September 17, 2006

Juggling fest in Syracuse

Soooo. I know this entry is the first in, well, a while. I decided I needed a break from my frantic studying of biochem. Yesterday I had the great pleasure of going to my first juggling convention. Now I know most of you will be very puzzled...juggling? Anna?. I kid you not my friends, I have gotten eaten by the juggling bug. Just to let you know, this new hobby is not taking the place of any of my others (sorry, mom, I still need a horse). But anyway, back to the story.

I left in the 1:30 car, vs the 9am car or the 7pm car. I got a good bit of juggling in in open gym, but I also got to see other jugglers show off. It was, needless to say, extremely cool. This one guy did 5-ball endurance for like, 7 minutes! Also, in the best-trick contest, one guy did a 2 diablo front flip!! OK, so I was impressed and inspired. My goal: 5 balls by senior year. I think it's possible.

As night fell, we took our posse of Cornell jugglers to CVS for some food, got hit on by a drunk, and finally made it over to the place where the show was held. On the walk over, I learned a few new tricks to work on. Nate helped me do two-person 3-ball cascade. Which is different than Dean's helping me with passing (so cool!). I need more practice, but I'm getting there. I also want to be able to juggle over my head, so being the lazy me, I can juggle while lying down.

The evening show was pretty cool. I must say my favorite performances were by Wes Peden. He also did a two-person act with his dad, in a group called Airplay. The main performer of the night was Michael Karas. Although his act was good, I actually liked Wes better, oh well. Oh yea, by the way, Wes, Michael, Joe Showers, and a ton of other people there are very good, like winning medals in INTERNATIONAL juggling competitions. Wow.

So all in all it was a fun day, and we leave Nate to stay overnight and try and cram 12 people into two, seats-4-comfortably cars for the hour car-ride home. Unfortunately I got stuck in the car with a driver who has different tastes in music...I'm sure the Billing car had a little Sim Redmond action going on, I would expect nothing less of Greg. So about 20 minutes away from CU, we see the dreaded blue lights go off behind Greg's car....shoot...so we slow down and pull off into this side street. As we're waiting, still crushed in the back seat, another cop car pulls up behind us. Luckily he was very nice and our driver had a clean record. He joked around with us because we told him we were coming from a juggling festival, and he asked the normal question, "can you juggle chain-saws"... so our cop pulls off and we sit waiting for the Billing car to get on the road again...and we're waiting....and waiting... while Pat tells us stories of how all police officers think Greg's a terrorist so that's why he gets pulled over...one phone call from Steph a few minutes later though, we find out that the car was not being striped searched, but they made everyone get out of the car, searched it, then Greg and Jon juggled for them....Haha, can you imagine juggling for the cops that pulled you over? I really wish I had been in that car. What did the people passing think? "Man! if that's the new sobriety test, I gotta get working on that!" Oh, what fun, so now they have an awesome story to tell.

The rest of the trip was uneventful, thankfully because I was really tired and ready to go to bed. So here I am, back in the old apt, studying biochemistry...off to work at 1... maybe i'll find someone at the wall to practice passing with...

Posted by agutwin at 11:07 AM | Comments (1)