schalicto.com

This past weekend was the 2008 Indiana State Yo-Yo Contest.  I know that I said that I would not be traveling to yo-yo contests anymore, however I have made a couple of exceptions to that rule, those exceptions are Indiana and Missouri because Takeshi and Chris really know how to run and contest and they treat their staff well… and they don’t expect me judge freestyle’s.

The trip was just about perfect.  I left Minnesota with Abe Ziaimehr on Friday morning and we picked Dylan Kowalski up just outside of Chicago.  The drive there was long and pretty irritating.  Abe has this cute obsession with 80’s punk rockabilly and so I got a sickening education on bands like X, Black Flag, and a bunch of other crap.  And then we picked up Dylan who is all about that stuff too… it was long drive through Chicago.

We arrived safely at what I am referring to as The Ebbinghouse at around 6pm eastern time on Friday.  The only really bad part of the weekend was that night because I did not get a good place to sleep.  I tried to go to bed at about 3am on a couch in the living room, that turned out to be a huge mistake because Tyler Severance, Brandon Jackson, and Danny Severance seemed to think it would okay/hilarious to spend the whole night laughing and shouting about 15 feet from my head.  It was a terrible night.

I woke up early Saturday morning and took a shower and then took a quick trip to McDonalds for breakfast, did you know they don’t have free wifi?  I thought they had a free wifi.  After breakfast I stopped back at The Ebbinghouse to pick up Abe and Dylan and then we were off to the contest site.

The contest was held at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art.  I wish I would have had more time to explore the place, because it was pretty cool.  My only job for the contest was as the M.C. which is a pretty cool gig.  I actually spent the last week familiarizing myself with pronunciations that I have had problems with in the past, like Scholten (Skolten), Tigas (Teegas), and of course Eulalia (You-lay-lee-ah).  With the exception of a few music issues (mostly caused by Ian Johnson) the contest went very smoothly from my end of things.  On stage however was a crop of some of the saddest freestyle’s I have ever seen.  I was generally very impressed with Samm Scott who had a particularly ballin 1A preliminary round.  Chris Myers routine would have been a show-stopping contest winner in 1996 (I mean that as a compliment) and Hank Freeman had a fantastic 3A routine (but that’s pretty much a given).  All the other players who you expect fantastic freestyle’s from did not bring their A game.

After the contest was over a group of us went for dinner at TGIFridays and Abe, using his biggest voice, ordered a Sam Adams.  For some reason all of us thought it was hilarious, even the server.  It was a fun dinner particularly because Russ Andert was there and that guy is totally awesome, I’ll have to show you the titanium bottle opener that he gave me.

Are you still reading?  Is this too long?

That night we were back at The Ebbinghouse and there was a spoon fight, I chugged a Turkey Dinner Jones Soda (it was a lot better than I was hopping for), Seth threw up on Abe and found a nice comfortable/quite spot to turn in early.

We left early Sunday morning, dropping Dylan back off in Chicago and then I had to drive Abe back to college in Oshkosh.  The best part of the drive home was being alone in the car for the 5 hour drive from Oshkosh to the Twin Cities.  I drove home listening to Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich which is a fantastic true story of how the MIT Blackjack Team took Vegas for millions and millions of dollars.

Now I am home.  What do you think about Twitter?  Is it worth my time?  Is it just confusing and irritating?

-Josh

Posted on March 31st, 2008 by schalicto
Filed under: Josh Rants