First Shred Back... Not as good as first hoped...

Kicked for the first time since early september. I didn't really get to kick at Hackrifice10 because i was running around doing organizational stuff, making sure every thing was running smoothly, etc., etc., so i only really kicked for about half an hour total the whole weekend. After that was school catch up, and work work work.

It was nice to see erik and manna again after so long. It was also my first chance to meet brandon. He got himself some twill lavers. The other boys goofed and had him cutting the canvas out of them, which is a big no no, but i helped him on to the right track. Ha, reminds me of my first pair of lavers. they were leathers and i pulled all the canvas out of the insides, not knowing any better. And that's when i started playing without socks, and the mustard gas shoes were born... whoops.

So, I guess this means manna's not the new kid on the block any more. I guess he's now a officially a full fledged member of hackrifice. Not that he wasn't before, but now he gets to be on the other side of the table for teaching and moulding new players, and playing a bigger part in the club. Pull up your socks my friend!

Any way, in regards to the shred, WOW. i was rusty! I was having trouble with the most basic of basics. linking butterflies and infinities was a challenge at first. I warmed up a bit and had a few neat strings. I hit a few strings that were note worthy. One that i really enjoyed was: run>pdx whirl> whirl> whirl> whirl> rev whirl> whirl> ss symple swirl> double pickup
it was on my flip side so that was cool. Had another run with both reapers and both dso's which i was happy with.

about mid way through i helped brandon with his shoe mods and my legs got cold and i never really warmed up after that. No noteworthy strings after that, but it worked out because we started just doing big tricks to make up for the 2 years or so of missed MOTW's. Erik busted out this industrial style flood lamp, which gave the session a cool feel to it. Definitely brought me back to my early days of skating. Reminded me of when we would bring flood lamps to spots late at night so we could skate well into the early hours of the morning, trying to emulate the big name skaters we saw in vids. I hit alpine whirly gig once or twice. one was thin at best and the second was off camera, but felt really clean, so i'll have to do those again. I was trying blurry massacre, but since massacre is still new for me i wound up hitting blurry voodoo in a few attempts. i was pleased with that one, as it's been years since i've hit it, let alone hit voodoo. I have a really strong fog and really strong symp mirage, so i guess it makes sense that it came back quickly...

What really irked me was i tried gig>gig about a million times on camera and just couldn't make it sit. arg. That's a combo that i feel i had pretty locked, as i've hit 4 beasts out of it, so i was really frustrated by that. The camera died, and to make a frustrating session worse, i hit it second try, very clean and well balanced, just after that.

Obviously i need a few good long solo sessions to shake that rust off, but saddly i won't have time for that untill december. School, work, papers, work, school, exams, ballocks...

Been thinking about Oz alot lately. Figured out what i need to do to get my work visa, how much money i'll need (which reminds me, Joel owes me $220 from the tournament still) and a few housing things. Still need to talk to my BFF will to see if he is on board or not. Having will along will change the dynamic of the trip, but ultimately make it alot better, despite being less footbag intensive. Regardless, it's only about seventy-some odd days away, and that's not long.

In other news, i finally found my camera cord, so i can maybe get to work on that video i wanted to open with, but don't hold your breath. it'll be a while...

p.s. I'm totally nerding out on this shit!