I AM SO BUMMED OUT THAT IANEK IS GONE. He just left a little bit ago. This has been an amazing weekend. I have certainly made a new close friend in footbag. The coolest, nicest guy ever. Totally down to earth, same interests as me, grabs life by the horns, just really LIVES life ever day.
Ianek arrived on Friday evening, just after I got home from work. I was a little nervous for his visit, because my knee had been hurting quite a bit on Thursday through Friday. I was just praying to Allah that I would be in good shape for shred on Saturday. I iced my knee and put Biofreeze on it and kept it in a knee brace those 2 days. When I got home and Ianek showed up at my door, we all sat down (parents, Ianek, and me) and talked about his journey. My parents love Ianek too. Ianek told us of his travels and a little about his life, then soon after, footbag talk started. So we chatted about that for a while. Some interesting topics came up, like how to spread the sport wider, and patches that could be done to the ADD system to make everything more fair. There is no way that Grifter is the same difficulty as a to ss Butterfly...
After a little while of footbag talk, we sat down and just relaxed, ate dinner, and watched a movie with my dad.. well, we kind of had the movie on for background, because we sort of all just conversed over the movie about a bunch of topics. Ianek is just too interesting to quietly sit and watch a movie with. After that, we went to bed.
Woke up the next day, had some breakfast, then went for a hike in Valley Forge. I gave Ianek a tour of the park, which is like historical and shit. We talked all about his different travels and our loves of nature and wildlife. I've decided that I must take a trip to the west coast at some point, as well as Costa Rica. Too many unbelievable amphibians, reptiles, and birds. my 3 other passions outside of footbag.
Here is a picture of us at the main look out point at Valley Forge:
On our way back to the car, we spotted an interesting small falcon. Anyone else would be totally bored learning about birds, but Ianek has an interest for all wildlife, which is awesome. So we stalked this falcon to try to identify it better. We both had binoculars, but this was something I had never seen before, and I'm still trying to do some research to find out what it was.. I currently have no idea, other than that it was a small accipiter. Anyway, enough nerd talk.
When we got back to my place, we were just in time for the session. My neighbor owns a tang zoo do dojang, and he let us use it for the whole day after 2:30, which was super nice of him and also totally awesome, because we used the crap out of it.
We head down there and start our session. It was filmed and I am editing it now. I think I may do the rough edits, then and it to Bonslaver so he can have some fun with some fancy after effects and stuff. He's been wanting to try out some new stuff he looked into. Should be a great video with a little bit of everything. Hardcore shred, lots of variety, lots of fun/silly stuff, surprising things. Excited to star editing. Anyway, the session was amazing. We were both very pleased. We realized our games are so similar, but so different at the same time. After we finished kicking, Ianek looked at all the concepts in my game and helped me clearly understand some stuff I had been having problems with, like Atomic, Pixie, and some other things.
One thing I hit off camera to end the session, was Toe ss Swirling Mirage. Never hit it before. But when I landed it, I rolled my ankle a bit

So I won't be playing for a little while, due to knee and ankle injury. But honestly, I'm glad, because this was a blessing in disguise. I needed a break anyway.
After our 3.5ish hour session, we headed back to my place and Ianek explained his ADD-patching ideas to me for hours. It wasn't boring. His new idea is totally logical and makes more sense than our current ADD system. After that, we watched old footbag videos and then went to bed.
Ianek just left a little while ago. Really sad to see him go, but man, we had such a great time. Talking, hiking, footbagging. Every moment with him this weekend has been so gnarly. I can't say one negative thing about the dude.
Anyway, I'm going to be taking about 2 weeks off from footbag now. I got some great runs and combos in the upcoming video, but I really need a rest. So it will be nice to have a good video come out as a check point for my last session before my break.
Good news, though. Ianek said he will be back. We invited him back to our house and/or our vacation RV in Maryland. Really looking forward to seeing him again. I love new footbag friendships.
Good day to you all.