Less than productive
For the first time in several weeks I’ve had nothing to do. This rare and cherished opportunity has spanned most of the weekend, and aside from an out of town basketball game Friday night, and a handful of soccer games Saturday morning, I had absolutely nothing to occupy my time.
It has been a very welcome relief, and since my last post (just before the AJA juggling festival) I have been kept pretty busy. I’ve not done much on the blog as far as coverage of the festival goes. I made a Juggling Profile page–not quite festival coverage, but certainly inspired by the event. While I haven’t done much on the site, on the up side, I have gotten a fair amount of juggling done.
I’ve kept working with my clubs, and I am more pleased every day with my doubles throws. Before i went up to Atlanta I could barely manage to put a clean double spin on even one club without having to scramble desperately to keep my pattern alive. But after watching other jugglers and picking up a few tips (not to mention several hours of practice) I can now throw two doubles very reliably in a regular pattern and a flash. After a bit of warmup I can even work in a third throw. I’ve tried the third throw with both the regular, slower rhythm of a high three cascade as well as the faster five cascade or "flash" where all three are up in the air at the same time. Surprisingly enough both seem to work about the same and I can usually keep juggling after I make the throw. I can tell I still have a lot of work to do with doubles, because I can’t do a full pattern with them, just a few throws here and there. But the progress is there and I am happy with it.
Speaking of progress, I made some crazy advances in unicycle juggling yesterday (sunday) afternoon. Again, I think a lot of this goes back to just seeing someone actually do this in person. I’ve found that just watching someone juggle or ride a unicycle really helps my own performance. After seeing a chap or two riding around the festival in atlanta juggling casually on a uni, I decided to give it another go. I loaded up my juggling bag, rode my unicycle over to the school and started practicing. I started off with just one ball (I used my heavy exerball for good measure) and rode around for about 10 or 20 minutes just tossing it from hand to hand. I went right to three after that. I used a reverse cascade and I had amazing success. I would estimate I averaged about 50 catches. I feel like I can legitimately say that I can juggle on my unicycle now. Of course I need a good deal of practice still at this point, but again, like doubles, the progress is there.
My four ball progress is slower. I am very pleased with my fountain, but I still have some trouble with synchronous throws, which makes transitioning a bit tricky. No luck on learning the shower (with either three or four). Progress is slow, but it is still very fun to run four and I am happy to just keep churning away at it. All in all I have had a very good week of juggling and even got in some exerball runs over the weekend. I am really looking forward to the point where I can juggle my exerballs on the unicycle (I did it for a bit, but it was quite challenging).
Well, I need to do some “work” for the “job” I have that “pays” me. Right.