It's a sad state of affairs when 4 TWJCers are waiting for the Hastings locals to turn up to open the hall. Aside from enjoying a brief pass with Andy, doing a spot of diabolo, devilstick, cigar boxes & a few handstands I didn't spend much time on anything. I did spend 5 minutes learning to do 180° turns with a jitter ring. Sorry. Nicola's first trip to Hastings saw her having to demonstrate items from her considerable repertoire of hoop tricks to the locals. I also introduced her & Sam to the broomstick challenge thanks to rather abnormal hyper-extending joints Nicola found it very easy (when she moves her arm into a penguin position she can point her fingers straight forward & it just looks like a normal arm with the hand on backwards), Sam… not so much.
John, your parcel has successfully taken the next step on its jugglermail route.
#hcc
John Shearing - - Parent #
Thanks Jon.
As a result of a comment you made I have been inspired to write an entry about jugglermail on my blog.
Rob has suddenly become a master basket ball spinner with a very solid spin & some nice chest roll moves. He was also working on arm curls, one in each hand & a two ball spinning stack. Instead of ending the evening playing hackey sack or kikbo we played with a football & achieved considerably longer chains than we usually do with the other props. In a circle of 4 guys & one girl, inevitably Laura was the best football player by a Paris-Dakar margin.
#hcc
16 people crammed into the hall at Hastings! Who would have thought that?! This was by far the busiest I've seen the Hastings club this millenium. I was very impressed with Colin's stylised reverse (6x,4,)*. A young chap whose name I have forgotten was doing an impressive one up pirouette from a 3 ball cascade into 2 on one foot. I was able to put Sam off his 5 ball cascade by staring at him. Laura annoyingly managed to cartwheel into a handstand on her second attempt. Andy was struggling with passing due to avocado under a finger nail. No, I didn't understand that either.
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I almost missed #HCC last night. Fortunately though this fantastic website called the Juggling Edge reminded me it was on! We were joined by a newbie taking the total of Joh?ns up to 4. It felt really good to have a high ceiling to practice under, it's only been 10 days for me but it felt like a lot longer. I had a really good session with surprisingly few drops. Eric was doing very well running a very tall 7 ball pattern. Towards the end of the evening the lights went out for some glow juggling. Oh well. I did join in with an amusing glow hacky sack session which was truly awful. I have no idea why everyone was so bad, it certainly wasn't because it was hard to see. There were a lot more instances of people kicking each other because you couldn't see who was going for it, who could've predicted that?
Another good turnout at Hastings last night. Chloe & Lauren returned & showed much improvement from last month. They also brought along their unicyclist friend John. Eric's 6 ball pattern was looking very solid & tidy. Andy & I did some club passing, during a hand feast Andy was whistling different tones for the passes, selves & heffs, when I made him aware of it he became self conscious & stopped which immediately resulted in us getting worse because his whistling helped me to know where he was in the pattern & adjust accordingly. There was lots of talk about old letters no longer used in the modern alphabet (I spent some time exploring the church to see if I could find any), nail care, sustainable fishing & banoffee pie.
#hcc
Little Paul - - Parent #
The problem I have with banoffe pie, is that as far as I'm concerned it's not a pie unless it has a pastry top.
It's not as simple as that! https://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/64629
A pie is defined by the OED as "A baked dish of fruit, or meat and vegetables, typically with a top and base of pastry."
Do you think 'base' means bottom & sides, or just bottom? Even that is not clear.
Little Paul - - Parent #
I think for BJC I might develop and bake a true banoffe pie, with hand raised hot water crust pastry
What about custard pies that clowns like to throw in each others faces? If they had pastry tops, they wouldn't get covered in foam.
Little Paul - - Parent #
Shaving foam on a paper plate doesn't even count as custard
mike.armstrong - - Parent #
Lemon merigue pie is a pie. That is all.
Little Paul - - Parent #
It's not. It's a tart with ideas above it's station.
mike.armstrong - - Parent #
It's not the only one ;-p
Kevin brought along some planks to play woodkopf at Hastings on Friday. Unsurprisingly this turned out to be a lot of fun. My initial thought of sidestepping my opponent to nudge their plank from the side turned out to be ineffective due to the slow speed at which you need to move in order to turn without your plank slipping. The most effective tactic turned out to be maneuvering your plank underneath your opponent's so that it invades the space in front of their face which usually induces enough of a panic to make them drop. Mark was the undisputed champion though, the plank seemed to adhere to his bald head & he was able to trot around the hall with tight leaning turns without losing balance. We were joined for the first time by Lauren & Chloe with the 3 ball cascade already under their belt, we introduced them to a number of tricks & a whole lot of ball passing. There was also a demonstration of zen wrestling for those that were unfamiliar, during which Andy punched me in the face.
#hcc
Daniel Simu - - Parent #
Funny that going underneath works, it was described at this webpage that being tall was an advantage, I guess because nobody can touch you when you don't want them. Being lower seems like a vunerable position where the other player is in control of the next step...
I wish I had been there to try it too, it sounds like fun!
Very good turn out at Hastings last night. Carolyn, Mark & Kevin were desperately struggling to remember the name of a performer from a 90s BJC. I managed to correctly guess Peter Panic from the mostly inaccurate description of, "he juggled yellow basketballs" & I wasn't even there. All you need to do is factor in the inaccuracies of recollection that creep in over time. Andy was trying to juggle seriously. He's also floating the idea of a uni hockey meet in the future. I sold my unicycle for my own good a few years ago, now it looks like I'll have to get hold of another one. Newly weds Rob & Laura were doing lots of bounce passing. At the end of the evening we joined together to kick the last remaining unbroken feather out of my Kikbo but it is still holding together, just.
#hcc
I found some one piece clubs that I really liked last night at Hastings. They were found in the 'bag of tat' & Mark said they would be ~15 years old. They are a lot heavier & about 1.5cm shorter than my PX3s. The plastic is much thicker than any other one piece club I've ever tried & the balance is superb. They juggled a lot better than many composite clubs that I have tried. If it wasn't for the short handle they would be my ideal club. No one could identify what they were with 100% confidence, but I think they are Spotlights because they shared the same knob design (round with a concave bottom) with the more common Spotlight one piece (the one with "Spotlight..." in raised lettering on the nose). However, the dimensions are very different. The nose is a lot thinner, the body is longer, the handle shorter & the knob is smaller. They are also easily twice as heavy. Did Spotlight make two different types of one piece club? Or are these possibly some prototypes that were never mass produced? If they were mass produced I can't believe that they weren't more popular.
The less said about our kikbo session the better.
#hcc
Very possibly, the specs are definitely within what I describe. Club looks squatter than I remember though that could just be the photo.
Interestingly I had a go with some clubs that the owner claimed were Airflites, but they certainly weren't those.
Well, they sound like Airflites, apart from "short handle". Not sure where you can say the handle precisely ends, given the smooth taper. As to whether Spotlight made another club.... I have a very vague memory of there possibly being a single example of an obscure Spotlight club in the depths of Oddballs basement way back when. A photo would help a lot....
Meanwhile, here's an old video of Wes juggling Airflites.
http://juggling.tv/560
A photo you say? I commissioned Sam with the task & they've just come through:
https://www.jugglingedge.com/userfiles/Orinoco/mysteryclub/1.jpg
https://www.jugglingedge.com/userfiles/Orinoco/mysteryclub/2.jpg
https://www.jugglingedge.com/userfiles/Orinoco/mysteryclub/3.jpg
As you can see they appear squatter than the Airflite pic on Dubé's website.
The taped handles are making identification harder for me. It is just vinyl tape added for decoration & is possibly an aftermarket addition.
Actually if you turn pic 1 on it's side & compare the angles they are pretty spot on. They've got to be Airflites. Well done Void!
I just tweeted @Dube and made this pic. I still vote Airflite. Damn good club.
https://t.co/tCF31YWeZ1
I was going to suggest a picture of the top, picture 2 makes me fairly sure it's an airflite [sic]. The concave dome with a hole in the middle and a seam.
In York, airflites are known as marmites.
Yet again I have been lambasted for not writing about TWJC this week, so I will write about Hastings. It was a very busy night, joining the Hastings regulars we had four of us visit from TWJC & we were also joined by Eric from Leeds who will be moving to the area in a couple of months. John was continuing with his Juggling Jaunt, Hastings being stop number 8. Almost everyone in attendance could juggle 5 balls so it seemed silly not to have an endurance competition. The first game came down to a showdown between Simon, Colin, newbie Eric & myself, Andy went round critiquing our patterns, Eric juggles with one foot pointing out 10° more than the other. I apparently juggle with my head cocked slightly to the left (I like to think it gives me a whimsical appearance). I managed to win the first round but was forced to swap my nice uglies for some uncomfortable large overfilled thuds for the second round, I was doing ok but then I dropped while I was heckling Rob. Andy was juggling two ping pong balls on a bat & it was nice to find that this trick is something that Simon couldn't do straight away. Simon also suggested trying moshikame with a ping pong ball which was monstrously difficult. This is not a trick for the weak of knee. Every catch needs to be cushioned from standing right down to the floor, I managed to get up to all of 5 consecutive catches before my legs gave out.
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There were more table tennis skills at Hastings this month. We never really managed to get two balls batted round the circle with any degree of consistency though. Andy & also I had a go at juggling two ping pong balls on one bat which is pretty tricky. Once I'd figured out how to start consistently though I managed to get a personal best of all of 10 bounces. I had a go at teaching Sam to switch between synch & asynch ultimates & we managed a few successful transitions by the end of the session. Oliver was trying to do a forward roll in slow motion. Laura was trying to kick up a hula hoop. Rob needs a haircut.
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