SandWraith's Footnovel: Now with more footbag!

[SandWraith]

Today was good, but a change to be sure. I began using my new DocBag, but it's gonna take some getting used to. Here are the differences:
-The DocBag is a lot smaller and heavier than my last bag, a very worn Mr. Sandbag, which means that it is a lot easier to control and direct (just like it's easier to throw a small rock accurately than a large milk carton).
-The DocBag is a bit more awkward for me to set, because of the weight difference. Being used to something probably half the weight, it will take some time to be able to naturally compensate.
-The DocBag isn't broken in. Well, I don't really know what 'broken in' feels like, but the outside isn't extremely bendy at the moment, so it doesn't stall as comfortably as my Mr. Sandbag did.

All in all though, it's an awesome bag and worth every penny. I won't be switching back (boy I hope that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass).

I spent about an hour, the first half of my session, just getting used to the DocBag. I'm not in the habit of naming my bags, cause that's always seemed weird to me, but if it had a name it'd be a Jerry. It's got large, dull orange pentagons and dull, silver hexagons, and looks JUST like a Jerry.

While I can't string as welll with it yet as I could with my old bag, the smaller size does make dexing easier, in addition to the aforementioned increase in control. As I got more used to it, though, I began to hit some nice stuff (both sides unless otherwise mentioned, as always).

-zulu clippers (at least 7 each side but probably more)-- I can come a bit close to going back to back, but so far I haven't.
-ducking paradox mirage-- I thought this was assassin, but I was wrong. That's pixie ducking mirage. Darn. Oh well, this is still my first real clipper > duck > toe move. Ironically, I had just told Brian earlier that day that I can't do ducking to toe for crap, and used this very example.
-butterfly > spinning clipper-- not that amazing but it's a start to incorporating spinning moves
-drifter > refraction-- same as above (it didn't take very long to get either of them)

The real highlight (and lowlight) of the day was that I footed 4 consecutive ripwalks. Oh holy man was I close. Really, I was pretty surprised when I did that, because at the time I was thinking how I can't string for crap with this bag yet, and then I managed that.

My toe drifters seem easier with this as well-- a good thing considering my flip toe drifter is horrid.

Finally, I had another revelation in my stepping technique. I have been dexing with my whole leg, throwing the whole thing over the bag on the uptime. I realized that it's a lot easier just to dex with the knee, or at least focus on getting the bag to go up under the crook in your knee. That way, the majority of the leg can lay lower, while the dex can actually occur higher. I'm not sure if the meaning is coming across, but the point is that I could get a lot more effortless sets in.

I also am finding that my double switchovers are getting better. From R > L it is not that bad-- I only tried probably ten times and hit three of them. From L > R I am getting very close, but need to school the motion without the bag some to really get a chance.

Oh, and people are actually commenting on the video! YAAAAAAYYYSSSS! I'm so glad it's being watched. I hope someone like Jeremy or Erik Chan or Maraxus comments, that would make my week.

[SandWraith]

This afternoon was just about perfect. Last night, Brian and I went on a walk. Near the end we were talking about kicking in public, and decided we'd like to have a session together near the mall or at Memorial Park. So today, after my usual post-work nap, I called him up and we headed out to the mall. Our mall front was recently redone, and has a large open sidewalk-court type area. It's very pretty and looks great for shred. The problem, though, is that it's like an oven. After kicking there for about 15 minutes we were sweating so bad that we decided to go to the park. In the short time we were there, though, I noticed a shopkeeper on her smoking break watch us intently for a while, as well as a bunch of little kids.

So we headed out for Memorial Park, which is on the other side of Marshfield. Not a big deal-- usually. Karma was not on our side, however, as a train had backed up traffic and we ended up sitting in a jam for about another 10 minutes. Given our city is only about 20,000 people, any traffic seems very odd and uncomfortable. After we had been sitting in traffic a couple minutes, two drunks came out of a bar on central avenue and ran in front of traffic (it was moving in the other direction). The car honked its horn and slammed on the brakes, and the two guys proceeded to start hitting the vehicle and yelling at the guy. Finally, the driver managed to escape in his violated vehicle, and the drunks proceeded to run up to the car sitting behind Brian's and do the same thing-- harassing and hitting and the like (Brian and I took different cars in case one of us wanted to leave earlier than the other). At this point Brian and I both put up our windows and locked our doors, and luckily the drunks ran off across the road and into another bar. Ohhhh Wisconsin. ^_^

We finally arrived at the park, and it was GORGEOUS. The trees offered perfect shade, with a soft lighting and gentle rays of sunlight streaming through the branches. Within two minutes we had started. There wasn't too much in the way of innovation, because we tend to try to work on strings when we're in public or kicking together. The real highlight for me was I hit spinning refraction on both sides-- which is such a sweet feeling trick. I definately want to keep working on my spinning/gyro sets, because I'd love to be able to throw it into runs better. I hit paradox whirls both sides within about a minute (I actually had asked Brian to tell me if he could see what I was doing wrong on my weakside with them, but I kept hitting them for some odd reason. Ob la di, Ob la da).

What's cool is Brian hit omelette both sides-- after only a couple tries, too (his pixies are so good). He also managed to hit whirls both sides by the end of the session. I kinda hope I had some part in helping him learn them, even if it was just telling him he was really close and to keep trying.

Afterwards, we went to Dairy Queen and had blizzards. I <3 chocolate extreme blizzards.

Overall, it was a pretty awesome day. I'm hoping we can go kick at the park again on thursday.

Oh, and today's Brian's birthday, too-- so happy birthday, Brian. I also convinced him to start a blog. Yay! That should allow me to keep up with what's going on with him and footbag, among other things, when we're gone at school.

Random quote of the day(/week/month/year depending on how often a funny quote comes up):

"If I were naked I woulda hit that."
-- after the bag got caught up on the bottom of his shorts during a move (torque?)

[SandWraith]

I just had the best time in footbag chat. Usually no one is in there and it just idles (if you type /beepall it beeps when someone types something, so you can minimize it and still keep on top of it). This time, though, Jeremy O'Wheel and Ken Somolinos (and Brian) were in there! We had a ton of fun playing yahoo chess. Ken beat Jeremy, Ken beat Brian, I beat Jeremy, and I beat Ken. Honestly though, Ken probably would have won if he were playing seriously. He would make moves that had me analyzing the board for five minutes or more; he just made a couple really unfortunate errors. I really hope I get a chance to play him in chess again sometime soon-- it was so much fun!

[DoctorJay]

Today was good, but a change to be sure. I began using my new DocBag, but it's gonna take some getting used to. Here are the differences:
-The DocBag is a lot smaller and heavier than my last bag, a very worn Mr. Sandbag, which means that it is a lot easier to control and direct (just like it's easier to throw a small rock accurately than a large milk carton).
-The DocBag is a bit more awkward for me to set, because of the weight difference. Being used to something probably half the weight, it will take some time to be able to naturally compensate.
-The DocBag isn't broken in. Well, I don't really know what 'broken in' feels like, but the outside isn't extremely bendy at the moment, so it doesn't stall as comfortably as my Mr. Sandbag did.

All in all though, it's an awesome bag and worth every penny. I won't be switching back (boy I hope that doesn't come back to bite me in the ass).

I spent about an hour, the first half of my session, just getting used to the DocBag. I'm not in the habit of naming my bags, cause that's always seemed weird to me, but if it had a name it'd be a Jerry. It's got large, dull orange pentagons and dull, silver hexagons, and looks JUST like a Jerry.

.

Hi Zach , nice that my bag arrived .

I do not know what you expected but if there are any probs contact me and we could deal with the prob.
It is very uncommon that you can shred with the bag so early after its arrival so I guess it will get broken in in less than a week for sure .
Wash the bag after dirty sessions with shampoo and dry it with toilet paper - and you will have this fluuushy feeling when the bag stalls onto your laver .

Good luck !

Btw ----you improve like hell...

[SandWraith]

Thanks so much for posting that advice! It means a lot that you read my blog. I'm gonna my docbag tonight and am sure that will help a lot. As far as it being unusual to kick with one so early, I guess I didn't know any better. Oh well, it's probably good for my game to have to work harder on the delays. And I am in no way dissatisfied with the bag-- I love it. I just can't delay it very well yet. In fact, Brian was so impressed after kicking with it for just a few minutes that he now plans on contacting you soon to get one. Word travels fast in this town... especially when only two people kick.

Yesterday on the drive home from Memorial Park, I decided to see how long I could hold my breath. I managed upwards of a minute! This is huge for me, since I am positive I never got much past a half minute as a kid. So today, while I was riding in the truck at work (with my coworker driving), I took another shot at it and managed 75 seconds! Yeah! I'm hoping to get 90 seconds within the next couple weeks.

As far as work goes, we finished moving the theater mainframes out to the wrecking yard today. We moved 4 yesterday and 3 today, but the 3 today were the heaviest of them. The lightest was 400-something and the largest weighed around 730 pounds! (the wrecking yard pays by the pound for the steel, so everything was weighed) It took four of us to get the beast up onto the truck bed, and we very nearly broke the tailgate right off. It was a lot of fun.

Today I had planned on working on stepping a bunch, but for some reason or another I just didn't feel too much like it. I did do SOME stepping, and hit 3 ripwalks back to back, but it's a lot harder at the moment with the non-broken in docbag. Other things I hit, both sides unless otherwise specified:
-stepping far refraction-- first try both sides!
-stepping near refraction
-butterfly > spinning osis-- hard on my flipside for some reason :/
-5 zulu clippers each side-- BSOS in a string with a bit of ducking too; hopefully I can do ducking, diving, and zulu BSOS sometime soon (though zulu is still really hard for me)
-swirl!... but only strongside-- hear that, reverse swirl? I NAILED YOUR SISTER! HA!
-double switchover-- hit flipside for the first time today! still very difficult
-toe whirl x3-- I'm gonna work on these for a while before working on paradox whirls, because I have no problem with the set, just the dex (which is essentially the same for paradox and toe)

Henry challenged me a couple days ago to hit 40 contacts of butterfly > paradox mirage > repeat, which is definately a challenge given my crappy string length. I know I could have gotten at least 20 contacts of it without too much trouble if I still used my sandbag, but I'm not gonna regress. All I managed was 9 contacts of it today, but I'll keep working on it and hopefully increase that number each day.

Finally, I was really lucky earlier to find one of the BEST THREADS I'VE EVER READ. It deals with drifters, but the important thing for me was the two tips, one given by James Erickson and one given by Jeremy O'Wheel. Here are the tips they gave:

Very similar, except there is more of a hip pivot involved. Set straight up and pivot your hips to the side as you raise your knee up. This will open up the window for the bag to be in. Once the bag is at its peak and your knee is over it, pivot your hips back and pull your leg around and to clipper posistion delaying the bag.

With drifters - an important tip I got was to keep the dexing leg straight - don't try to dex the bag by moving the leg - instead move your whole body so that the bag passes through the dexing window - you should twist a bit as well as jumping sideway so that lands on your clipper. If you get the technique right you shouldn't need much speed at all.

Now, if you've been reading up to this point, you may have noticed that my toe drifters are HORRIBLE. My strongside/flipside percentages can't be above 40%/10%. Yet today, as I read this, it was like the clouds parted-- and I realized that I have been trying to dex my way around the bag and haven't been using my hips or the hop at all. I went outside and tried it and hit the toe drifters like butter. 10 in the session each side! And that was given that I haven't done any toe drifter practice in a week or so and didn't spend a ton of time practicing them today! I highly recommend trying it like James and Jeremy suggest. It made such a big difference that on several occasions I hit my strongside toe drifters ON THE FIRST TRY, and at least twice I hit my flipside toe drifters ON THE SECOND TRY. I'd say my toe drifters, which were all but given up for lost, are now around 70%/40%... a huge difference. The change in set proved to important that I nearly hit paradox drifter on each side, but figured I'd wait on that for a while. I did, however, hit toe torque from my right toe-- a move I thought I wouldn't hit for a LONG time. I really hope that tomorrow at the park I can hit my first paradox torque in front of Brian (I won't work on it much-- just like Blurry Whirl and Mobius, I'd just like to hit it once or twice and then work on the components to strengthen it).

So yeah, it was a very productive day.... <8]

[MaelstromEx]

Yeah well if i dont see pdx torque tomorrow you owe me bigtime cause i'm expecting a show

[SandWraith]

There was no paradox torque. I didn't try that hard to do it either though-- cause I am so freaking tired. Because we were kicking at 12:30, and I get off of work at 12, I wasn't able to take my usual nap, nor even eat lunch. Even with that, it was a lot of fun. Brian hit phoenix again (2nd time, as far as I know), and ducking paradox mirage both sides, at my challenge. I hit zulu osis both sides without too much trouble, and also 4 consecutive ripwalks! There goes that challenge. I have thought about the 25 bop average and realized that there's no way I'm gonna get that, so I am gonna pseudochange it to getting any one guiltless string of 25 moves. Even that probably won't happen, but it's at least somewhat possible (in another month and a half). As far as new goals, I would like to hit:
-zulu clipper back to back by the end of the month
-3 consecutive spinning clippers both sides, seperate runs by september 15th

As noted when we did our video, I can tell that sessioning together and/or in public really helps with runs. Almost every run that isn't a drop on the starting toe stall (happens more humiliatingly often that we'd like) goes at least 5 guiltless contacts for me. Also, some very interesting and unexpected things arise, such as that I almost hit tomahawk on my strong side in the middle of a run, out of the blue. Obviously I need to work on my flip paradox whirls before I will pursue that move. To improve my paradox whirls, I'm doing a lot of toe whirls, and am trying to add those to runs as well.

The highlight of the day, as you may have read in Brian's fooblog, is that a red car stopped at the edge of the street while we were kicking. A well-dressed young man emerged and came up to us. I thought he for some reason or another was going to kick with us, but he immediately told us he worked for the newspaper and wanted to do a story. While one of us kicked for him, the other would talk about anything related to footbag-- the history of it, the stereotypes, the major websites, the fundamentals, the add system, etc. He watched and talked with us for probably a 15 minutes to a half hour, during which we continued to kick, and then he told us he wanted to go get the photographer. It started to rain, so we relocated on this sidewalk under the trees, which remained surprisingly dry. The photographer came and took a bunch of pictures and then fluttered off as is the custom passed from photographer sensai to photographer apprentices. Given that the last hour or so had been filled with trying to kick as hard as possible for the reporter and the photographer, we were both dead tired, but Brian came up with a nice little way to end the day that I hope we can continue: he said that each of us had to challenge the other person to hit one move that was difficult for that person, and that the person must hit it before we could leave. Brian challenged me to zulu osis, which I did first try. He seemed kinda sad about that, so I told him I'd do it flipside... and did on the second try. Since I'd like to see his ducking/diving game progress, I asked him to hit a mirage out of any ducking/diving/zulu/weaving set he wanted. After about 10 tries he hit ducking paradox mirage, and then did it flipside in about the same amount of tries. In the lull between his strongside and flipside attempts, I tried my hand at stepping ducking again, and managed to do it on both sides, though I'm still so unprepared when it does succeed that I never try to catch it... so it's a stepping ducking drop (still 2 adds!).

[SandWraith]

It was the last day of work today, and I didn't mind at all.

My stepping was off today, so my plan to try to do a lot of stepping strings didn't work at all. The best I managed (beyond 3 consecutive ripwalks) was sidewalk > ripwalk, on both sides. Hopefully I can get to the point where I can do that as a repeat.

Both sides unless otherwise mentioned:
-zulu clipper BSOS
-diving clipper > zulu clipper-- I want to get that to be a repeat as well, but doing anything out of zulu clipper is still iffy
-bubba > toe whirl
-blur > refreaction
-schmoe > toe whirl
-double switchover-- three times from R to L, and only once from L to R
-dyno-- twice each side! This move is so sweet looking. I actually wanted to get these and reverse whirls down because at one point in Cali3, which I recently rewatched, someone does a TON of reverse whirls and dynos, and it looks so cool. If I never hit blender, but can get dynos down, I will be completely happy.

I hit a few more toe whirls, but I didn't have a lot of energy for some reason. Oh, and that spinning clipper goal I have? Yeah, that's not looking very bad I got 2 spinning clippers from LF clipper many times, and footed a third once. From RF clipper I could only manage one consecutive though (so that obviously needs a lot of work). If I get that goal within the week I'm gonna up it to 6 consecutive spinning clippers each side.

I also broke my inside delay record, but that doesn't count cause I've only tried like 3 times ever and I only tried once today-- getting 21 insides. I'm sure I could get 50 or more if I put a concerted effort into it, but I don't like that too much.

In other news, the footbag story mentioned in the last post was printed in the newspaper today. Here are the pictures:

FRONT PAGE THINGY:



ARTICLE WITH PICS:


Transcription of the text since it's really hard to read on that:

Local friends hope Hacky Sack grows in popularity
A simple kick will keep a Hacky Sack flying, but when Zach Marine and Brian Moeller practiced with one Wednesday at Veteran's Park in Marshfield, they combined kicking with fluid artistic movements.
The activity may conjure groovy images of flowing hair and beards trailing dancing hippies, but what Marine and Moeller engaged in is much more organized and intricate.
This is called "footbag freestyle."
"We got into it the way almost everyone gets into it, and the way we did is I went online looking for 'hacky sack,'" Marine said.
The two friends would kick around a Hacky Sack, but when Marine searched the Internet, he found this was only the foundation of an entire sport, called footbag.
Footbag was invented in 1972 in Oregon when John Stalberger met Mike Marshall, who was recovering from knee surgery and was kicking around a hand-made bean bag to work on his flexibility. Stalberger took to the game, they became friends and began playing what they called "Hack the Sack." The two eventually designed a product known as the "Hacky Sack," and used "footbag" as the name of their sport, according to the International Footbag Players' Association at www.footbag.org.
The game has grown to an organized sport with specific rules and moves with clubs and players throughout the nation and the world.
Hacky Sack is actually a trademark, but anyone can find something labeled as such and begin.
"One comment I hear the most is, 'I could never do that," Marine said. "You just have to learn the basics."
Moeller said he practiced basic kicks for about six months before getting into the freestyle moves. Now both he and Marine can chat while flipping the small bag around their legs, heads, or even catching it on the outside of their feet behind their backs before flipping it to the opposite foot, turning around in one fluid motion.
Both 18 and from Marshfield, Marine and Moeller are about to part ways for college. Luckily for Moeller, who will attend the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he has the UW Madison Footbag Club.
Marine said that if one doesn't exist already at Washington University in St. Louis, he'll probably be the founding member.
They began practicing in Veteran's Park to garner interest in the sport and see if anyone would stop and join. Marine said the sport often doesn't get the recognition it deserves in the media and seems to have a "druggie" stigma, having once been a popular recreational habit among hippies at Grateful Dead concerts.
Freestyle footbag, however requires great coordination and dexterity.
"There's an overall connotation, but a lot of people who play wouldn't do that because you need a lot of endurance," Marine said. "You're essentially jumping up and down for an hour and a half."

[SandWraith]

Kicked with Brian in the park. Only good thing to report is as Brian was trying to do a flipside clipper double legover he said, "This leg doesn't work" and pointed to the one that would end up doing the second dex and delay. Neither of us had any energy and couldn't hit any strings past maybe 4 moves. Yeah, it was horrible.

WORST.
SESSION.
EVER.

I have been working on a LOT of stuff lately and hitting a lot of new moves, but I think my run length is suffering as a result. How could it not? If you overextend yourself, you're gonna be ok at a lot of stuff but, on the flipside-- only ok at any particular thing. So I am gonna go back to basics... sorta. I'm gonna try to keep working on my spinning, toe whirls, toe drifters, and zulu, but I am planning on putting a lot more emphasis on cleaning up my stepping set. It's really the only set I have at the moment, and I don't want to go off into learning another until I can do combos of at least 4 or more stepping moves with good consistency (like sidewalk > ripwalk> stepping ss osis > stepping ss clipper or whatever). Anyways, I guess today can be considered a day off, since the session in the park was like an hour of suck.

[SandWraith]

Much. Better. Session.

I tried thinking about stepping a different way and have to say it made more of a difference than almost every other stepping tip I have tried-- I tried thinking of my stepping set as a furious set, but then bailing. I can't really do much of a furious set, or at least can't do anything out of it besides a toe stall, but just consciously pulling my foot up higher in preparation for the dex really helped. I tied my ripwalk record of 4, and footed 4 two other times, so there's an obvious improvement. The bag went so high on a lot of my sets that if I had wanted I probably could have ducked them without really ducking much. Yeah-- holy shit.

I reached my spinning goal from left foot clipper, getting 3 spinning clippers without TOO much difficulty, but my right foot spinning is stuck at 1 consecutive. That's gonna be practiced heartily.

BS:
-5 toe drifters-- wasn't feeling them today
-3 toe whirls
-2 double switchovers-- flipside is getting better. I am doing some motions around a bottle in my room at night to work on the dex
-diving clipper > zulu clipper-- still can't repeat but soon!
-clipper > near osis > zulu clipper-- osis > zulu is hard
-zulu clipper b2b <--- GOAL COMPLETED
-miraging legover / double legover both sides-- I have been doing clipper set MLOs for a long time, but never did the toe version. However, in trying to learn paradox MLOs I really need to work on the downtime version

I also considered whether or not I really like pixies, and came to the conclusion that I don't. I don't like how they feel nor especially how they look. Since I DO need to acquire at least one toe set eventually, I have decided I would much prefer stepping/atomic to stepping/pixie. I practiced the motion for atomic a bit today, but couldn't hit anything out of it. My dream atomic moves are atomsmasher and legbeater, because I like how they look (it's just coincidence they're part of the rubberman drill).

A really cool run I tried and came sorta close to both sides is:
butterfly > sidewalk > stepping ss clipper > stepping ss osis
I dropped on the end of the stepping ss clipper both sides. I can only hope I'll look back at this in a couple months and laugh at this combo, saying "I could hit that easily now."

In other news, I got to ride a friend's moped after frisbee golf yesterday, and the thing rocked. I was in a muscle tee (it was hot out), had these badass sunglasses on, and my black hat was turned backwards as I'm riding down the road on this midget scooter. It was so awesome. <8]

[SandWraith]

Today was definately an eye-opener. Brian and I went to the park, and Brian began working on a challenge from Paul Agostinelli -- to get 20 tiltless. Well, it seemed like a good idea to me, and since I don't get any challenges I tried it too. I am pretty sure I could get 15 tiltless without a huge deal in my garage, due to the fact that I'm used to the surface (smooth cement), but playing on concrete everything is really hard and frustrating for me. That's bad given that I think I'm gonna be stuck playing on it starting wednesday. Even though it didn't take me an exorbitant amount of time to get the 20 tiltless (22, actually), I think part of it edged on luck. The rest of the time I spent trying to complete a challenge Brian gave me for the day-- to get 6 guiltless with only 1 butterfly, 1 osis, and 1 paradox mirage. I couldn't do it. I feel so shitty knowing that I can't do 6 guiltless without it being all BOPs (granted, I probably can do more than that in the garage, but I'm thinking ahead to wednesday and how sucky I'm going to be starting at). Part of the problem is that I can't do a lot of 3 add moves from toe. I can duck/dive/zulu to clipper or osis, and I can do refraction and occasionally toe whirls, but I don't have a set from toe, which is why I feel a need to focus on learning one.

Therefore, given that I lack 1) string consistency and 2) a guiltless toe foundation, I am going to forego my current challenges and change my focus from learning new moves to developing longer strings. There's no point in being able to hit even a single 5 add move if I can't throw down a 15 move guiltless string that I'm satisfied with. So I am consciously avoiding learning any new moves beyond a good toe set-- atomic.

My new goal is to improve my string length to a level that I'm happy with, with part of that facilitated by developing a strong atomic set to allow for guiltless play.

Highlights of the day:
-22 tiltless run EDIT: thought I'd mention that probably half of that run was guiltless (not that it means I'm any more capable of going guiltless)
-hit paradox miraging legover (paradox DLO) from right foot clipper and swore off hitting any new moves for a while.

[SandWraith]

Brian and I went to a park again today, but this time Wildwood Park/Zoo. It was the last time we're gonna be able to kick together till Thanksgiving. I was doing very well, which may in partbe due to the nice asphalt surface that we kicked on. Really, though, I was just on for some reason. I hit a lot of long (for me) runs for the first half of the session, and then intermittently hit long runs in the second half.

Brian didn't seem to be having as good of a day.

I managed what we think was a 10+ all guiltless run, which I know included a spinning clipper from one foot and a spinning osis form the other somewhere in there. There was also a cool sequence where I did diving clipper > ducking clipper > zulu clipper in a run. The only run that I managed to remember and write down fully was this:

ROTD: whirl > rev pickup* > op butterfly > spinning clipper > osis > op butterfly > spinning butterfly > handcatch

*clipper set > op out [dex] > same toe [del]; so like a bubba but to the same toe; clipper set near legover, if you prefer

Tomorrow morning I leave for St. Louis at 8 am. How depressing....

[Bander87]

I think its called far legover. And congrats on the tiltless runs!!

[MaelstromEx]

I'ma Gonna miss you Zach! best of luck to you in college and pick up some chicks with footbag.

[SandWraith]

Just a fill-in on how tomorrow and early Thursday are going down, because I know for a fact I can't post tomorrow (no computer):

7:30 am: Get up and fill the van my dad is renting
9:00 am: Leave and begin the 9 hour trip to St. Louis
6:00 pm or later: Arrive in St. Louis and check into the Cheshire Inn

After that, my dad and I probably will go eat somewhere if we already haven't and then take a walk around Forest Park, where I will likely be kicking there a lot. The Cheshire Inn is about 2 to 3 miles from WashU, which is right across from Forest Park.

I found out that, contrary to what I thought, I won't be moving in tomorrow, but rather on Thursday morning. This is good because I might be able to beat my other roommate there and secure the not-top-bunk spot that is available (I am in a triple with a guy from Indiana and a guy from India, and the guy from India got there a week early for an internationals orientation). We are moving in as early as possible-- around 8:30 am on Thursday. I don't know if I'll have the energy/balls to go out when I'm so uncomfortable there to kick, but if I can get one of my roommates to try it I definately will.

I will try to get my computer set up by Thursday night, but don't hate me if I'm not on msn, Brian. I'll make sure to keep you filled in with how things are going via this fooblog, since, to the best of my knowledge, you ARE my readership. ^_^

[sniikeri]

Hey Zach,
I think Marine is one of the coolest last names there is. Isn't the US Marine motto "The First. The Proud." ? I think you should make it as your blog title.

props on those guiltless runs and making it to a newspaper, the footbag community thanks you and mr. Moeller.
Has anyone been interested in starting footbag there after the article?

[SandWraith]

Thanks for posting, Lauri! I think the U.S. Marine motto is "The few, the proud, the Marines" I had considered using that, but I don't want to step on anyone's toes that has actually earned the title (i.e. Aaron Orton). It is a good idea though.

Hey Zach,
Has anyone been interested in starting footbag there after the article?

No. Or at least, no one has managed to find us. But then again, the article came out when we only had about a week left before college (1 week for me, 2 for Brian). Either way, it's nice for footbag to get any public exposure, since the more prevalent it is, the more likely someone is to eventually try it.

What I'm really hoping will draw some newcomers is that video Brian and I made recently (Sheep Go To Heaven). We made it partly for our senior gym teacher, who plans to show it to his classes when they are choosing activities to do. With any luck, a few people will find it really cool and take the initiative to learn it.

We can only hope!

[C-Fan]

Wow, this blog is great. Thanks for writing so much.

We should totally get more chess in sometime too.

[SandWraith]

Definately, Ken. Today I didn't get a chance to kick, since we had move-in and some orientation stuff (read: pep rally). I got to meet my other roommate, who is named Aayush. He's meh.

I DID, however, get the chance to meander through the campus and find what looks like an awesome spot. I will take a picture whenever I get a digital camera, but for the sake of description, here goes:

It is like a covered patio on the lower backend of a very modern style building. The whole building is made of conrete and is very... angled. My dad described it as looking like a crematorium. The area I like faces a parking garage and is on the very edge of campus, meaning it won't be extremely frequented (that's the hope, anyways). Since it's in the tailend of this building, and so out of the way, I think I should be able to play my music as loud as I like. The patio area itself is formed by large concrete panels, interrupted every so often by a thin column. There is SO much room, and after our pep rally (around 9:30 pm), I went and saw how it was lit at night. The lighting is FABULOUS (I think... may still suck for kicking but I can't be sure). There were two maids or something down there so I gave one a glowstick, which seemed to make her pretty happy. I hope to get up kinda early tomorrow and go rock the socks off that concrete patio. >8]

EDIT: 800+ kb/s on this connection

[MaelstromEx]

I hope that parking garage isnt like that one out in cali, when that van is rocking what ever you effing do...don't bother knocking, or answer the phone that late at night. Cant wait for more info.