The Juggling Edge - The Legend of the Canadian Cascadian

Mike Moore - 2014-09-19 02:17:21 UTC #

The Legend of the Canadian Cascadian

There was some buzz at my university about a guy riding on a three-wheeled unicycle for the past few weeks. We finally tracked him down and he came to juggling club today. He tells me "I can juggle three balls, and I'm trying to learn five."

To me, this means that he probably has an okay 3b, shoddy 4b, and wants to skip right to 5b. I'm still unpacking my stuff/setting up music, but as I turn around, he's juggling 5! It looked pretty nice, and he held it up for ~10 seconds. Colour me surprised!

Surprise number two: I asked him what other patterns he knows. "I don't know any other patterns. Well, I can kind of do the over ones." He had a pretty shoddy reverse cascade. He didn't know shower. This guy actually knew two and only two patterns*: 3b cascade and 5b cascade. I showed/taught him a couple basic throws/patterns (throws under the opposite arm, shower, etc) and he learned at a rate only slightly better than a typical beginner.

He also didn't know any jugglers, and had never heard of the IJA/EJC/etc. I found this entire experience a well of surprises!

*I never saw him do 4, but I didn't ask about it.

loganstafman - 2014-09-19 02:57:56 UTC - Parent #

We have a similar legend around Princeton, NJ. He juggled on the street in Switzerland for a few years; he juggles by launching objects so high that he has all the time in the world to keep going. He juggles tennis balls, and can keep 7 up for a little while, but there is no pattern; when he catches one ball, he launches it high, and it sometimes lands in the same hand he threw it from!

Orinoco - 2014-09-20 14:01:11 UTC - Parent #

I think a lot of people used to learn in isolation 5-10 years ago especially, but now resisting the urge to not use the internet to find a juggling video is an almost impossible trick in itself. Or perhaps rising college/university attendance rates means more people are used to researching prior art than before?

Was there a story to how he has managed to avoid external influence?

Mike Moore - 2014-09-21 13:34:41 UTC - Parent #

I don't think it was intentional: he just hadn't met any jugglers, and I suppose he only searched for what he wanted to learn on Youtube (and didn't click on any related videos).