Bobby G's footblog

[bobgreen]

I hope to get the chance to play with you some day soon 

Thanks for the nice comments! I always love to shred with new people, so I’d look forward to kicking with you in the future. I can’t tell from your profile who you are ‘IRL’ and where you live though. We have our house on the market at the moment and are planning to move from MA to CA assuming we can get a reasonable offer for our place. If time allows, I’d like to drive across the country to see some sights and hit up as many players as possible along the way. If I don’t meet you at an event first, maybe that would be an opportunity to shred.

Hope to see more footage from you and ya' shred pahtnah, who shares his nickname with a sandwich.

I may need a better camera before I film one of our sessions. It can keep up with me, but I don’t know if my 2006 camera can keep up with my 2014 shred pahtnah!

Did you get any footbag in during this European sojourn? Todexon 1? Though that may have been the following year.

I was just in Ireland and Northern Ireland for the whole trip, which was only one week long. Just did some solo shred as footbag.org did not have any clubs listed near where I was visiting.

My second trip to Europe was in May of 2002 to visit a buddy of mine going to graduate school in Berlin. I can’t remember if I had e-mailed them ahead of time, but I do remember that my friend ended up calling the contact for FC Footstar Berlin for me to set up a time/location for shred. There were I think 4-5 guys that came out. I remember meeting Matthias Lino Schmidt, and also Paul Cronjaeger. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the names of the other folks that showed up. I lived in Pennsylvania by this time and Paul had done an exchange program to a town not too far from where I lived so we chatted about the PA shred scene. Nice group of guys and awesome of them to meet me for a shred.

I’ve traveled to Europe a number of times since then but all of that was during my 8 year break from footbag, so no other European shred for me yet.

enjoyed the vid. didn't realize you had lost so much weight. went browsing through your photos on fb. congratulations! i know it's not much but i have lost 10 since playing and now am hovering under 150. haven't been that light in decades! play because you love the sport!

Thanks Aaron. Ten pounds is pretty substantial when you haven’t let yourself totally go the way I had! In 2005 when I stopped playing I was already up to 210 or 215 and stopped playing regularly in part because my knees would hurt after I played. I made the decision that I would start playing again once I dropped a few pounds, but when you stop your only form of exercise and don’t change your calorie intake it doesn’t make for a very successful weight loss plan. My other hobbies ALL revolve in one way or another around food (cooking, cheese making, gardening, preserving what I gardened, and brewing), so that’s not so helpful either. By 2006 or 2007 I was up to about 245 and figured that my footbag days were over. I avoided going to tournaments even when I knew they were nearby (e.g. Beantown throwdowns) because I didn’t want to be the fat guy that used to play showing up just to watch. I tried to lose weight around 2009 and did get down to 225, where I more or less held steady until last year. Then with my new commute that I mentioned on FB, I was riding bike and buckled down on some dietary changes to help loose weight and finally had some success. When I started kicking again last November I think I was about 205, so in retrospect I guess I met my original condition that I would start playing again once I dropped a few pounds. My original goal from when I was at my heaviest was to get down to 190, but I am actually at about 175-180 right now. Funny part is I think I could still lose 5-10 pounds but I’ve been maintaining at my current weight for a few months now.

By the way, if Paul happens to read my blog I think it is fucking awesome that you are dropping pounds too! Losing weight is such a bitch. When you posted your level 1 badge it was really cool because you could see a lot of your current transformation in the same video.

Alright, that was probably more detail than probably anyone cared to hear about. In the current internet vernacular, TL;DR.

Getting ready to shred it up with Hogan in an hour or two. Looking forward to it!

[shred4life]

Thanks for the nice comments! I always love to shred with new people, so I’d look forward to kicking with you in the future. I can’t tell from your profile who you are ‘IRL’ and where you live though.

I added my name to my signature now. But I'm Vince R from Grand Rapids, MI. I travel a lot for work and sometimes end up in the Boston area... Next time I'm out that way I'll have to hit you guys up. (If you haven't made it to CA by then)

PS, MI is an excellent detour to make on the cross country journey
Would be more than happy to put you up for a night or two as well (and this goes for anyone reading this )

[bobgreen]

Hey Vince, you should definitely look us up next time you are out this way! Even if I've moved by then, you should still look up Kevin.

A stop in Grand Rapids would absolutely be plausible! The shortest route there would take us through Ontario, so maybe even some FAT action? We have a good friend in Madison that we want to hit up too, and Grand Rapids would be pretty well along the way there. Do you know anything about the ferry that goes from Muskegon area to Milwaukee area? I'm not sure if we would try to take that or drive around Lake Michigan through Chicago.

My only concern with the trip at this point is timing. Originally we had planned to move by end of summer, but we do not yet have an offer on our house so the timing on that does not look so good. To make a road trip across the country enjoyable, I'd want around 1.5 - 2 weeks which is a concern for me if my son Ruari has already started school by the time we move. Time will tell I guess.

Fun session with Hogan yesterday at my place. After a rainy 4th of July the sun came out and made for awesome shred weather. I think both of us played pretty well, but I don't remember too many specific combos. I know I had one string with ducking clipper b2b and also diving clipper. Was also working on flip drifter which is coming pretty close now. I hope to have it soon!

[shred4life]

Here's some info about rates for the ferry
http://www.lake-express.com/rates-fares ... fares.html
Unless you get terrible gas milage, I would assume it would be cheaper to drive around the lake. If money isn't a problem, it is DEFINITELY faster

It looks like the ferry runs from May 1 - Nov 2

[bobgreen]

Thanks for the info, Vince. Yeah, between the car and my family it looks like the ferry would be around $400. I think gas would be about $50, so I guess the question is whether the ‘ferry experience’ is worth $350. I think the ferry would be really fun for the family, especially my son Ruari, but $350 is a lot of money.

I was thinking about writing up another ‘throwback’ post as it seems like some folks like them, but I think for today I’ll stick with current events.

Played solo four times in the last eight days and had one session Kevin Hogan and Pete Bowler in that time as well.

Solo Sessions:
In terms of the solo sessions I’ve been following a program, which isn’t too exciting to report on but I’ll give it a go anyway. One of the drills is clipper > pickup > butterfly > pdx mirage > mirage > same mirage > clipper > mirage. I’ve hit that a good number of times this week, and was able to get through the whole thing b2b a couple of times this week. Trying to do things like that to work on consistency. In terms of more exciting highlights I’ve gotten:
*spinning clipper BSOS 2x this week
*ducking clipper > spinning clipper BSOD (happy to see that Acronym, Nick?)

Been working in drifter too. Still haven’t hit flip drifter since my return to footbag. I’ve been giving that at least 10 attempts each session, and I've footed it a couple times recently. Soon I hope.

B$C Reunion Shred at Boston Common:
Wednesday night the godfathers of B$C, Pete Bowler and Kevin Hogan, met up with me in the oldest city park in the United States. Dating from 1634, Boston Common consists of 50 acres of land and is the home of the Frog Pond, Boston Massacre Memorial, Parkman Bandstand, Brewer Fountain, and AWESOME SHRED.

I arrived first and was sitting by Brewer Fountain (aka Park Street Station Fountain) watching people and enjoying the sound of running water and the nice weather we were having. Pete spotted my shoes, and came up to introduce himself to me. We caught up for a few minutes, and Kevin arrived shortly after. Bromance ensued and shortly after everyone was pulling their pants off. In preparation for footbag.

I’ve never shredded with Pete, but he did not look like someone who had been laid up the last 8 months recovering from a busted leg. I don’t want to spoil his highlights in case he decides to blog about it, but I was duly impressed.

Kevin was busting out a lot of really long, dense strings. He’s been doing a lot of really stylie shit too like throwing in flying legovers and rakey things like gyro toe, wauxpins, etc. At one point there was a huge tourist group that walked through. Kevin got the bag right as they started to come through and proceeded to shred balls through the duration of the entire tourist parade.

I hit a couple of strings that I was really pleased with. I don’t do a very good job counting contacts, but I’m pretty sure I had one or two nice tiltless runs with decent variety that were around 20 contacts. I ended the session with drifter > spinning clipper which i was pretty stoked about.

After the session we grabbed a beer and then went on our merry ways. Super fun time, and I can’t wait to do it again!

[bobgreen]

G’day gov’nahs!

Turns out my overnight work trip now extending into its third night away from home. I had anticipated a slight possibility of the trip slipping for an evening so I brought my footbag gear and one extra change of clothes. So glad that I did! Had not expected to be gone this long, so had to go buy a clean shirt for tomorrow and I picked up a new pair of shorts for footbag while I was at it. I was in pretty dire need of more shorts anyway, so that was actually a good thing.

Just finished up a session in the exercise room of the hotel. Nice padded floors, so my knees and ankles are happy. Decided to spend the session just trying to get personal bests.

Managed personal records for a variety of things:
around the world (r)
around the world (l)
infinity
ducking clipper
mirage > legover > rpt
mirage > same mirage > rpt

A lot of these I hadn’t tried in a while, so it was exciting that for a couple of them I broke my old record on the first try.

Tonight I also worked again on flip drifter. Had several attempts that felt so-so, but was having problems with the bag hitting my setting/support below the knee on my shin after clearing the drifter dex. Finally had one attempt where that didn’t happen but my foot was too slow to get to the bag, but I knew I was on the right path. Next attempt I finally hit it! I love that feeling you get when finally hitting something you’ve been working on. I only hit it once, but if I did it once that means I’ll be doing it again and am hopefully on my way to BSOS and B2B

Toward the end of my session, a couple brought in their toddler to waddle around burn off a little toddler energy. Despite the fact that I was playing with a ‘ball’, the kid was very well behaved and avoided temptation to come grab it while I was playing. That said, at one moment she bobbled toward me and I saw her in my peripheral vision just as I was going for bubba mirage and it felt like I came very close to giving her a knee to the head. After that I couldn’t focus too well because I kept worrying I’d hurt her, so I decided to call it a night. Cute little girl….I would have felt like a royal asshole if I’d tagged her!

[bobgreen]

I’ve been enjoying the photos of both footbag related and non-footbag related life events in other folk’s blogs, so I’ve decided to include a few of my own.

At the moment I work in South Boston, and my house is a 38 mile (~60km) drive from my job. My town is the last stop on the commuter rail line, so I have the choice of driving or taking the train. I had typed up a few paragraphs discussing the details of each option, but my own eyes started to glaze over when I re-read that so I will spare you that pain. The short version is that I purchased a folding bicycle when I started the job and that I do a dual-mode train/bicycle commute (except for the winter months, when I drive). Built into this is 8 miles of bicycle riding per day, and while that isn’t a ton it is was the start of me being more active and in that sense was the first step on my path to playing footbag again after stopping for 8 years.

Usually I am pretty internally focused during the commute thinking about work or whatever, but I try to remember at least a few days per week to just enjoy what is around me. This week I snapped a few photos during the commute.

I start my day at approximately the ass crack of dawn, take a 1.4 mile ride mostly downhill, and end up at the local station in time to head out on the 5:38 am train.



When the train leaves my station, it immediately crosses the Merrimack River. This time of year there are really pretty views with the sun just coming up. Summer is fleeting and in another month or two it will be dark still.



Boston has made a big effort the last few years making the city more bicycle friendly. Along most of my route there are bicycle lanes that just a few years ago were not there. I’m still a prairie boy at heart, and I if it were not for these bike lanes I don’t think I would have worked up the courage to make bicycling through Boston part of my commute. Below is a photo I snapped after leaving North Station along the way toward Faneuil Hall.



There is a section of South Boston along the waterfront that has is called the “Innovation District”. I don’t know what political mechanisms are in place to make it happen, but the city has been trying to encourage high tech businesses to come in. The picture below was snapped just as I was approaching the bridge to cross into the Innovation District. Just to the left of the South Boston Waterfront sign, almost directly above the bridge, you can see a building that they started working on a couple of months back. On the left side of the bridge are “the bones” of another building that is being worked on, and behind that is a white building that is just getting finished up. A year ago when I started, that massive white building was in the same state as the building on the right of the bridge. It is amazing how much new stuff is being put in down there and how quickly it gets built.



Here is a picture I snapped looking south from the bridge that leads into the Innovation District.



My work is directly across the street from a drydock where ships are brought in for repair. In the year that I’ve been there, we’ve probably had 4 or 5 different ships come in. Here is a picture of the one they are fixing up now that I took from my office. These things are massive, and it is pretty neat to be able to see them from this view. Boston Harbor is in the background.



And to honor the footblog spirit, I will mention that we did have another session in Boston Common last night. Biggest turnout so far this summer I think. We had Kevin Hogan, Dave Remmilard, Pete Bowler, Erjon Milo, and myself in a 5 person circle for a while. Kevin and Dave were the last guys standing and they were both tearing it up pretty well. Pete and Erjon each only hung out for a little while, and although I was there the whole time I had a really off night. Felt unfortunate because I’d had a pretty good solo session the evening before at home. I’m lucky to have a group to kick with though, so I guess I’ll just have to tear it up at the next group session.

I’ll close this post with photo of the fountain we’ve been shredding next to.

[boyle]

Awesome photos, too bad you couldn't put the solo efforts into the group session, but it's always nice to hang out.

[akprice]

congrats on flip drifter. that's awesome! can't wait to try those.

funny, darren and i have been shredding next to a fountain as well. not as spectacular as yours, but...



also those tables and chairs are not there anymore so it's wide open for bags flying around.

[h0ag3yb3atZ]

shredding with bob tomorrow and he's gonna hit drifter back to back and shit, gonna be super fly.

nice pics, I saw you snap off that last one on friday and the end result looks great.

stoked!

[bobgreen]

Met up in Salem for shred with Hogan yesterday, and man oh man what a good time! I hit a 25 contact tiltless string during warmups, which is great for me, and the session continued to go well from there. Flip drifter continues to be a bit elusive, but I worked on that for a while and Kevin gave me some good tips on it. I will keep at it until I can start hitting it consistently. I did manage to hit the following:
pixie muted clipper > drifter (my best substitute for drifter b2b)
plo > plo (first time hitting this since coming back to footbag)
spinning clipper bsos (been doing this a few times per week, but still highlight worthy for me)
ducking clipper > whirl > whirl
toe drifter sealed into a decent-ish string (brand new for me)

Also worked a bit on flip clipper set barrage. I cleared the dexes on a few attempts but missed the delay afterward. I feel pretty confident that I'll be able to add that into my game soon.

Kevin had a ton of long dense strings too. Hopefully he will post more highlights in his blog, but I was particularly impressed with one string that must have been close to 30 contacts with lots of good stuff including both gyro DLOs and a finish with PS whirl to hand catch. The PS whirl might have been ducking PS whirl. I told Kevin that my eyes are too old to keep up with all of the adds that he lays down.

We needed some fuel after kicking so we grabbed a beer at a nearby bar and then headed over to mexican joint for a bite to eat. Kevin was kind enough to give me a ride home where we watched a bit of California Connection before he took off. Super fun night!

[bobgreen]

Well, well, look who I got caught behind in traffic this evening. My wife had seen this car out and about one time too. Driver was probably in his mid-50's and seemed to just be enjoying life and taking his DeLorean for a leisurely drive.


Seems appropriate then that we should go back in time. Okay McFly, set the dial for September 16, 1998.


In 1998 I was in university studying chemistry, playing footbag a fair bit, and an avid participant in the footbag.org freestyle discussion listserve. For newer players who do not know, the footbag.org listserve was an e-mail discussion group advertised for “Advanced discussions about freestyle footbag (moves, dds, paradox, judging systems, etc.)”. As far as I know, it was the first organized way that freestylers kept in touch online. For anyone interested, you can still find the archives at this URL: http://list.footbag.org/majordomo/index/freestyle

Back to the time in question. That September the topic of the day seemed to be the concept of sets, and atomic sets in particular. I surfed through the discussion archive and found this exchange between Eli Piltz and Adrian Dick from September 16, 1998:

Adrian’s original message:
> 1. Us kiwi's call this one 'Blackjack' - Toe > op out dex > op in
> dex > op clip del
> Its pretty much a reverse Miraging Whirl - 4 adds

Eli’s response:
I've adopted the adjective 'Atomic' for moves starting with a
reverse-mirage (stemmed from atom smasher)
So I call this 'Atomic Whirl'

Adrian’s message:
> 2. We call this one 'Silo' - Toe > op out dex > op in dex > (back)
> spin > op clip del
>a toe set reverse miraging torque... 5 adds methinks

Eli’s response
Hence this one would be an 'Atomic Torque' This move is astonishing,
who hits it out there?
I'm pretty close to doing 'Paradox Atomic Torque'
Haven't done it normal yet (better side atomic set leads to my bad
side torque, so I try it pdox).

Also, you should try 'Atomic Drifter' and 'Atomic Blender' and 'Atomic
Double Legover'. They are hittable

Eli

These concepts were bleeding edge back then, which is really neat to re-read given the level of the sport today. At that time I had never seen* atom smashers, legbeaters, or any other atomic tricks in person, nor had I seen any video of these tricks. I had already seen illusion, but I could not at all picture how anyone would have time to cram in another dex after the reverse mirage dex. Essentially I could not picture a ‘hippy‘ set as I was only used to seeing ‘leggy‘ downtime illusion.
*There is a decent chance I saw these tricks when I was a spectator at 1997 Worlds before I knew what I was actually watching

Fast forward about a month when I would go to Austin, TX for my first ever chemistry conference.


I get that a spectroscopy conference outside the scope of interest for most folks, but I was pretty excited to go to a city that I’d never been to and to meet experts in the field that I was immersing myself in.

What will resonate with most readers here is that I found out shortly before going that this was going on in Austin the same weekend I would arrive!


Sometimes the stars do align, and I was stoked to be able to attend my first footbag tournament in a cool city with an expense paid trip due to the conference I was attending. Turns out I really lucked out, because the 1998 Texas State Championships had quite a few awesome freestylers in attendance:
Intergalactic Eli Piltz
Kung Fu Kyle Crawford
Big Add Chad Devlahovich (aka Hollywood Chad)
Die Hard Dave Holton (aka Teva Dave)
Derric Scalf (local Texas crew)
Matt “Sofa King” Strong (local Texas crew)
Ariel Santesteban (local Texas crew)

I flew down to Austin with my advisor and one other student the day before the conference was to start and then we went to the hotel to check in. After I got my bearings I figured out that the tournament was about 2 miles from where we were staying. So I laced up my lavers and huffed it over there as quickly as I could.

This is going to be a long post, so hopefully a tangent isn’t too out of order. To get to the tournament site from the hotel I had to cross the Congress Avenue Bridge. Mean anything to you? It didn’t to me before I went to Austin. This bridge is a very popular tourist destination because of the bats that live there and come out at dusk. You may also be aware of the Congress Avenue Bridge if you are an Uncluded fan.

Sup sup Austin, I know a little magic
No checked bags show up with the most baggage
Fresh hell dragging old hell up from holed rabbits
Who mangle emotion in gross patterns, No Carrots
No Carrots, only rumors of a bridge that flickered with black scallops
And float pine out of the bathtub of crass maggots
Bats!
One point fuckin five schmillion
A number underminding how they duck and dive different
And I was waiting for an hour and I merely saw six
Some thought it was a bust, I thought it was the shit

Here is an image of the bridge from the interwebs:


After a brisk paced walk I get to the tournament site and locate the freestylers and find a step to sit on and watch for a while. There in person I got to see people talking about and hitting this atomic concept, which I had only read about 3 weeks prior and couldn’t even imagine before seeing it. Fucking cool! Initially I didn’t have the guts to join the circle, but someone saw the Lavers and eventually called me into the circle. I don’t really remember much about the actual playing that day or what I hit, but I do remember just meeting a lot of really cool people. Aside from seeing some of the names through the .org mailing list, this was the first time I met any of these folks. The tournament logo above is from a tank top that someone gave to me without me even having to pay the registration fees. Footbag people are cool. Got to know the Texas guys pretty well, and actually shared a room with them at 1999 Worlds in Chicago. Perhaps a story for another day if I get around to it.

I do need to get to an actual event so I have something current to talk about, but for now I’ll leave you with this.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Bob, I'm on my phone or else I'd give you a props that was one of the coolest blog posts I've read on modified. So cool that all that lined up well for you. Reading the atomic topic listserve was crazy! I wish I was around for that. I take atomic sets for granted, but now thinking about it, I can see why it was so ground breaking for the sport.

As soon as you mentioned thathe bridge, I knew I recognized it. Believe it or not, I am an Uncluded fan I don't know if driving 6 hours to see them with you and Kevin would prove this or not lol but yeah footbag people definitely are cool. I'm glad you had a good experience with that at your first jam. We've gotta get you to another jam. NYFA jam 8 at the end of August? East Coasts Championships at the end of September? I know Kevin and Pete will be at both.

Also, I have a request for a future flashback post... I'd love to hear about how you met Bob Reifer and how you guys started playing/any cool stories you can share he texted me recently and asked to session again soon, by the way. I'll let you know when that happens.

By the way, great post

[janis]

Completely awesome writeup. Thanks for posting that.

[bobgreen]

I'm glad you guys liked that. I had fun writing it.

I really would like to get to NYFA, ECFC, or both. My work schedule is so crazy right now the only time I ever see much of my family is on the weekends, so I'd like to figure out how to bring them with me. This comes down mostly to crash space because I don't want to spend $200-300 per night on a hotel room. We are totally down to sleep on floors or whatever, but I also have to be careful about what after shred shenanigans my son is exposed to. I'll post something in the Events section to see whether anyone has family friendly crash space or would like to split accommodations somewhere.

And Nick, I'll have to think through some stories to tell about shred sessions with Bob. We played pretty consistently for 4-5 years, so I should be able to come up with something. As far as meeting him, it really goes back to the .org listserve I mentioned in the last post and looking up club listings on footbag.org. I guess you could say Steve Goldberg introduced us. That's one thing I left out of the Texas State story is that I met Steve there. I remember him asking me how I found out about the event and me mentioning footbag.org and him letting me know that was his baby.

Anyway, when I was finishing up I basically expanded my job search to anywhere in the United States. Idaho is pretty rural, and typically jobs for chemists and rural areas are not well paired. I had promising leads both in Albuquerque, NM and at Merck in West Point, PA. There was no shred scene that I was aware of in NM so that was lower on my list from that perspective, plus it seemed that Merck had a really good reputation as an employer. By this time Bob had already held a few events in PA and it was clear that there was a pretty decent freestyle presence around that area. This excited me about the prospect of living in PA, and I sent him an e-mail at some point and we corresponded for a few months before I ever even moved out. That was nice to have someone to get input from about the area before coming out, and also nice to have a built in friend before moving to a new area. As soon as I relocated, Bob and I started playing 1-2 times/week together and we had various other folks in the shred crew that came in and out over time. Afterward we would normally have a beer or two and talk footbag or work related stuff. We did very different work, but we were both young guys in our first "professional" jobs so mostly bullshitting about corporate life and that kind of stuff.

[F[uns]tylin' Eclectic]

Cool read! I used to end my sessions with Bob the same way.. Beer and bullshit!

Cant wait to hear more tales of Bob from Bob.

I miss that bastard, and unfortunately, he keeps being really hard to get a hold of. Haven't had that session with him yet. Hoping to have it soon though.

Also, with regards to ECFC and/or NYFA Ocho, Drew posted some camping sites that would be a "child-friendly" alternative.

Either way, hope you can make it to both/one. I'll be at boths!

[Cass]

Whoa you're a chemist!? That's awesome, me too!!! I'm curious what industry you're currently working in and if you like it. I'm just about to begin my career in chemistry.. or something.

I really liked the post about the Texas champs also. Footbag events and conferences are the best so it's super cool to be able to combine them!

Hope to see you at ECFC!

[bobgreen]

Whoa you're a chemist!? That's awesome, me too!!! I'm curious what industry you're currently working in and if you like it. I'm just about to begin my career in chemistry.. or something

I’ve gathered that you do organic synthesis? I do analytical and would consider myself a vibrational spectroscopist but I’m actually doing mass spectrometry right now. I started out in the pharmaceutical industry doing process monitoring, but for the last several years I’ve worked on development of miniaturized handheld instruments. Overall I love what I do! You going to be at NYFA or just ECFC? Either way I look forward to meeting you too, and talking both footbag and chemistry.

In footbag news, I’ve still been working on drifter. I’ve now played into and out of strong drifter with a variety of stuff, but flip drifter continues to be a pig. I hit flip drifter on July 15th, but as I read in one of Anssi’s blogs just because you’ve hit something does not mean that you’ve learned it. I’ve continued pressing on that, and for the last week I basically dedicated at least half of every practice to flip drifter. Working on trying the trick itself as well as similar things like pixie muted clipper which I can do without too much trouble.

Through this effort, I can tell that I’ve been slowly chipping away at it and that the motion is feeling more natural and finally I started to foot the trick several times per session the last few days. I made a few mental notes of where I thought I was still going wrong and decided yesterday was going to be the day and that I just needed to be persistent. It did take persistence, but finally repeated ‘the glory of July 15th’ by hitting the damn thing again. In the end I actually hit it 3x yesterday, so I’m encouraged that I’m on my way.

Aside from drifter, I also hit whirl > pdx mirage BSOS and ducking butterfly on both sides yesterday. I was so close to BSOS on the ducking butterfly. Earlier in the week I managed 40 contacts tiltless with one of the drills that I warm up with. Very little variety there, but still good to get my stamina and consistency up. I was really out of breath at the end of that, which I think is a reflection of poor breathing technique more than it is being out of shape.

Missed shredding with my fatha Hogan this week due to work travel, but looks like we are on for tomorrow. Stoked!

[bobgreen]

Played with Hogan on Monday. I can’t believe how quickly summer has been going. We are starting to push up against daylight considerations when scheduling mid-week, after work shred sessions.

Had Kevin watch my flip drifter a few times and got some tips from him that I’ll be trying to work on. I feel like learning drifter is more difficult for me than it should be, and I’m looking forward to being able to hit that one consistently in strings.

I also hit two new tricks.

Was messing around and tried paradox whirl just for fun and was surprisingly close. So I gave it a few more tries and got close each time. After maybe 5 tries on one side I switched to the flip and hit it on the first try! Joked that I should stop while my pdx whirl success rate on that side is 100%. Ended up spending a good chunk of the rest of the session going for it on the original side I had been trying. I footed it a number of times but never quite got it. I think I was driving Kevin nuts that I couldn’t just hit the damn clipper. I probably spent a bit too much time on it, but I thought it would be really cool to get it on both sides the first day working on it. Either way, I’m pretty excited and I’ll work on adding more whirl stuff to my game.

Also hit terrage a bit later in the session, which is also a new trick for me.

Kevin and I are planning to travel together to NYFA jam. I’m really looking forward to that....thinking this will be my first event since 2005 Chilly Philly!

[boyle]

awesome that you're right back in the game and going to the events, these upcoming East Coast events sound really cool.