Mosher's Footblog

[mosher]

Paul wasn't so happy that I posted an ugly picture of him, so here is one of him looking dashing with Mathias gazing:



Here is a great picture of Tim Heun, I stayed at his house last year when I was in Berlin for the footbag summer camp. It would be totally impossible to ever fully describe Tim! I am really fortunate to have him as a friend though, he is one of the only people ever that I have trouble keeping up with!



He's a big fucking bear of a great guy.

All of these shots were from the Fusion music festival.

[mosher]

Last night was footbag club night, quite fun indeed.

It was a small 905 meeting, only myself, skippy and hunter.

I tooootally built a full on net court in my backyard! I used ski poles, rope and tent pegs to make something basically legit looking.

My dream came true too, I got to roll spike!

We played with a freestyle bag because it was just too discouraging trying to use the net bag with our curvy lavers.

I can imagine us winding up liking net, but we are all still freestylers to the core.

I don't think I had any shred highlights... uuhh... anyways, we had fun.

Then afterwards I had dinner with my sister and then biked over to Hunter's house for a 'candleing' session.

Oh boy, it'd be hard to fully describe the candle. It's located in a secret nook in the ravine behind his house, it weighs about 300 lbs and is well over 6 feet tall. Basically it's the biggest accumulation of candle wax you will ever see and it's something he's been working on for a long time that friends of his are welcome to join in on. I quite enjoy it, we relax and talk and it's all mellow and (obviously) candle-lit.

Here is the blog for the candle.

http://itstartswithagiantcandle.blogspot.com/

I did alot of work on bulking up the near side of the green tower last night.

He took more pictures, perhaps they will get posted.

I think I am shredding again today? Footbag everyday bitches!!

[mosher]

The candle! (only the topmost layer of wax is actually the red/green/blue colours you see)

[mosher]

Here's some photos from the night I stayed at Rene Ruhr's house building up his new bike:

http://picasaweb.google.com/reneruhr/TomInBerlin

I don't think I can direct link to them.. let me try..



That will probably be a little red x box.

Anyways, there are some cool pictures and the bike came out super sick so have a look if you wish.


Have you ever played Apples to Apples? If you havn't then you are missing out BIG TIME!!!

It's a super basic easy to play game, but it's crazy funny. My biggest lament in life is that it's hard for me to find 3 other people to play it with!



I am going to go on a sweet mission today. I have a pretty crazy underground idea that I have been working on.

So as you may know I am big into exploring things, particularly underground things. A few years ago I found a kickass room in a drain I was exploring, here is a picture of it:



So this drain is a parallel double-barrel drain that has rooms periodically where the two tubes join up into one room then cascade down a chute to a lower level then split back into two tubes and carry on. My big idea is to go to the waterfall room upstream from my halfpipe room and divert the water that would go down the halfpipe path into the other parallel tube. At the next waterfall room they would split up again and return to the normal setup.

What this would do is make my halfpipe room totally dry and skatable!

I guess my big idea is pretty clear at this point. I need to set up a skateboard to use in the drain now...

My first thing to do to accomplish this silly idea is to do some scouting. I have entered the drain from either end, but never from a manhole with the intention of popping in at a specific intentional place. Interestingly the drain runs bascially through Skippy's backyard. The drain used to be a river that sat in a ravine, the city of Mississauga decided to bury the river and make a walking path instead. That works out fine for me.

I have two things I am going to have to construct to turn this into a viable place to go skate semi-regularly.

1) Fake manhole cover to put in place of the one I remove to make exiting much easier without leaving a gaping hole in the pathway.

2) Water diversion barrier. I will have to go on a scouting trip today to find out what shape and size this will have to be to work. Fortunately it's a fairly low-flow drain so there won't be a shit ton of water to divert.

Anyways, I really didn't have to type all that, I just thought I'd let you guys in on one of my many other big projects.

[ericksonj]

Props on the interview Tom! That was a really good read, I hope you get the internship!

[mosher]

Thanks James!



So I did the drain mission today! It was pretty scary doing it solo actually.

It wasn't that hard or anything, the only 'work' involved was when I used a piece of rebar to prop the swinging metal gate open.. you know, to prevent it from swinging and chopping me in half.

This was only the second drain I've done on my own, I've been in lots and lots, but basically always with at least one other person. I was a little nervous as I waddled my way deeper inside as the light from the entrance eventually disappeared.

I couldn't stop thinking about a wall of water rushing at me suddenly. This thought stuck with me most of my time down there, any time there was a junction room or place where the tunnel opened up for whatever reason I would study the shape incase I would soon be hurtled down the pipe at it. It's scary having to fully accept that something that absurd may be your forthcoming reality.


Anyways, no walls of water rushed at me and so my journey continued on. There are these sweet rooms in this drain where the drain experiences an elevation change. Instead of making the whole drain just sloped, which would make the water go too fast, they take care of height changes efficiently with either a waterfall, slide or staircase. This drain has 5 or so slides of different sizes.

I eventually got to the room that is pictured above, it didn't appear that anything had changed since I was there last, which was a good thing because that place is FUCKED UP! You can see that there's lots of scribbled graffiti, what you can't see that well is that there is actually toooons of it that I only really noticed by shining my light at specific areas.


You have to remember that for almost the whole time there is absolutely no natural light. If I turn off my flashlight I am pitched into total darkness, it's really quite an experience! When was the last time you got to see total blackness? It is very very hard to find a place that doesn't have ANY light bouncing around, but this is about as close as you can come.

I went upstream to try to find the logical place to divert the stream but I got ADD when it turned out to be pretty far.

I retraced my steps and worked my way splashing back out of the drain, sliding down the slides and slinking out of the still-propped gate.

It's dinner time, ta ta bitches!

[dp]

Sounds cool. Now I gotta go search the drains near my house to see if there's any rooms like that. There's loads of creeks that they have to make go under intersections and roads and stuff so maybe I'll get lucky.

[mosher]

I just finished a pretty long shred. Out of the blue Ben Rawsko was in town and so we connected for a somewhat short shred. It was shortened because he was visiting his dad and it wasn't really proper to spend all his time with me.

Anyways, we had a nice shred in my garage, it was our first time playing one on one for any extended period I believe. I gave him tips and we sessioned a shred line until his dad came to pick him up.

It was a nice, short visit.

Also, he needed needles (did you know that glover's needles are pronounced GLOW-vers needles?? I found out today from ben) and wanted to trade me a bag for them since he didn't have any money. I wouldn't accept that depreciation of his efforts so I gave him needles, patching tape and an amaretta panel pack and he was super stoked.


After he left I still had some juice in my legs and chub on my belly so I kept at it. I managed some pretty sweet highlights actually!

- (my most exciting highlight in a long time).... scorpions tail BSOS!!!!!
- pixie paradon>bedwetter>string>foot BSOS
- phoenix>jani again
- reactor>pdx blender
- pixie ducking legover>DOD swirl

I got a bunch of that on film too, so maybe a video will come out of it.

I have alot of footage that hasn't turned into anything. Sorry bout that.


On a totally unrelated note, I saw someone I sorta half-know that rides a fixed gear in Toronto ride through the background of a CBC news broadcast. Even I was impressed with my keen eye, I have a tendency to check out every single bike I see, and fucking finally one was a fixed gear!

Man, all I want to do is hit scorpions tail, I hit the most of my life today and I felt so bad ass.

[Muffinman]

Nice highlights, Tom
Don't go dying in the sewers, k?

[mosher]

I've recently discovered the best TV channel (not that I watch thaaat much TV, but my parents have a sweet setup that's hard to resist and like a gabillion channels), the Documentary Channel.

Last night we watched this haunting docu about the Golden Gate bridge, it was called The Bridge. To sum it up, some filmmaker guy set up cameras filming the bridge for all of 2004 and caught on tape over 20 people jumping to their deaths. The film was this footage and interviews with the family and friends of the people in the shots.

Holy shit was it ever disquieting.

I guess it made me feel good in the end because it reaffirmed my position that I don't want to kill myself. Phew!

Heh, I guess it's similar to the relief I felt after watching Coffee & Cigarettes and I didn't want to drink coffee or smoke cigarettes.


It took some effort but I have managed to not bite my nails for like a week or something. I promised myself I would just fucking stop and finally regrow some nails. I have ten whites! (a white is when there is enough nail for there to be some overhang and thus appear white)


I did some crazy fixie tricks yesterday. Maybe some inventions?

I rode several hundred feet pedaling with one foot while juggling four balls! The only person I can imagine having done that before is some circus performer maybe.


Also, I have a whole slew of wierdo track stands (when you don't go anywhere) with my legs all tangled and through the frame and making use of the tires instead of pedals. Fun stuff!

I need a nice flat spot to practice my backwards riding.

There are three things I need to be saving money for:

1) World's - Pengpeng has been rather convincing that I need "money" to do "things"
2) Velocity Deep V rims for my new track wheelset
3) Tattoo's - I decided it's finally time to get alot of them. How did I resist so long???


The other day I was showering and as I scrubbed behind my ears I accidentally popped out my pretty white plug (a large guage cylindar that acts as an earring in stretched ears) and cursed as it plunked right down the drain.

Being resourceful I headed to my basement and searched for some bamboo. I used to do lots of crafts with bamboo so I figured I could find something about the right size to fashion a plug out of. I didn't find any raw sticks of it so I tore apart a fountain I made out of bamboo for an ex-girlfriend (that didn't give a shit about it) and used my dremmel to turn two pieces into two plugs of the right size. I even boared out the centers to make more light let through them.

So now I am wearing sweet bamboo plugs that I made myself. I actually first made bamboo plugs for myself 5 or 6 years ago or so. I am kinda afraid that I am about to start stretching my ears more... sometimes I can't resist extremes.

I am gonna bike to the post office to mail some footbags.

I like replies in my blog if you are nice and my friend and stuff so don't be too shy. I feel like a looooooser when nobody replies to anyting. Lame? You bet!

[ericksonj]

Been out from modified for a while, what is a fixie?

[CautionFragile]

ONE FOOT 4 BALLS

[Sporatical_Distractions]

Pretty stoked to meet you guys and stay at la chez peng the final night of worlds

[mosher]

Been out from modified for a while, what is a fixie?

A fixie is not a modified/footbag thing, it is a kind of bike. A "fixed gear" bike to be exact. Google it.

[mosher]

Ahh, what do I say?

I got the big e-mail finally.

I won't puff this up, I didn't get the job with Adidas.


I guess I am sad, but like, bleh, I can't do anything about the decision at this point. I was told that I was too footbag focussed and they were really looking for someone more marketing based. They did indicate in the interview that my talents may be better applied elsewhere within the company so I will make one more stab at them and ask if there is anywhere else I may fit.

But am I discouraged? Fuck no. I have a job to get done, dammit!

I can see the impact on the history of footbag perhaps more than anyone else because I could see where that path was headed. Perhaps that route was too easy? Perhaps this means we weren't ready for the impending explosion?

I still intend on applying my passion towards this project, I suppose that means giving Planet Footbag a call.

I havn't cried yet, if anything this has turned my resolve to iron.

Fucking nothing can stop me.

Anyways, I don't need or want sympathy, the story has been told and now it's time to move on.

[CautionFragile]

Ahh well, chew gotta roll with the punches. And you don't get any sympathy from me, as a matter fact, FUCK YOU, with all your enthusiasm and passion and knowledge and drive and ruggish good looks.....wait a minute, my backspace button is stuck..I'M NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU I PROMISE I love you though, I'm just not "IN LOVE" with you

[mosher]

I hate the end of long pages!

[mosher]

Two more posts?

[mosher]

Almost...

[mosher]

Twenty?