll have a permanent solution for my camera troubles. On a related note...

Good news: My tripod works with my bloggie, so I can film in landscape with that camera.
Bad news: The bloggie has a weird autofocus, which pretty much doesn't work. The quality has varied from bad to terrible. This camera is a POS. Can't wait to replace it with the Samsung.
Middle of the line news: I hit 10 unique fearless on video...but since it was the bloggie, it came out a bit blurry. I'll still probably use the clip, but it's annoying.

Final bit of good news: before I took my 3 week break, I had a bit of a breakthrough with furious. I was only hitting janiwalkers, but they felt much easier, and I was able to step out of them, so that felt great. Yesterday I revisited furious, and it's still there. I decided to try fury in addition to jani and sure enough, the new technique led to my best furies ever. My set is still too low for nemesis, but I feel like it's much more possible now.

Here's vid from that session. Apologies for the blurriness. Hopefully I'll just be able to dump this camera within a week.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkcaUy_LDnc[/youtube]