More importantly for this crowd, I played some footbag with others. This guy Joshua Rilko posted something a while back asking if there were any kickers in Sydney or Melbourne. Whenever I see a message like that, the immediate thing to do is to say, well hey mate Canberra is just down the road. Actually Copey had already done that, and it turned out they were coming to Canberra to play the Folk Festival.
On Saturday I met Josh and his bandmate PJ and we had a kick. That was good fun, convenient too as they were staying close enough to us that I could suggest that we play at the local shops. Josh has posted some stuff on the Facebook groups, he's really getting into it, learning a few sets, atomic sets even. Interesting that I was actually one of the few other people he has played with. PJ is starting out, he has Lavers too and was getting some of the tricks like mirage, pickup, etc. They are in the band together so they can play whenever. That day I wasn't doing much special, but I had a few decent length runs.
The next day there was a Sepak Takraw tournament on. I was glad to get there and check it out.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhBGvevnV_K
I met this guy Alex (left red player in the video), I had talked to him on Facebook a few times. He's very involved in the takraw scene on an international level. He came up to me with my Facebook profile on his phone and said - "is this you" I said it was. We had a good chat, was quite interesting to see what is happening here in Australia with takraw. He said they have some groups like him, who are keen to grow the sport, then other groups from the ethnic communities, who want to keep it quite closed and as their own traditional game (even though there are a lot of very similar traditional games across the different communities).
This was a pretty good event, seems it's the biggest in Australia. They had 6 courts running at once. I was hoping to get in a social game, though I didn't stay around long enough. I did have a little kick around with the takraw with some guys but then they had their match.
Sunday I was able to kick with Josh again. We kicked in the carpark of his hotel, but there was shade so that worked quite well. We were coming back from the swimming pool and it was on the way, so Nico rode his scooter around the carpark.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhEBLTRHWIU
I got some more on video but this is all I put up on Instagram. I will probably try and put together a little vlog or something from the weekend. That might even be tonight's project once I get home from work. Not so long to go now, it's been a pretty slow night.
I went for a bike ride before I came into work, and got this clip down by the lake. The jetty thing was kind of damp and slightly slippery but I managed to get comfortable on there after a short while. This run went quite well, about 30 contacts.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BhGHNghHhXO
Josh said he hopes they can tour Australia again next year, so it would be really cool to try and to a footbag tournament on one of the festivals or something. That could be a lot of fun.
I thought this was a post lacking in a bit of colour then I realised this was a top post.
This is a painting of Mt Ainslie, which is the hill just down the road from where I live.
http://www.martinpaull.com.au/exhibition.html for more info on the artist. I don't actually know anything about him, I just wanted a very local painting.
