all is well (... TOO well?)

i kinda thought i'd be feeling it by now.

like honestly, maybe i was really "caught up" in the whole thing last time, or else i was somehow unintentionally aggrandizing the act of using a single fixed axle yo-yo for a year. but like... big deal? it's now mid-march, and this has been positively EASY.

my cabinet full of unused yo-yo's is nice to look at, replete with shiny aluminum or painted wooden throws, but it hasn't been remotely tempting. i feel like that's a good thing in general, right? surely, it's preferable to feel content with throwing the same woodie every day, as opposed to desperately wishing i could grab one of my precision metals? but part of me is also aware that this could easily be the end of that part of my yo-yo life and it would be totally alright. in that regard, it almost feels like it SHOULD sting more.

part of it is undoubtedly due to the support of other players. when i did this in 2012, there was almost no one else primarily working on responsive throwing, let alone fixed axle. it was a much more lonely road. this year (even having given up instagram), i feel really connected - particularly through the fixed axle discord server. even if those folks aren't throwing fixies every day, there's always a running trick dialog, people asking for help on this or that, people musing over the "state of yo" which is such a big part of throwing fixed... it's a lot easier to go through this process with some group therapy lol. 

fixed axle february came and went, and i was able to throw a fun little contest on the yoyoexpert forum. i set 7 tricks to serve as "gates" and players had to hit them on video in order to enter a random drawing for a deHcade yo-yo. the tricks weren't impossible, but they definitely weren't easy either, so it was rad that 16 people entered. brian datz from canada won the random drawing, and andre will send him pretty much the last deHcade he's got. when the month ended, i was asked if i'd be doing another one for march. i hadn't planned on it, but said "sure", so you've got another chance to try if you're up for it! i can't offer any more deHcades, but i'll find something rad to give as the prize. 

which brings me to a bit of a bummer. 

i got an email from colin a few weeks back. he was in the process of turning the latest run of deHcade, and he realized upon preliminary testing that essentially all of his pieces were bad. apparently the tooling he had made to produce the yo-yo's (and specifically the axle threading) has deteriorated or otherwise failed. fixing that requires re-making the tooling which would be costly, in terms of time, work, material and expense. whether colin is up for that at some point in the future remains to be seen, but in the short term it means that there's probably not another run of deHcade coming. from my perspective, colin/tmbr has done more for fixed axle yo-yoing (and especially manufacture) than anyone since tom kuhn. he most definitely does not owe the world another wooden yo-yo, and i'm 100% only grateful that i got to work with him on the stuff we (he) did. but i also know how much people love tmbr and that the deHcade demand outstripped the supply, so i wanted to be transparent about it.