Mosher's Footblog

[The Rhino]

Tom, I wanted to say thank you for:

when I was kicking with some peeps at worlds, you came up to me said

"PAUL GRESSETT" !

that meant alot to me that you knew who I was and we had not even met. that was really cool of you man.

[mosher]

Hey buddy!

Just thought I'd give you a shout to say that the super-pink bag you sold me at Wakahakkee is coming along wonderfully. I had only been using it in solo session, but yesterday busted it out for Mike and Alex, and it is nearing maximum-hoiceness.

Also, I'm feeling like we should shred sometime soon. Where you at? Toronto session? Oakville session? I'm in like sin.

Great to hear about the bag, it always makes me happy to know that someone has a sweet bag because of something I did.
Now shock everyone and manage to not lose it!!!!


Paul, I am really glad I made a good impression, footbag has always been very welcoming and accepting of me so I try to extend that to everyone else in footbag.



So, Peng has been hassling me to do my CJF2 writeup, so here it is.


I feel like I should start the story on Friday. Friday was a culmination of alot of emotions for me. I guess it's pretty hard to really properly express the various, numerous, things in my life that are applying differing amounts of stress and pressure on me. The things are pulling for all different reasons too, some are internal such as my desire to make it out to every footbag and track bike event at the cost of basically everything else. I've been putting really big pressures on my family to get me to trains and help me out in all these ways and really selfishly I haven't been pulling my weight with like.. scooping cat shit and kitchen cleaning and stuff. Anyways, by friday my mom had gone waaay above and beyond and helped me so many times that week when I was in total last minute huffs to get to some thing or place RIGHT AWAY, which unfairly passes the stress of my situations onto her/them.

So by Friday I had already been a total pain in the ass (and I never felt good about it or wanted that to be the case, I need to learn to manage my time better and be more realistic about how long it takes to do shit) and I think my karma needed to bite my ass a little for it all.

Friday would prove to be brutally frustrating.

Friday there was an alleycat race scheduled called 'Track or Treat' and I was frantically trying to get a new bike put together so I could participate because the old beat up frame I was riding was in really dangerous conditions that I really couldn't trust my life to in race situations. That was a really long sentence, hehe. I also felt pressured to build up a ridable bike because I ride my bike to and from work every weekday which is about 14 KM total. And now that the dollar has reached parity that's like 15 miles!



Aaaaaaanyways, since I was doing so much riding and I am intending to do so much more as it has become quite ingrained in my life I decided that it was time to step up to my first 'new' bike in like.. 15 years or something. I have a good fixed gear wheelset that I got as a birthday gift from my parents and all I needed next was a proper frame to attach them to. I did lots and lots of research and discussed alot with my Toronto fixed gear buddies and the search eventually led to me getting my first track frame from a store called Cyclemania in eastern Toronto. The price was really staggering actually, for the frame, fork, headset, bottom bracket and stem, all installed he asked only $250. I know this is probably being read by footbag people who are all like "who gives a shit?? talk about footbag you retard!" but to someone who cares about bikes this price will resonate as VERY reasonable and in fact quite generous. It's mostly to do with the fact that the frame is their in-house brand that they have their buddy in Lithuania or something make for them.

Anyways, my mom had taken me into the shop on Thursday with the intent of setting it all up with them. This in itself was a drama stress fest. I had intended on using the car to take my shit to cyclemania and build up my new ride then bring it back home to have ready to race on Friday. The problem was that I didn't communicate this to my mom in time and wound up frustratingly waiting at home for her to return from doing groceries to let her know that I had wanted to have been using the car. Waiting was brutal because she didn't have her cell on her and so I just had to wait, watching my plans slip away. So she gets home at 6 PM, the store was closing in an hour and it was at least an hour drive away. I told my mom that I'd been waiting and wanting the car to do my stupid shit and so she just like totally 180's her day and instead of making dinner she just had me hop in to take me on this stupid mission of mine. In hindsight (though I had this thought basically right away) my mom shoulda just hopped out and done her thing and let me take the car instead of feeling all the stress I was under by taking me.

(In case you're wondering why I am drifting off back in time further away from the footbag part it's so I can explain why we didn't come up friday and why so often I don't have time to write about what I did that day each day)

Anyways, we make it to the store after having called ahead asking them to stay open a little late to let me buy a frame. So it came down to me not being able to just buy all the things I needed right then because I needed to have with me my crank to know a few specific dimensions. So we left my wheels and I was to come back Friday after work and we'd get it all done in time for me to race the race.

Well, this all proved to be not to be. I managed to scramble to the train with most of the parts I needed, by this time I'd accepted that the race probably wasn't going to happen for me. It was most likely going to be rained out it appeared and I knew that it was going to be hard to get the bike all together. Anyways, I got to the train, at which point I found out I'd left my bank card at home when I went to work as I'd hoped someone could toss in like $40 so that a check I'd written Peng wouldn't bounce and then forgotten to grab it before leaving for Toronto. I wound up paying by credit card, which I hate doing. When I got on the train I realized I left my cell phone at home charging. I'd managed to remember to charge it like Peng reminded me, but I didn't manage to remember to bring it. So, I'd ALSO not brought any cash with me. I happened to have $2.50-something in my pocket. This all added to up to a fantastically frustrating time when I reached Toronto. I needed to purchase a token to ride the subway up to where the store was, walking was not an option due to the sheer distance. I got to the stupidly busy Union Station which was where the frustration really ramped up. One token cost $2.75, meaning I was CENTS short of making the one crucial connection. I could not buy tokens with my credit card and as you'll remember I didn't have my bank card. Nor did I know the code needed to get money from a bank machine with my credit card. Nor would any business give me cashback on a purchase made by credit card, a practice common with bank card purchases.

So, there I was with MONEY IN MY BANK and absolutely no way to help myself out. I was there, ready to make this dream of having a track bike come true and I couldn't do anything. I didn't even have my phone to call people to help me out. So, I used the small bit of money I had to call home to let them know I would be needing to be picked up much earlier and one to Peng because we call eachother and talk about stuff when we're upset. She always helps me alot. She's really great.

So, despite all my effort I was forced to just hop back on the train back to my house in Oakville.

No bike and no race for Tom.

So this left me with LOTS of time to pack my shit for Cornell!

Uh oh! Look out, there may be some incoming footbag content!!

So another level to the planning was that I was going to do my race and then meet up with Pengpeng and Chad Landry at Union Station and we'd all take the GO train back to my house to prepare for leaving super early the next morning. Since my plans deflated I wound up just picking them up from the train station by my house. By this point I wasn't upset or stressed anymore, I was just pumped and getting stoked for the fun that lay ahead, footbag events rule!

Peng and I have gotten really good at traveling together, which is sweet because I bet either of us could be a pain in the butt independently, but somehow we help each other out enough to be functioning people. haha, that just made us seem like half-tards.

We had to clean out the car Friday night as there was no way I was going to drive any distance in it with all the illegal shit that was in it. I don't want to paint my sister in an unfair light, but the amount of empties in the car was scary. Also there was just so much junk that we wouldn't have been able to fit 5 people and all their shit in the car. So a much needed cleaning was done and then we loaded the car up so we could just take off the next morning.

I got Peng and Chad snuggled in to their respective couches and we drifted off to sleep to charge up for a big day ahead!

Morning came fast and I was up with a spring in my step ready to do the things that needed doing to get us to Cornell. I cooked a big sweet breakfast of strangled eggs and bacon and toast and fruit, very satisfying!

We punched in the address of Luis' frat house into our GPS system and hit GO! We fueled up and checked the tire pressure and off we went. The drive went easy and the border wasn't that bad. I think it was like 5 hours in transit which included border and stopping to eat and shit.

My first impression of Ithaca was that it was like.. all on retarded angles. Like, you'd be driving along level (or on some ridiculous angle) and then be intersected by a road at some frigging MC Escher angle, seriously!

The city looked like it was draped over a gorge, very handy if you don't like round things to stay in place.

As we drove in, approaching the city I saw something that startled me and pointed it out to every one else, there was a fucking great big building UP IN THE AIR!!!!!!!!!!! Oh wait, no, that was just what it looked like, the road just happened to go up like a few miles straight up. It felt like we were in a cartoon driving on such angles.

Man, if I could only get over the hills we could maybe get to the footbag part!

So yeah, it was dramatic and pretty.

The campus looked like what I'd always thought university campuses should look like until my hopes were crushed when I went off to school. I guess my hopes had been raised by movies based around american universities and colleges, anyways, Cornell was pretty impressive. The whole 'tons of frat houses' thing was pretty foreign to me. In canada frat houses are pretty rare, only a few universities have em, but in the states they are much more ubiquitous and it was neat to peek into a slice of university life that I never got to participate in.

Man, how long is this so far? I have a really long way to go still!

I may need a typing break.

Yes, that does it, I need a snack.

I will end this post by hinting at what will come in the next one: the very last trick that was hit at CFJ2 was a brand new invention based on a brand new set by jorden, then we hopped in the car and headed home.

[C-Fan]

My first impression of Ithaca was that it was like.. all on retarded angles. Like, you'd be driving along level (or on some ridiculous angle) and then be intersected by a road at some frigging MC Escher angle, seriously!

That's a pretty accurate and fair description. I look forward to the rest of your write up. And of course, thanks for coming down. Your energy and enthusiasm makes every footbag event better.

[mosher]

Here is the new system I've come up with for selling my shit.

It is a thread of just the stuff I have IN STOCK. This way there will never be any falling behind on orders, yay!

Check it out and then give me your money.

http://modified.in/footbag/viewtopic.ph ... 305#352305

[mosher]

Here is a picture of one of the craziest things I've ever done.



Six feet below me the ground was littered in jagged logs and rusted steel objects jutting out of the ground. It took me a long time to build up to actually doing this. It was so scary because normally when I balance stuff I move my feet to adjust, but in this case that was not an option. I totally had to carefully fall after nailing the trick and getting the shot. All in all I don't know what I was thinking, especially since that's my brand new track bike!

[TayChaint]

that is INSANE!

what will you do next?

[Benzilla]

how heavy( or light i should say) is that bike? Hope you're ready for this weekend. I'll see ya Saturday. your still gonna have shirts and bags for sale right?

[snafu1322]

I wanna see some close ups of the new bike. A frame set and them some for $250 sounds like a steal. I just dropped $700 on a Sputnik haha. Kind of wished i went a different route, but i still love it.

[mosher]

My new track bike! eeeee!!!!

Here's another pretty shot:



My friend Katie took those one day this week when I was playing around in a parking lot on my new bike. I am really in love with it!!


I guess I have a lot of things to fill in and catch you guys up on in here, eh?

Where did I get to in my Cornell story? Let me go check...

Hahah I didn't even get to the footbag part yet, okay, let's do this.

So after a dozen turns that our GPS guided us through expertly we finally got to Luis' frat house Aeta Pieca Pi (:lol: just kidding, it was Beta Theta Pi I think... anyways, the joke name will become increasingly fitting later in the story). Having Daniel (the GPS system has lots of different voices and the one we use is Daniel a British guy with this awesome voice we all love emulating) really makes a huge difference on road trips. All the sudden you just can't get lost basically, sweet!

Once at the Frat house we call Luis up and ask what to do, except he wasn't answering his cell... so we had to BS it and figure it out for ourselves. We punched 'Cornell University' into Daniel and hit GO! (the on-screen button looks like that, I am not necessarily punctuating that sentence with an all capitalized word with an exclamation mark.)

This got us to the univeristy no problem but we didn't know where to go from there. We remembered it was something like bartells or something so eventually we resorted to just asking people where it was as we drove around. Or maybe we used daniel a bit.. not sure. Either way we got there eventually and we parked easily.

We loaded up our necessities and entered the site. After a longish walk down bland hallways you go through some blank doors into a really big squishy faux grass sporty area. One whole wall of the place was a cool 3D climbing wall, someday I will be more into that stuff I bet. The whole place was pretty much dominated by the jugglers but it didn't take us much effort to find the telltale signs of footbag off in the distance. I think the first thing I see is the weird rhythm that the people are moving at.

We got there as the circle comp was going on. I totally remember the first string I saw was David and I ran in and gave him props after his run because it was sweet. The string is actually in Marc Giard's cornell video, I think it starts with nemesis and has alpine fog and other silly stuff.

BTW I just noticed that in my first post about the cornell story I forgot to mention that in the morning Jay Boychuck was dropped off at my house, right on time, and we also pulled off the highway at the start of the trip to pick up one other lonely shredder, mister Jorden Moir. Fortunately both of them managed to not get lost and so adding them to the car was easy.

In my dream last night (and this is going to sound so gay, I guess) I was hugging David goodbye as I was leaving some tournament.. maybe this one and after we hugged someone shouted 'oh! it looks like they're going to kiss!' and then like dave's eyes shot to them and then back to me and maybe he smirked and I don't know if he kissed me or if we both kissed but he totally kissed me right on the lips! hahahah I think people laughed and stuff. Wow, I can't believe I am including this!! I want to have sex with girls!!!!!

Okayyyyy... back to the story!

I did my rounds of hellos to old friends and new, I always find this part overwhelming because ideally I'd get to spend minutes greeting each person but there are like 50 people I'd like to spend that much time with but only like.. minutes to cover them all. I asked Ken if our car could be added into the circle comp and they compromised by tacking us on as a slightly truncated extra circle, which I appreciated. We got to warming up and then did our round. I was awful in the comp! hahaha I hit like, basically nothing, I wasn't upset though, I was more laughing and amazed at how bad I was doing. So, after competing was out of the way (I don't mean to dread competing.. but I do, it's just this weird pressure that isn't normally applied to footbag, the pressure that I left other forms of sport over) we got to some real shred.

I never remember who I play with at events, somehow others remember it all so clearly but to me it's just one big blur of fun. Needless to say it was enjoyable and I probably did some hack tricks. I know that I hit spinning ducking clipper BSOS for my first time at the event, that's a highlight!

I will get to the rest in a bit. It's now 6:14 AM and I need to shower, make breakfast and drive my parents to the airport, they are going away to Mexico for a week.

Pengpeng is also visiting me today! yay!! Her and I have a really awesome friendship going on right now.

And actually the other day I had the funniest idea. I thought that since I am single and she is single and we get along and she's hot that it was a great idea to ask her on a date! hahahahahah So we went on a great date last Saturday in Toronto, we saw an amaaaaazing performance too, I will get to it all eventually I think!

Okay, sorry I can't type more now, big day ahead!

Foooootbaaaaaaaaaaaag!

[footbagi]

Very nice bike.

Ugliest handlebars of all time though.

Edit: It could just be the picture but the frame looks really small. What size is it?

[Asmus]

I just read this in the hall of fame/shame topic:

Your stiff is always so polished and slick looking.

I don't swing that way mosh.

Am I seeing a pattern?

wanna share a room at worlds?



That bike is the sexiest bike I have ever seen! Maybe you should use pink on the handlebars instead of yellow?

I wanna write alot of shit to you.. hmmm.. pm? no! letter? YES!

Hopefully I will see you soon. I miss you man.

[C-Fan]

I'm not even into bikes, but I think your bike is hot.

[hacksterbator]

nice looking bike mosh! what kind of frame is it? and what's your gear ratio? it might be the black and silver colouring throwing me off but your chain ring looks kinda small.

[Pengu]

Does that mean your old bike with a new fork means I have a new bike?

I played lots of hacky today. It was fun. I hit stuff.

[jon]

it might be the black and silver colouring throwing me off but your chain ring looks kinda small.

My first thought was that the size looked very reasonable. Tom any updates on the two finger width chopped handlebar?

[Jdigges]

thanks for the write-up tom! im bummed that i couldn't be there

oh yea...speaking of orders being easier and not mixed up....

YOU STILL OWE ME 4 NEEDLES!!

Josiah Digges
424 maple st.
Syracuse, NY
13210

[Pengu]

They are in the mail as of yesterday Josh!

Tom and I went to do gymnastics last night. It was awesome. I hope it becomes something we do regularly.

[Jdigges]

thanks guys!

[mosher]

They are in the mail as of yesterday Josh!

Tom and I went to do gymnastics last night. It was awesome. I hope it becomes something we do regularly.

Thanks for taking care of that Pengpeng. And sorry for not getting them out earlier Josh, my bad.

The gymnastics that Peng referred to is something that is sparking up old passion for flying and flipping and it has me very excited!!

We went out to our first of these sessions that this nice guy named Allen Keng throws at a small gymnastics facility in North York (a bit north of Toronto) every monday and friday nights. They are run for people of all levels and the crowd was a big mix from pretty newbish people like Peng and me to crazy flipping ninjas. Here is a video of Team Ryouko, which Allen is a member of, doing their thing.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=O_MYX8UM9qw

At the sessions Peng and I go to only sooome of the people are this crazy and everyone is nice and kinda like footbag people in that they like to put time and effort into learning wierdo skills that don't really pay the bills. hehe, I like those kind of people though, I would say that they are my favorite for sure. Basically all footbag people are this kind of person, totally genuine.

In footbag and gymnastics and chess and fucking whatever takes skill all the people are totally real with you about their commitment to the sport as evidenced by the fact that they took the time to put in the effort and thought required to get good at whatever the thing is. I love that there are no posers in footbag because you actually have to invest the time to have the skills so it keeps it all so real.

So the gymnastics stuff was a lot of fun! I have now gone and learned tons about what I appear to be getting into, they call it 'tricking'. Sweet!

I don't know if I've mentioned it here before but for years I have had one recurring dream theme. Of all things, I have dreams about standing back tucks. Frigging backflips! In all different situations, sometimes they work out, sometimes they don't. So last friday at the class after we'd done the lengthy warm up and stretch stuff we were let loose. One guy asked Allen if they could resume the back tuck lesson they'd started the week prior and me and a big-ish group went and did all the lead up learning parts.

I liked how Allen taught, it was similar to how we teach footbag. Instead of just telling someone to just try and do a back flip he had us all go through the various parts of the trick. It was like, jump up tuck and land on back on this big block thing to practice the set, then crouching on the block and rolling off backwards down to your feet, which lead to doing that from standing with more momentum. Then the block was turned so that we'd do the set>tuck>land on back on the block>roll back right away down to feet.

I saw the people doing the next level, the level I will be doing this Friday... so stoked!! I have been studying sooooo many videos on youtube about proper form and I learned lots of REALLY cool physics stuff about gaining maximum height and so many cool things that I can't wait to try out!!

I am sooo glad that Peng found out about this because it's something I really wanted to be doing so I am glad she found just the right scene and vibe to help us learn this fun stuff. Also, it's great that we have a weekly guaranteed super funtime hangout session. I am really glad that I still have Peng in my life helping me out and supporting me constantly, she's sweet!

Work has been fine I guess, I still work at a warehouse. It's odd but I am in a really unique position there. I am the only person that doesn't have a set department, I bounce around working for various different managers doing different things daily. Though recently one latched onto me because she liked my work ethic and my thoroughness. What this turned into was her having me be the person to do a complete audit of all her aisles of the warehouse which also means driving around on a 'Skyjack'. A Skyjack is a platform on wheels that drives around herky jerkily with this totally non-human-style controls. You push forward AND pull a trigger and then you lunge forward making this loud high pitch electric motor sound and a beeeep-beeeeep-beeeeep. The steering is so odd. There are two tabs at your thumb, one for each direction, which is strange enough, but they add to it by having the wheels not return to center after turning. So you have to be really active and confident swinging it around and into the aisles. It really lurches and jerks and makes embarrassing noises if you don't drive it smooth and just swoop in where you need to go so I have had to learn to drive it confidently.

So with having to totally audit her shit I get to drive this thing around quite alot now and that's kinda fun I guess. I get to be like 50 feet in the air on this swaying platform regularly.


Gah, I have to get to bed.

I shaved my head and mustache last night.


Oh yah, and today I was biking to work in the freezing rain and I was like halfway when I decided to give up because I was totally soaked and it'd be retarded to show up to work all drenched. And nobody likes to drive me at that time of day so I called in to the temp agency saying I couldn't make it into work and went back to bed.

So every day I work from 7:30 AM - 4 PM (at least) and then most days of the week I have a regular event scheduled. Mondays and Saturdays are the only totally free days. hahah When exactly do I have time to do anything like stitch or breath? Never, that's when, haha.

I am having fun though, but I for sure can't keep this pace up forever. Taking today off was to give me a chance to catch up on several things that needed doing so it was worth it so long as I didn't get fired.

Night modified.


Also! I play footbag.

[mosher]

I am just going to knock this ^^^^ post to the next page.