IJA Part III
Saturday morning saw Luke and myself a bit groggy, but excited to hit the day. We ate in the hotel cafe..a bit of a letdown, for having to pay extra..and left for the fest. On the way, I introduced him to Dimmu Borgir and one of my brand new favorite bands: 3 Inches of Blood. They are awesome. Songs about pirates, storming castles, and warring cyborgs. Awesome
We arrived at the festival rocking out and ready to rock out some juggling! We warmed up passing with each other, mucking about with seven clubs.. They were also holding the games today, so I kept half an eye on that part of the gym, watching for games I wanted to enter. I managed to get involved in some fancy group patterns with the Madison jugglers..Luke, Mike, and Melonhead, and IJA dude Martin Frost. With the exception of Melonhead, all amazing pattern developers..they can think about a passing pattern and figure out the timing for all the different throws going to all the different people.. There was a lot of juggling jargon as we hashed out this relatively new five person moving juggling pattern, using something like 17 clubs. We also did a successful run of ten catches with a pentagram in ultimates. (For Georges: Five people stand in a regular pentagram formation, one person at each point, facing inwards, and pass to the two people most directly across from them. In ultimates every single throw, from both the right and left hands, is a pass to another juggler, so the air space in the pentagram is filled with clubs: there are no “off” beats to relax and recover from mistakes.)
I think it was around this time that I got distracted by the games. I entered the quarters juggling competition and was probably the very first person to drop. How I have fallen from my former glory….sigh… Three club backcrosses and eight club passing helped me feel a lot better, though!
I then ended up going back to juggle with Mike and Luke. We decided to do a three person pattern, I think called a Turbo, where one person is always moving inbetween the other two even as they all pass to each other. Of course, these are the Madison guys, so the regular Turbo was just a warm-up and we quickly added a club, to make it a ten club turbo, and much harder. I had a nearly impossible time keeping track of where I was supposed to make what kind of throw when, but eventually we got a couple of semi-decent runs on it. whew!
I had a good time watching the numbers competitions… Nine and ten ball solo juggling looks so amazing when done well.
The main public show was Saturday night.. I enjoyed it quite a bit, with a couple of exceptions. Steven Ragatz was probably the high point for me, although both bits by the Passing Zone had me rolling with laughter. Very very funny guys.
One Comment
- George Wyche replied:
Yep. Thanks for slowing down the patter to a ingestible rate. The midnight festival must be where the “out-of-nowhere” gets its view.
Would you say that the 3+ people interactions for pin passing at events like these is where you really get to practice? Otherwise how regularly do you practice with pins?
Are the names for various passing situations written down (and read) or all learned by being in game (at events like this)?
August 14th, 2005 at 7:27 am. Permalink.
