Matt K wrote:Alright, time to recount one of the best weeks of my life before I forget.
Saturday: Prelude
My Worlds journey started last Saturday. I was saying so long to one of my long-time high school friends before he heads down to Georgia for grad school as Nick Polini and Nate Pipenberg headed up from Pennsylvania to my house before we headed off to Montreal with Doug Tank the next day.
I headed back from the lake after seeing my friend for a short while and pulled in to my driveway to see Nick and Nate sitting on the back of Nick’s yellow car. They said they had just arrived and I was beyond excited to see them. They stretched their legs for a few minutes then we headed to the park to have a pre-Worlds session. I don’t remember anything that any of us hit, but it was pretty evident that Nate was in great shape.
After getting home and showering we were greeted to a lovely dinner from my mom which consisted of hamburgers, hotdogs and the best zucchini any of us had had. The five of us ate outside and caught up; Nate had just stayed a night a few weeks ago but this was the first time Nick had met my parents so we had plenty to talk about. At one point my mom offered to search Doug’s bag once he got here to make sure he wasn’t trying to smuggle drugs up into Canada. Oh mom!
Doug got there as soon as we finished eating and we proceeded to take the dumbest picture of the whole trip while on my porch (put in on facebook, Doug!). We hung around the house for an hour, Nate and I messed around on our instruments for a while, then headed out for a night on the town.
Let me fix that for you
Matt K wrote:Alright, time to recount one of the best weeks of my life before I forget.
Saturday: Prelude
Blah blah blah, nothing happened and life is really broing until...
Doug got there...
I also noticed there was one other part you messed up...
Matt K wrote:
...and I gave Doug my bed then headed to the basement to sleep on the couch.
Next: We’re off!
This should be read as...
Matt K wrote:
...and I forced Doug to sleep on my super uncomfortable bed made of nails in a room with no AC that felt like the inside of satan's colon, while I slept in my underground castle that was cooled to just the right temperature that any man would be comfortable with or without a blanket.
I was first to wake up in the morning and I went upstairs to wake up the gang. Nick and Nate’s door was cracked so I popped in there first to wake them. We went in to my room to get Doug, which sufficiently freaked him out (“wuhuhufuckyou”). I got everyone going quick by reminding them that my mom was making us a pancake breakfast which we all thoroughly enjoyed.
While everybody took their time to get ready I had to pack everything (from visiting my friend the day before I hadn’t had any time to get ready to leave). I finished and Doug and I packed my car, including his guitar and my keyboard, around 11am. We left Doug’s car in my driveway for the week, safely away from the gigantic tree limb that’s been threatening to fall for two weeks, said goodbye to my parents, and set off North.
Now, the reason we met at my house was because it’s directly South of Montreal and we only need to take one highway up North. That proved to be more useful than we thought because apparently my GPS doesn’t support Canada, so Doug and I set off on I87 with Nate and Nick in tow.
Besides Nick’s incessant desire to follow me exactly, including cutting off drivers to merge back into the middle lane, the drive up went pretty smooth. Doug and I talked for a while and then listened to Plinkett’s hour long review of Star Wars The Phantom Menace for the rest of the trip. In addition to our friends we had two driving buddies: a family from Quebec and one from Minnesota. The Minnesotan car passed us, and we passed them back at least 7 times, and each time Doug and I waved to the mustached man in the back seat.
After a pretty short three hours we found ourselves at the Canadian border. Doug and I pulled up to the patrol and fielded our first question of “What is your business in Canada?” My mind sort of went blank, and given that footbag is strange to describe to people for the first time, I turned my head to Doug and said “Uh.....” Not sketchy at all. We were eventually able to describe exactly what we were doing and got through fine, along with the other car.
Since we didn’t know where were going we pulled over to a rest stop to try to find a map and set off again. I went in to the bathroom and recognized the man from the Quebec car as we were washing our hands. Outside, the Quebec family pulled away and I waved goodbye to them. Back in the parking lot Doug hit our first Canadian trick of a Reverse Swirl. We grabbed a couple snacks from Nick’s car and decided to follow his car the rest of the way since he had a GPS.
The drive through Canada was pretty fine despite the fact that I never quite got comfortable with km/hr. Nick was a little harder to follow in the heavier traffic, and we ended up circling around a bit and making weird U-turns, but we did finally arrive at 4206 Van Horne Ave, our new home for the week.
The four of us parked in front of the apartment and walked up the stairs to find a locked door and nobody inside. None of us really wanted to use our phones and deal with the charges but after a minute Nate made the call to our landlord. We thought that Doug had been e-mailing a woman, so we were surprised to hear that a man was coming over to let us in.
After 10 minutes a red van pulled up and a man came up the stairs to us. The first thing he says to us is “Where is your dad?” We all stare pretty baffled as he repeats the question again. I think at this point we were all thinking the same thing: does he really think we’re too young to rent this place?
See, at this point, we had been denied at four separate apartments in Canada, two of which had accepted our offers, taken our money, and then came back and said they couldn’t do it. We were here in Canada, with our last resort place we had booked not a week before, there was no way in hell that we were not staying here.
Nate stumbles for words and says something about how we’re all 18, and the guy finally says “Oh, sorry, Doug, which one of you is Doug?” We all breathe a sigh of relief as we’re taken inside and shown around. This may have been the only place we could rent, but man did we luck out. We were greeted to a big living room, a bathroom, kitchen, 3 rooms with queen-size beds, a dining room, and a weird half bed for Nate. Nick covered us on the $100 deposit and the man set off, leaving us to call Doug ‘Dad’ for most of the week.
The excitement was really sinking in now as we went back to our cars to bring our things in. We all witnessed Nick try to walk up the grass next to the stairs with four boxes of food in his arms and proceed to do the best faceplant we’d seen, leading to the first of many falling-over-laughing moments I had during the week.
We decided to hold off on going to the grocery store in favor of heading to the event site to catch the late registration. We packed in to my car and took our first 20 minute trip into downtown Montreal which was probably the smoothest that I had all week. We parked on the street and Nate treated us to the 25 cent parking meter fee (we were just shy of the 6pm cutoff) and then went inside the event site.
We trekked up the top of the building where the freestyle and net gyms were and went into the separate room to find the registration tables. The director of the event, Luka, checked us in and set us up with our player packs. I opted to not take the freestyle football they were offering (which ended up being a good call) and shared Nate’s bag for my shirt and booklet.
I saw many friends I had not seen for a few years now, including Ianek Regimbald, one of my closest pals in this sport. The group went over the net side of things, since no freestyle was going on (we had missed the Tam Tam shred earlier in the day), to site, watch, and catch up with friends. Ianek and I ended up talking for at least an hour, catching up on our lives, talking footbag, news, politics. It was really great, and it was the first time I realized how much I had missed my friends in this sport. This was also the first time I met Aleksi Airinen, who I sat and talked with for a half hour.
I look up in the stands and see the rest of my crew sitting and talking with somebody I can’t make out (I didn’t have my glasses). I asked Ianek who that was (who also didn’t have his glasses) and asked if he thought it was a girl, to which he agreed. After another minute of staring, we both realized at the same time, oh shit, that’s Ken (sorry Ken, you’ve got that baby face!).
I climbed into the stands to say hello to another one of my very good friends who I had not seen since USO 2011. He was leaving just as I got up there, but we talked a bit as we walked out. We’d all heard talk that there was a get together at Nick Laroche’s house that night, but nobody had any idea where he lived. Ken was interested in going too, so we took him with us to try and figure out what his address was.
We stepped outside towards the car and tried to buy some beer for the party. Nick and I were the last to decided, and finally Nick says “let’s just get the same thing, so if it’s shitty, we’ll both have a bad time.” I chuckled at the notion and agreed. We picked out two of a random bottle, but both of our debit cards ended up being denied, so we ended up both getting nothing.
Once back in the car, I knew I had to get gas so we stopped at the first place we saw. The machine was not taking my card outside so Ken and I ventured in to make sure I’d be able to pay before putting gas in. I tried to buy a six pack of Corona and was successful so I knew I could at least pay somewhere. I filled up the car and we drove home where we found Nick L’s address on facebook.
On our way we all were very hungry and took a detour to grab a quick dinner. We didn’t see anywhere great or fast, so I just said “let’s go get some Canadian McDonald’s.” It had one of my favorite signs of the trip, which simply said ‘McDonald’s: Hamburgers,’ so that’s great. While eating at my separate table, I spilled some sauce from my burger onto my white pants as Nick was reaching over to take the pickles I didn’t want. He thought that he somehow caused it to spill so he rushed over to the drink machine and came back with a napkin full of ice cubes which nearly sent me out of my chair laughing.
We pulled up to Nick L’s house shortly after leaving the hamburger place and were greeted with even more people I hadn’t seen in years. I’m not even going to try to list the people I said hello to, but I will say that it took me 10 minutes to get a beer back to Nick because I kept stopping to hug and say hello to people.
The party went on for a while longer and we eventually left, taking Ivan home to our apartment with us, and squeezing Johnny Suderman in the back seat to give him a ride to where he was staying downtown. We all got home and slept in our nice comfy beds, me with Nick (head to toe, of course), all antsy to play footbag in the morning.
After our first night in our new apartment we rolled out of bed and packed into Drew Martin’s car (he was at the party and had shown up here at 3am or so) because he had the most space. Nick offered to go in the trunk and worked very hard to get his unicycle in with him (which he ended up leaving in the car).
None of us had eaten much so we stopped at a Tim Hortons (Canadian Dunkin Donuts, if you will), and Nick again said that he was getting exactly what I was. I grabbed a bagel with cream cheese and sat down with the group to find again that the initial table was filled and I didn’t fit. Nick very nicely grabbed me a chair and we all ate our meal quickly.
I needed to hit an ATM to avoid the situation at the beer store again so Ivan took Nate and I down a few stores to a bank. I took out 100 CAD and was greeted to the sweetest money I’ve ever seen. I’m jealous of all of you all in Canada who get to handle those new 20s; I must have exclaimed at least three times that I would pay $50 for one of those bills.
The rest of them had finished eating so the three of us headed back to the car. We got back in, Nick and the unicycle in the trunk and drove to the event site. We parked in a convenient all-day parking garage, and I think Nate covered the $10 charge for the day. We made our way to the event site down two blocks while marveling at the beautiful murals on multiple buildings.
People were already playing and warming up at the event site so we dispersed from our group, sat, and got ready for the day. From the night before I had found out that I’d gotten a bye for Circle (because I made Semi’s in 2010, missed you Tuukka!), so one of the first things I did was go up to Steve and offer to judge. Judging was one of the things that I really enjoyed in 2010, and even though I didn’t officially sign up to judge, I started each day by offering.
I went up to the freestyle table and said to Steve “Hey, I didn’t sign up, but if you need anybody for today you can call on me.” This was the first of three times that Steve told me “I think we’re all set, but thanks,” only to call me back a few minutes later to say “Actually I think we will use you.” I happily obliged and took a seat at the end of the table next to Alex. I don’t remember too much from the prelims (I judged all 4 pools), but a big highlight was watching my roommate Nick advance out of his pool into Semi-Finals.
After the rounds were over I hopped up from the table and got changed to play for the first time. I was pretty nervous, as I tend to get at tournaments, and it didn’t help that I was slightly injured and had not played in a week until Saturday. Nevertheless, I got suited up, threw on my shoes and hopped in a circle.
I started off in a circle with (I think) Ivan and James Pleas, the latter of which jumped in and out with me for the rest of the day. I started off pretty shaky but loosened up as the day went on. I don’t remember a ton of what I hit, but I did get a good starting combo for Ianek’s camera of Blurry Whirl>Blaze>Fusion (into bad run, grr). One of the coolest things of playing this day was that I didn’t leave the circle I was in, so I got a good groove feeling by the end of it. Players that cycled through the circle that I remember were Hania, Cassy, James McCollough, Jams Pleas multiple times, Ivan a few times, and I’m sure more.
At some point after playing for a while Aleksi asked me if I’d be playing for a while longer. I assured him, yes, and he went away to get changed and join me (!). He came in the circle, along with Cassy, and I watched in awe as I saw him warm up in person for the first time. Cassy jumped out pretty soon (she had been playing all day) and Felix replaced her (!!).
This was the first time I had ever been in a circle like this so I was a little intimidated, but I managed to hold up fairly well. I had one thing I could do slightly better than those two which was harder Blazing tricks, so I gave myself a little internal fist pump whenever I nailed a Blazing Drifter. Aleksi even asked me for tips on blazing at one point, even though he could have schooled me at it in a week.
Aleksi popped out after 45 minutes saying that he didn’t feel great so Felix and I agreed that we would do a few more runs and then call it quits. Well, after another 20 minutes, both exhausted, we agreed to do a few more runs and then call it quits. After another 20 minutes, me dripping in sweat and losing my breath at every trick, I nearly begged him, please, just one more. I did my one string, and Felix did his, and he proceeded to play for another 30 minutes. My highlight from that circle was a decent Superfly>Blazing Drifter, which I had never hit before.
When I was still playing with Aleksi and Felix I saw my whole house standing in a circle, dressed and watching, which made me feel like a teenager with my parents on the sidelines. Once I finished playing I found Nate and asked him if they were looking to leave soon. He said that a group of them were looking to get food and I could join. I looked down at myself and felt totally disgusting so I asked him to give me 10 minutes to wash up.
I went to the bathroom/showers and only then realized that I hadn’t brought a change of clothes, anything to clean myself with, or a towel. Well, fuck it, even if I’m dripping wet I’ll at least be clean. I stripped down to the underwear I played footbag in and jumped in the shower. Luckily the showers were right next to the sink so I kept loading up with hand soap to wash my hair and body. The shower was fantastically hot and pressured so I got very relaxed from it.
I got out, soaked, and tried to figure out a way to dry myself off. I considered just putting on the clothes I had worn to the site that day to dry myself a bit, but fuck it again, I just used the hand dryer. It was conveniently located high on the wall so I stood under it for 5 minutes drying the best I could as I talked with Tuan Vu a bit. I ditched the underwear and went commando for the rest of the day (this is a very important detail) and finally was ready to go out to eat.
Me and a group of 10 people, led by Ianek, walked a couple blocks to a vegetarian buffet. There were two main rows of food, and after passing by most everything in the first row I thought that I wouldn’t have a single thing on my plate. To my delight, I liked almost everything in the second row. Unfortunately, I was a little too excited and took just about everything that looked good which led to a gigantic cartoon-sized plate. Nick tried to get a comparably sized plate because I was picking up his meal to pay back my share of the deposit.
I paid for our meals (including Doug’s beer, not sure how he snuck that in there) and we sat down with the rest of the group. I sat near Aleksi, Ianek, and Ivan and had some nice dinner conversation while all of us marveled at the amount of food on my plate. I ended up eating pretty much everything on my plate, to my amazement and everything else, and then we all headed out.
My group headed to the dorms to grab Drew and head home. However, when we got there we found that Drew was looking to stay and hang out for the evening. A few of us wanted to go home (me, Ivan, Nick, and Doug) while Nate and Drew wanted to stay. Drew very nicely offered us his car to take home, as long as somebody came back to get him.
We hung outside with Mathieu GM and Rene Ruhr while we waited for Doug to finish his beer so we could go. While waiting, Rene mentioned that he had to get home as well, and we ended up taking him to his place. This was the first time I had met Rene, and the first of a few times that I very much enjoyed his company and talking with him.
The five of us made it home fine after dropping Rene off, (I drove, a common theme of the week), and Nick and Doug got ready to go back out and party. Ivan and I were pretty exhausted from our long day of playing footbag so we decided to stay in the for the night. We said goodbye to our two friends and tried to figure out how to spend our quiet night in.
We both had individual things that we wanted to do (Ivan had to edit and post video, which he did amazingly all week, and I wanted to read some of my book), so we decided to put some TV on in the background. After skipping over all the weird Canadian television channels that we got, Ivan got somebody’s computer and found a site where we could watch Whose Line is it Anyway?
During the few episodes, I read a few chapters of my book, Anthem, by Ayn Raynd, that I’m reading with my roommate from college. By the end of the third episode I was falling asleep on the couch so I got myself up and ready for bed. I was a little sore but really satisfied at the real first day of Worlds.
Last edited by Matt K on 08 Aug 2013 05:39, edited 1 time in total.
Tuesday: The Day Toolan Showed Up, or, The Day When Everything Started to Go Horribly Wrong
We woke up a little late today and had to get moving quickly to get to the event site in time for Routine Prelims. The only person in our house who was competing was Nick, who really did not want to go at this point, but we all encouraged him to go and do it.
We took the same seating arrangement as the day before, Nick having a more painful ride than the first time, and got to the site a solid one minute before the event was set to start. I run up to the freestyle table to look at the seeding and see that Nick is first to go, so I shout back “Hey Nick, you’ve got one minute to warm up, get going!” Steve extended the start out five minutes so Nick could prepare a little bit and again I ended up judging the entire pool.
For somebody who had never done a routine before and only warmed up for five minutes, I think Nick did really well. He had a lot of drops, but had some good ideas and I’m sure could do a good routine in the future. Ken won biggest troll of the tournament by convincing Nick for two days that they had randomly picked the same routine song (the one from the Spongebob pilot by Tiny Tim). Nick didn’t find out until Ken went on, as he was telling somebody next to him how bad he felt that they had picked the same song. You two are the best.
I judged the rest of routines and was really impressed at the level of artistry this year. I don’t normally love watching routines, but really enjoyed quite a few of them this year. In particular I think Ken, Dustin, Chris, and Honza had very nicely choreographed routines that showed clear plans for almost every trick.
I think after routines wrapped up I just hung around and watched shred for an hour. I was super sore from the day before so to deter myself from playing today I had not brought a single footbag related piece of clothing to the site. Steve announced that Alex could use some help judging Shred 30 coming up, so of course, I offered my services. Alex gladly accepted and it was decided that I would be the add counter.
I got set up on Alex’s computer and basically would watch the players and run down an excel sheet hitting [add number] > [enter] for every trick. I lost track or mixed up the keys a few times, but actually captured a lot of them pretty accurately. First up was the women’s finals and then the men’s semi-finals. We filmed and recorded every player straight through, mistakes and all, and then assembled a team to judge.
We started with the women, and using Ivan’s footage that he had just taken, it took me to call out adds, Alex to verify/record adds, Hania to count uniques, and I think Ivan to count contacts? Ivan definitely did something, but the whole thing was really adhoc and thrown together. We did get the women’s scores calculated and ordered fairly quickly and were able to announce the results within 20 minutes, yay!
The men’s scores were still to go, but we all needed a mental break. Alex went out for a cigarette and Hania and I went down to a coffee shop. I took every opportunity to poke fun at my Polish-ness (I’m ¼ Polish), such as the 1¼ Polish judging pool we’d had earlier, or the 1¼ Polish circle we had the day before. At the place, I got the weirdest thing I could find, which was a can of pineapple juice, which was not very good, but I’m glad I got it.
Back at the site, we all buckled up to score the men’s event. We got two people in when Steve came over and said “Hey, I just had a great idea, you guys should stop.” We obliged, glad to be relieved of the duty, and Alex ended up judging them later in a quiet place where he could write down each trick at his own pace. Sorry I couldn’t join you, Alex, but I had fun doing the ones that we did.
Hania and I walked out of the gym and heard that people were swimming in the pool in the basement so we headed down there to join them. I again didn’t have anything to change into, but I just jumped in. There was a “basketball” that we chucked at a hoop, and Nick had a chainmail bag that people did some water shredding with. It was pretty relaxing, and we had a good crowd that stayed for 30 minutes (though some people had been there for hours).
We all jumped out, got dry (some of using the hand dryer again), and assembled a crew for dinner. I went with Ianek, Nate, Nick, Drew, Doug, Ivan, and a mysterious eighth person. If there was somebody else, I’m sorry, and please remind me. Nate and I were craving Italian so Ianek took us to a slightly classier place that he used to go to.
I was still pretty wet from the pool and got my chair thoroughly wet, but I was glad to be at a restaurant where I could get a big dish of pasta. They also had this novel bread bar section where you could pick out a kind of bread, a kind of spread and then put it on a fryer. I had a couple pieces but would’ve just preferred regular garlic bread.
Over our meals we had some serious footbag-promotion talk where Ianek really got to shine in his knowledge of footbag-related topics. I didn’t have much to contribute, because for as long as I’ve been in this sport, I’ve really only ever been interested in being a player. I guess I feel bad that I don’t have much to contribute to footbag as a whole, but the other stuff (hosting an event, stitching, promoting) has never appealed to me, I just love playing and watching people play.
We paid our bill and went back towards our cars. I think at some point earlier in the week, Ianek and I discussed music for a while (he’s a drummer and I play keyboard) and had talked about getting together to play a bit. He has a building that he rents a room in to play, along with a bunch of other musicians, so we set something up for this night, and would try to get Dante and other musicians to come along.
At this point in the day we knew that Mike Toolan had finally gotten his passport (they shipped it to him at least a week late, so he had to delay driving up with us till he got it today) and had set off north in the morning. However, none of us had heard from him since then and we had no idea where he was, if he found the place, or how long he had been in Canada.
We pulled into our driveway to see our friend unpacking his trunk. Drew called out “Hey, who’s this dumbass!” Mike turned around.... revealing that it wasn’t Mike and just some random dude unpacking his car. We apologized and gave Drew plenty of shit for this hilarious moment. Mike was actually two cars up and had been sitting in front of the apartment for like five hours. We all greeted and got him set up inside.
I started to get ready to head out and it looked like nobody else was too interested in coming to play music. I wasn’t super keen on driving through Canada by myself, but I packed my car anyway and headed off to the address that Ianek had given me. I got lost a couple times and started to have some “oh jeez, what the hell am I doing” moments, but I did eventually make it there and Ianek helped me bring my keyboard inside.
We got up to his room to find Dante, Caroline Birch, and Matt Churney there waiting for us. I set up by the two sets of drums that Ianek and Dante were on and we got going. I’m not too good at jamming style music (I’ve only been playing seriously for three years, and I focus much more on reading music and expression), but I stumbled through a couple songs with them in this set up. We shuffled around on instruments a bit: Ianek on bass, me on drums, Dante on keys, me on bass, me and Dante on keys, and had a really fun time for an hour. I was definitely musically out of my league with those two, but it was fun to try to keep up anyway.
The gang walked me out to my car so I didn’t get mugged for a cheap keyboard and I drove back home by myself. I got home to find that my house had just stayed in the night to hang out with Mike and were video chatting with Kevin Hogan who was at home in Boston. I said hey, and he stayed on for 10 minutes. After that Ivan and I struggled with the dvd player and we watched The Art of the Game and the first section of Feet on Fire (there was no remote). After that I just went to bed to rest up for my only day of competition on Wednesday.
Note: I forgot this hilarious account from Monday night; I’ll leave it here, but put it back in the right spot in my own copy of this.
So the previous night, before Nick and Doug left Ivan and I to go party, we had the best two hours at the house. We were all just sitting around in the living room, and for some reason I brought up “that sentence where you just say buffalo a bunch and it’s grammatically correct.” I went to the page and finally understood it for the first time, and Doug got it pretty quickly too. Nick, however, did not get it, and it took us the next two hours to explain it to him in every way we could possibly imagine.
The sentence is ‘Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.’ It boils down to ‘Buffalo bison, that are bullied by Buffalo bison, also bully Buffalo bison.’ Trying to explain this to Nick and watching him short circuit more and more every time he couldn’t get it was one of the funniest moments of the trip, and he said that he felt really off for the rest of the night.
Matt K wrote:
We pulled into our driveway to see our friend unpacking his trunk. Drew called out “Hey, who’s this dumbass!” Mike turned around.... revealing that it wasn’t Mike and just some random dude unpacking his car. We apologized and gave Drew plenty of shit for this hilarious moment.
I'm pretty sure we actually broke Nick that night. I had to doctor him out of his stupefied existential crisis on the drive to the party.... which we only stopped back at the apt that one time bc we forgot our belts.... that is the only reason....
Thanks for doing this write-up btw, I really wanted to write something but my memory's a lil hazy...
I got up a little earlier today so I could make it over to the event site in time for the morning events. Nobody else was really awake besides me, Ivan, and Drew, so the three of us drove over in my car and parked in our regular garage.
At the site, everyone was getting set up for Intermediate Routine finals. For the final time, Steve and I did our “I can judge if you need me” dance, and like always he said he was good to go for the day. I sat down to watch the routines and cheered on Roy Klein who was shortly afterwards announced as the winner.
The next event was Open Routine semi-finals. There was a last minute scratch of somebody (Kuba I think? He did prelims but was also doing net so I’ll go with him for now), so the next highest seed took his spot, who was Mathieu Gauthier. Mathieu also happened to be judging this pool so he jumped off the table and Steve called me over to fill his spot.
Mathieu warmed up quickly and I sat down with my judging papers. I again enjoyed judging the routines. Mathieu had a pretty sweet one using some orchestral Legend of Zelda music, and in general I was surprised at how much of the music I recognized. Kuba’s prelim music was from the third movement of Dvorak’s ‘New World’ Symphony, and Jindra’s was a really, really cool orchestral version of Paint it Black. The only other notable moment was having to see Ken get on stage only for the wrong music to play (obviously if you saw the results, you know he got through it).
After the first pool, Mathieu was called back to take his original judging spot so I hopped off the table and sat to watch the rest of the routines. It was incredible watching Honza play for his routines and the other few times he touched a bag. His control is unreal, and everything looked absolutely effortless. I’m pretty sure my jaw was hanging loose for the entirety of his routine (he did his first two dropless).
Routines finished up pretty quickly, and Circle semis were up next, so I got changed and warmed up for my only event I was competing in. Given that I was still basically coming off a year-long break and was still injured, I wasn’t taking competition very seriously. However, I did still want to do well for myself and was characteristically pretty nervous. I warmed up with my pool-mates of Kuba and Rene, we decided on a bag and headed into our spot with Evan.
Now, I always feel a sense of comradery when I compete with my friends in this sport, but I have never felt it stronger than in this circle. We all wished each other luck, and right before we started we all came together and did a group high five (there’s a really great picture of this floating around on facebook). In addition to this, since Kuba was the player before me, every time I passed to him, I would encourage him with “Come on, Poland, let’s go!”
I ruined my first run by dropping on my third trick (butterfly, uggggggh), so that at least loosened up my nerves. I had two not awful runs, with my best run coming in density. I dropped on my first try of Blurry Drifter, and thought “come on, I can do that.” I got it on the other side and went on to do an OK run (Ivan took video of all the pools, so that run is floating around Youtube somewhere). We finished up our circle and had hugs all around. The moments before and after we played were not only highlights of this tournament, but of my entire time playing footbag; thanks, you three.
I was the first pool in Circle, so I hung around to watch the next one to see how Nate would do. He was up against Dante, Felix, and Jindra. Nate’s first run was like 50 contacts of great varied stuff, and after everybody else went, Nick and I started talking, “oh shit, Nate could beat Felix.” After a couple more turns, “oh shit, Nate could beat Jindra too.” We were so stoked to watch him do so well, and we held hands for his last run to channel energy for our friend. Later in the day when it was announced that Nate won his pool and was moving on to finals, I couldn’t have been more proud of a friend of mine, and I must have hugged him and told him so three times that night.
After competition I kept on playing in the event site. We moved outside pretty quickly, and most everybody who was not in our circle went off to get food. Our circle consisted of myself, Nick, Mike, Pete Bowler, and Dante. We had a lot of fun, and since I wasn’t feeling super creative, I enjoyed stealing most of Dante’s starting links and putting my own twists on them.
Dante jumped out to head after the food-goers, and I think Pete and Mike stopped pretty soon after that. Ben Benulis jumped in to take the third spot, and Nick and I tried to finish up with some last combos. I hit Mobius>Blurry Drifter on one side and was trying to get the other side as the entire group of 15 people or so who’d left before showed back up.
Ianek heard me mention the combo I’d hit and asked if I was taking requests. I was planning on just hitting the link on the other side and stopping, but I was having fun so I said yes and kept going. Ianek wanted to give me something weirder with Blazing, and he came up with Blazing Pickup>Tapping DLO, which I got first try(!). Ken had the next one of Gyro Symp. Mirage>Fairy SS DLO, which I tried a few times before passing the bag to Nick, who eventually hit his challenge of Spinning Osis>Spikehammer on both sides.
I got the bag back and went for my combo again. I spun, planted on my left foot for the Symp. Mirage, and felt it happen immediately. My footing was off, I planted hard, and my entire weight went down on it. My ankle felt hot, and I heard that horrible, horrible snapping sound for the first time in three years.
I fell to the ground immediately, and the entire atmosphere changed. Nobody moved. Nobody said a word. I didn’t feel any pain, the only thing I could think of was “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, is this really happening again?” The last time I was at Worlds, in 2010, I twisted the same ankle, probably on the same Wednesday, in nearly the exact same way; I was so pissed off, I couldn’t believe it was happening in the exact same way.
I don’t know how long everyone was still, but after what must have been close to a minute, a woman I didn’t recognize walked over and asked if I was OK. I responded, no, and Ken ran inside to get me a bag of ice. I was so overwhelmed with frustration I cursed out louder than I ever have before. Two people helped me up and get to a seat. All I wanted to do was scream and throw my shoes at a wall, but I couldn’t even take them off or else the pressure on my ankle would be gone.
Ken came back and set me up with elevation and ice on my ankle, and I just sat there for a while. I felt like I might start crying soon. This was the most excited I’d been about footbag in years, and I knew what this twist meant. I wouldn’t play at the rest of the tournament, I’d be forced to sit at the sidelines, and I wouldn’t play at all for at least a month. I tried to stay optimistic by reminding myself that not playing would help heal my groin tendonitis, and that the last time I came off this injury in 2010 was when I got better than I’d ever been before.
After a while I walked over to a nearby pizza place with Pete, Nick, and Mike. They helped me make it there, carry my food, and get me set up at the table, which I was very grateful for. The guys were all really great, and everybody in general was such a big help, so seriously, thank you so much to everybody. I also want to say sorry to the crowd that had to witness the moment, and that it probably looked a lot worse than it really was.
I got back to the spot outside and sat down and started icing again. I sat next to Hania and told her that all I really wanted to do was go home. She was aghast that I would miss the video contest that was starting soon and tried to convince me to stay for it. I made her a deal that if I stayed for this that she would have to help me hobble back to my car, which she took.
We went up to the freestyle room where a projector and screen were set up, and I caught the last two videos in the contest. I fielded more questions about my ankle, and it hurt a little bit more every time I had to explain it to somebody. As I was going to find Hania, I ran into Ivan who I didn’t realize was still here. I let her know that she was off the hook, and then went back to the car with Ivan. We drove home and I basically sat, iced, and went to bed feeling really, really defeated.
Next: The Aftermath
Last edited by Matt K on 11 Aug 2013 13:56, edited 1 time in total.
I intended to do a long write up of worlds but have been spending too much time on videos to make it a reality, so thanks for posting your great account of everything. It makes me feel much better that everything is written down, and less guilty of not doing it myself.
The previous day, Ivan, Ken, and I had made plans to do something touristy on this day. Back in 2010 in Oakland, I took a day trip to San Francisco with Ian Brill, John Goode, and Ken, which was a really fun time, and I was hoping to have something similar to that here in Montreal (and at this point, I wanted to be as far from the event site as I could be).
Ivan and I got up pretty early and got ready to go pick Ken up from the dorms downtown where he was staying. The plan was to get breakfast, drive to the planetarium which had recently been renovated, and then to figure out the rest of our day after that. Ken needed a day away from footbag to relax and not worry his final routine the next day, I needed to be away from footbag in general, and Ivan was just happy to come along.
The two of us drove downtown, parked close to the dorms, and walked over to the dorm lobby to get Ken. We didn’t really know where we were going for breakfast, but Ivan had an idea, so we followed him. I had to remind the two of them to not run across the road too quickly, but I was mostly OK to walk on my ankle.
We eventually found a place and sat down to order. Ken did all of his orders in French, which prompted all of our servers to ask Ivan and I questions in French as well. We had to wait a while for food, but it was at least better than the poptarts I’d been grabbing all week. The three of us enjoyed our meals and talked mainly about our outside-of-footbag lives, which was nice at this point in the week.
By the time we had found this breakfast place, we didn’t really know where we were in the city, so we found a map to get back to the car. We set off in what could have been the right direction, but it would be a while before we’d see a road that would confirm it. I said “Let’s ask this guy in the suit, looks like he knows where he’s going.” Ken inquired, and it turned out we were going the exact opposite direction. Thanks Suited Man!
We got back to my car, which was at least an hour overdue on the parking meter, which thankfully had not been towed nor had a ticket on it. Ivan sat in the back, and Ken took shotgun, which meant that he would have to fight with Nick’s GPS to get us where we were going. He didn’t have the exact address, so he just put in ‘Planetarium,’ which sent us in the wrong direction.
Eventually we changed course towards the Olympic Stadium (which we knew was close), which took us back the way we had come, but we did get there eventually. Ivan slept for about 45 minutes and Ken and I talked a lot of footbag in the front seat. We passed by a really sweet looking amusement park that was across a river, which we talked excitedly about going to, but never got a chance.
The stadium area finally came into view, and although we didn’t know for sure that the planetarium was in this little park, we parked a few blocks away and walked back over. The closest thing was a gigantic movie theatre that had a Canadian Burger King inside where we asked for directions to the planetarium. Ken went to ask, and came back with his classic ‘wit’ and said “Yeah, turns out it’s on the other side of town… I’m just kidding, it’s right next door; he said we’d have to be stupid to miss it.”
Trying not to be stupid, we walked out about 300 feet to the left and were right in front of the planetarium. They were offering package deals between here and the Botanical Gardens/Insectarium that we considered getting, but we didn’t have firm plans for the rest of the day, so we just bought tickets that got us into the two shows in this building.
Before seeing the exhibits, I realized that I left my glasses in the car, so Ivan and I walked back to get them while Ken stayed to get in a Zen mode with his routine music. When the two of us got back, we bought some smoothies at the snack bar and then set off to look at the public displays while we waited for our shows to start.
In the other room, we learned a lot about the skies and interacted with their really sweet gigantic touch screens. It really felt like a place of the future, like something out of Star Trek, and I hope more informational facilities start adopting this technology. They also had more interactive stations, for example, our group terraformed Mars twice, so, you’re welcome people of the future.
Eventually we lined up to go into the room with the first show, and were greeted to a dim room, filled with lawn chairs and bean bags, and were welcomed to take a seat. The woman explained that we would be taking a trip through the skies accompanied by music. She encouraged us to keep our phones off, and for kids with light up shoes to take them off because they are “quite deranged.”
The show started, and the globe above us filled with a tree line, that eventually shot us up into the stars. I was kind of sleepy at this point, so I was in a weird dream state for the whole show and don’t remember a ton of specifics, but it was definitely a cool experience, and the Philip Glass music aided with the atmosphere.
The second show started immediately after the first, so we walked to the other side of the planetarium and took a seat in a much more traditional room where we learned about the stars we can see from our backyards. The guy who was announcing was the same person that Ken saw when he went to the old planetarium almost 10 years ago. He remembered the guy and said the last time he saw him, he was shouting at a crying kid to ‘grow up.’
Upon leaving the planetarium we all realized that we were pretty hungry, so we went back to the car and drove around looking for food. The GPS didn’t bring us to the exact restaurant we asked it to, but it did bring us to a restaurant (some Canadian Greek place? Something like that), which was a quaint little mom and pop place. It wasn’t great, but we certainly got food and left fairly full.
It was getting close to 6, and at this point we were interested in seeing the Insectarium, so we hustled back to the car and found it after not too long. We bought tickets and found out that we had until 7 to get through the Insectarium (which is inside the Botanical Gardens), so we ran as fast as my ankle could go to get there. On the way we saw the very beginning of the Gardens, which were absolutely incredible, made up of 10-30 foot botanical structures that were so well done. We also saw a couple wild foxes before we made it inside.
The insectarium was a mix of animate and inanimate displays. The coolest living display was the first one that we came to, and one that we marveled at for 15 minutes. It consisted of a tree that spanned between two boxes about 10 feet apart, bare on one side, and with leaves on the other. At the base of the bare side was an ant colony, and you could watch them cross to the other side, cut out portions of leaves, and transfer them back over.
It was open air, so you could get in real close and study particular ants. We found the ‘Doug Tank’ ant, who was waiting as another ant came towards him with a leaf. We thought Doug was going to take the leaf and go back home, but instead he hopped on and made the other guy carry the leaf and him. We didn’t have a lot more time, so we moved downstairs and made our way through the rest of the exhibits. The rest was really cool, but the ant exhibit was definitely the highlight.
Back outside it was starting to rain, so we had to decide if we wanted to hustle through the rest of the gardens for an hour, or come back the next day before finals and take more time with them (our tickets got us in for a second trip). We’d had a long day already, and the rest of this place seemed really awesome, so we promised ourselves that we would definitely come back in the morning. We got back to the car and drove back into the city; Ken got dropped off at the dorms and Ivan and I headed home.
Back at our apartment, Ivan was looking to stay in, but Mike and Doug wanted to go to the dorms to hang out, and to get Mike’s car (he left it there the night before and they rode these rental bikes home…. I’ll let them tell you about that). I wasn’t planning on drinking too much so I offered to drive all of us home in Mike’s car at the end of the night. Mike, the ant, and I walked to the Metro by our apartment and rode downtown.
On our way to the dorms we ran into Nate and Nick who told us that they were going to go see Felix’s show (where most of the footbaggers would be this night), but none of us were really into it, so continued on up to our destination. We found Ken and Evan upstairs having some beers and wishing them good luck in their final events the next day (routines and circle, respectively). I think Evan left shortly after that, and since there was only a few of us, Ken suggested a game of poker, which started with me, Ken, Mike, and Doug.
Ken was by the far the best player, yet somehow the other three of us managed to luck through most of the hands, even doing dumb stuff all the time like forgetting to shuffle all of the cards or forgetting to deal out the first two cards before taking bets. Ianek showed up and bought in at some point, and by the time Doug was trying to illegally buy in for a third time, Wiktor came and bought in, and Kuba came to watch.
We continued like this for a few hours (the longest I’ve ever played a single game of poker), with Mike being in the lead for a while. Wiktor had this really sweet Polish-gangster persona going on, as he leaned back in his chair, smoked a cigarette, and described to Kuba in Polish the rules of the game (but since we couldn’t understand, it sounded very tough). It eventually got down to the two of us, with him taking me all in every hand. I finally got dealt something good, a King and a Queen, so went all in against him. He flipped his cards revealing a King and an Ace (uggggggggh), and he ended up taking it all.
By the time our match ended, most people were back from the show so the house was crowded and people started playing footbag on the second level. I hobbled upstairs to watch and caught Nick doing some cool barefoot flapper spinning stuff. It was getting pretty late though, and we had to round up our whole gang to get going home. I think there were six of us in all, so they had to squeeze four people in the back seat of Mike’s car.
I drove us home like I promised, and had minor back pains for the rest of the night for how far forward Mike’s seat was set (and he’s taller than me!). Nate helped me with directions while the rest of the guys in the back shouted out to cute girls on the street as we passed. Drew ended up passing out on Doug’s shoulder, but we made it home safely. Nick and I stayed up for another hour talking, and then dozed off, excited to watch our friends in finals the next day.
Ugh, I again forgot something about Wednesday, so here it is:
After we watched Circle, the last event of the day was Request. Even though it was an unofficial event, it looked like just about everybody who was there would be competing, so we were all able to really get into it. There were enough people that we had to split up into three separate circles, and the circle I was in went without any elimination for seven rounds or so.
I was doing pretty well with all the combos, but unfortunately did the absolute ugliest Fariy Legover>DATW. It felt awful, and even though the bag went straight up and grazed my hand on the way down, I was too concerned with its cleanliness to catch it. The guys thankfully said it was OK, so I was able to keep going for a few more rounds. I ended up getting out on Rake>Ducking Osis (concepts that I don’t really do, which is always my downfall in Request), which sucked because I could have done the next few combos fairly easily. Oh well, I always have a great time in that event.
I sat back and watched the rest of the competitors go on for forever, pushing out the list of combos at least two times past where they were supposed to get. I was surprised to see Evan get out (on Double Spinning Clipper>Blurry Drifter juuuuust off his foot) because he normally destroys this event, but it eventually came down to Rene, Felix, and Honza. Honza ended up taking it, with Felix in second and Rene in third.
Friday: Tourism! I mean, Finals! I mean, Tourism, and then Finals!
So after my group’s promise to return to the Botanical Gardens this day, I got to bed and woke up fairly early in the morning. I started to get ready and went to wake Ivan up, but he unfortunately told me that he’d be staying in for the morning and afternoon. I continued getting ready, and Nick decided that he wanted to come along, and it certainly helped that he could use Ivan’s ticket to get in for free today.
The two of us drove downtown again, (I think each time I did this drive I went a slightly different way, and we got lost worse than ever this time) to pick up Ken, who was with a net player Manu who we’d never met before. He turned out to be a really cool guy, and he and Nick got along well at the gardens because they were both into nature and could discuss more details that Ken and I couldn’t.
We got to the gardens pretty quickly this day, now that we knew where to go, and parked. It was much busier in the afternoon, and we saw a line at a parking ticket machine. Turns out, in our rush to get in before closing the day before, we had shafted the place of the parking fee, whoops. Today, however, we paid our fee and headed inside.
After Manu bought his ticket we headed inside and again marveled at the wondrous structures. We took a different path this time to try to see as much as we could, and ventured through the China section, which was a definite highlight. I can’t imagine what it’s like to actually be there, but if this display is anything close, it seems incredible. We walked around for a couple more hours, hitting the insectarium again for the two who missed it the day before, and headed back to the car to go find some lunch.
We drove a couple of miles away, taking random turns until we found a ‘foody’ area, and eventually parked on a steep hill next to a big ol’ fat cat. We ended up at a Canadian Chinese place called the Rice Box and I think we were all pretty satisfied with our meals. After eating fairly quickly, we hurried back to the car so we could see the rest of the gardens and get Ken back in time to prepare for his final routine.
We did end up seeing pretty much all of the gardens and it was truly incredible. The most noteworthy piece was a gigantic 40 foot Gaia who had a waterfall coming from her hand and an eagle perched on here. Another noteworthy one was a huge tower made up of different kind of birds. Along the way, I also made the unfortunate comparison of how one of the garden gorillas looked like Arsenio Hall (he did! I swear! He had the same long face!). More silly times like this were had, but we eventually did have to get going back downtown.
I dropped off Ken and Manu right at the dorm and Nick and I drove back home. We got ready for the rest of the day (the after party was at a fancy place, so I put on my man pants), and this time Nick drove us into the city. Again, we got lost, maybe worse than in the morning, but we did make it there, park, and head upstairs.
I took a seat at the end of one of the benches, close to the judging table, and got ready to watch Women’s Routine finals. There were only four competitors (Chrissy, Caroline, Cassy, and Hania), but it was still exciting to watch. Everyone did fairly well, and Cassy put on a really great show with a one-drop routine which put a lot of pressure on Hania. She started off not too bad, but ended up having a fair number of drops by the end, and Cassy was announced shortly afterwards as the new female champion.
There was only a brief break before the Open Routine finals started up. I wasn’t judging this time, but had plenty invested at this point that I very much enjoyed watching everybody. I had to again cringe as Ken’s music was wrong, but got to watch in pleasure as my friend not only met his goal of making finals, but beat his seed and took 6th overall. The top three (Aleksi, Jindra, and Honza) were all very good, but it was just so clear watching Honza that he was far and away the best player and nobody could’ve taken this title from him.
After a short break, Circle finals started up, and I was by far the most excited about this event to cheer on my friend, Nate. Back on the sideline, Nick, Mike, and me all channeled the East Coast energy for our buddy and tightly clutched hands for each of his runs. He started off the competition with a perfect Pdx. Torque>Sumo and got around 40 contacts each run. Nate put on a great show each time, and I am insanely proud of him for making finals and proving himself as well as he did. The circle overall was probably one of the best there’s ever been; nobody choked, and everyone really had to earn their final place and not rely on anyone else messing up. You all know the results of that circle, and I’ll continue to say that it was incredible to watch Honza’s performance in person.
Freestyle was all done at this point, so everybody started to loosen up and just play for fun. It was fairly late so a lot of people went to get ready for the night, but plenty of people were still playing so I stuck around to watch everybody. I mainly focused on watching Nick, because he’s not only very open to tips and criticism but he’s so good at taking the advice and implementing it immediately. That night I gave him two tips, and in a matter of minutes, watched him do the best Atomic sets and shuffle that I’ve ever seen him do, which is incredibly satisfying from a teaching perspective. I also had another really nice conversation with Rene which made me sorry that I’d probably only get to see him once a year from now on.
The gym was closing, so we all had to head out. Nick and Ivan were looking to head home, while Mike and I were looking to get some dinner somewhere and possibly check out the after party, so we split up. Mike and I tried for about 2 minutes to find where the party was, but our hunger ultimately won that battle and we started looking for food. We ended up at this neat, open-air Canadian Mexican place where we shared a gigantic pitcher (three beers each), a plate of nachos, and pretty big dinners. It was weird to realize that in all our years of being friends (probably going on 7 at this point), this was really the first time we’d hung out just the two of us.
After dinner we found our way to the metro station and headed home. I was about ready to fall asleep on the train (and I think I did at one point), so luckily Mike was paying attention enough to realize that we were on the wrong train and headed in the exact opposite direction of where we needed to go. We hopped off and got back on the right way pretty quickly and just had to wait to get home.
It was about 2am by the time we got to the surface so there was nobody on the streets as we walked the couple blocks back to our apartment. We got in to find that Nick and Ivan were nowhere to be seen. Since the last time we saw them, about four hours ago, they were headed straight home, we started to worry a little bit. We unfortunately had no way of contacting them and eventually had to admit that we’d have to wait until the morning.
Luckily, they came in a couple hours later while I was sleeping so I didn’t have to worry at all. I had to get some decent sleep because this was the last night that we had our apartment, so I had to get all of my things together and ready to check out in the morning.
