LOST... but no big deal...

 
i lost my yo-yo. this is the first yo-yo i've lost in 20-something years of playing with yo-yo's (i admit that some i've broken and discarded; notably ALL of the midnight specials i threw religiously throughout my childhood).

this would kind of be a big deal for me, seeing as i'm only throwing the one yo-yo all year. i guess it could even be said that i've officially FAILED in my mission to throw one yo-yo for all of 2012... however, to those might say "that [yo-yo] was [his] last hope," i answer "no. there is another."

the 'eh' disappeared on 5/19, while i was waiting for my daughter to finish her second swim practice of the summer. i was hanging out on our pool's playground with my son. he was clambering on things and i was shooting the moon with equal glee, garnering the amazed attentions of a few kids hanging out nearby. we had picked up chick-fil-a for dinner, and alex had received some sort of round lantern for a toy (what kind of lame kids' meal toy is that?)... which was about the same size and weight as a yo-yo.

at some point i sat on the little picnic table under the gazebo, and i must have put the 'eh' down. with the aforementioned toy in my pocket, i apparently did not notice its absence when i got up. though i realized it as soon as i got home, it was not there when i went back. perhaps one of the kids who were so enamored of my trickery snagged it as i made my exit. perhaps they even though i left it behind on purpose.

in any case, though i was crestfallen to realize that my yo-yo was gone, it occurred to me shortly thereafter that there are worse fates which may befall a yo-yo than to be picked up by an excited child.

eventually, i accepted the inevitable; that i was not going to find the 'eh' in the short-term, and that i had to move on to phase 2. fortunately, when devising this scheme, both steve and i recognized that the ephemeral nature of a wooden yo-yo might preclude it from a full year of constant play. it's not unlike the sci-fi movie contact, where the billionaire benefactor reveals a second trans-dimensional space center after the untimely destruction of the first: "why have one, when you can have two for twice the price?" (thanks again, steve.)

i had put so much time and energy into doctoring my first 'eh' to play perfectly that when i made the switch, it was pretty striking. the wood was raw, white, and virginal. the sleeve needed to be sanded and "burnt in" in. the gap was all wrong and the axle too long. most of all, i just needed to play the hell out of the thing. every yo-yo is different, and when you're dealing with wood, even two yo-yo's of the same make and model will respond differently. regardless, the fact that there is no silver bullet (wow, what a pun), and no panacea for getting wood yo-yo's to work well is perhaps, what i find most compelling about playing them.

the last 3 weeks or so have been a blur of hard play. i've seen the oak soak in a great deal of my sweat and filth (and that of the world). i've made a video with it, and have made the segue into using it for my 365yoyotricks.com entries. it's survived a few walk-the-dogs on concrete and wooded trails (yes, i walk the dog - deal with it). i've handed it off to a few kids to try at our new "yolex" yo-yo club (not ideal since i then have nothing to throw!). it's gone on a few nice day-trips in the early summer and a jaunt down to disney for star wars weekends (during which i used it to show the darth vader the "darth vader" trick - impressive. most impressive.)

perhaps it's also noteworthy that writing this post has also been the most time i've spent online in a few weeks. i've found that spending time on the computer has made me feel really disingenuous lately. too much time cultivating or maintaining some kind of 'persona', and not enough time just being a person. i need to spend more time interacting with my family (or skateboarding, paddling, cutting the lawn, and otherwise embracing the real & here & now) than i do crafting pithy statuses, posting pictures that make me feel interesting, or polishing my own virtual effigy. i do try to be earnest and simple with these posts, so i thought it was a decent exception (ok, and especially for that vader pic).

so, maybe i failed to hang on to the original 'eh'. maybe i should be more broken up about it (i AM sorry i was so careless with it, steve). i'm a big believer in accepting consequences for one's actions though. i make a LOT of mistakes, and i don't always get held accountable to the extent that i should. i lost the 'eh' at a time when i kind of needed a series of wake-up calls. when life gives you those moments, you can either lie around bemoaning your fate or existence, or you can wind back up and get spinning again, truer and better than before.

you lose yourself. you find yourself... or start over.

a guided tour of the 'eh', and a new video

first off, here's a video! it's been forever since i put together a clip (and never with the "eh", so here goes! here it is on vimeo!



thought someone somewhere might be interested in looking more closely at the yo-yo steve made for me. here's a brief tour of the only throw i've known this year. in that first pic, you can see some of my favorite aspects, the grain and the engraving. the body is oak, which is porous. the perforated veins of xylem and phloem are easy to distinguish. the whole yoyo oaks up sweat like a rag, and in 4 months has developed a lovely patina. the engravings are about 1mm deep and easy to make out in any light. the only issue with them is that when they catch a fingernail, they will drag a chunk of it off. small price to pay.

(click the images for big)

here's the obligatory "open" shot. as you can see, it's a fixed wood axle yo-yo, with a replaceable axle kind of like the no jive's. these axles are made of hemlock, which is a bit soft, but has worked really well. i'm using duncan friction stickers for extra snap. i actually stick em on something flat and manually scratch off all of the tacky material, leaving only the linen (which is all that's needed with wood) before adhering them to the yoyo. both sides have built in dimples, but they don't really provide enough variation for adequate response on their own.

In this shot, you can see the only 'non-cellulose' material pretty well. the 'eh' has brass thread inserts and a steel axle. this makes it MUCH easier to maintain, and way more sturdy than all-wood construction. this is probably also the aspect which made the eh so difficult to get "just right", and why spyy would be loathe to make a production run of them. take-apart design still precludes me from any more "1955" contests at worlds, but the trade off of replaceable axles is necessary.




i'm using a special aluminum jig (not pictured) to sand my axles evenly. i've over-sanded a few of them. the last set steve sent me were quite long, so i can kind of 'guess and check'. too long, the gap is wide and you get loose winds and up loops. too short and you sacrifice spin time.





i'm still using the same old 'cones to balls' type 10 cotton string. this cone is definitely on its way out, but the stuff lasts so much longer than normal, thin cotton, that i rarely use more than one string a day. i'm pretty adept at twisting at this point, if i do say so. this year has really brought into relief the difference having good string can make. people make a big deal about having this or that poly for great whips or lacerations, but with fixed axle, even your sleeper suffers if you have the wrong stuff.


here's how the 'eh' compares with two relatively common shapes (or maybe they just USED to be common), a fhz and a no jive. it's definitely got more of a fhz profile. the edges are quite sharp, which can hurt on whacks, but i need every milligram of mass on that outer rim to get the most out of my spin.

so there you have it; the spyy "eh" in all it's glory. simplicity is truly bliss... or anyway, it's all i know!

stalling in the golden age

you hear a lot about "golden age" these days. a lot of it is just bs self-importance, but every now and then it rings true. sure yo-yoing has been around for generations, and we've already had any number of golden ages, really... but when i think about how i'll look back on this time, the past 5-10 years... i don't know. it's special.

i love the peralta documentary riding giants, and this section about the early days exploring the north shore of oahu is just golden (you should watch it - i'll wait). we don't have breaks in yo-yoing, we have trick elements. tricks are neither created nor destroyed; they're just discovered. once you find something unique and interesting, if you advertise it, others can go there. it can blow up like the banzai pipeline and become a place people go to test themselves.

in that context, i feel as though so many guys (and girls) are uncovering so much deeply personal territory right now. i don't think that we'll ever run out of material. with adaptations in technique and materials, creative people will always have somewhere new to explore.

this is an especially exciting time for fixed axle yo-yoing. there aren't many people really pushing themselves through it, but the people that are are fantastic. you have drew tetz with his butterfly and crazy acrylic punch out yo-yo's. you have colin leland, whose putting out the most exciting wooden throws in decades (and throwing killer tricks). as a result, you've got all these guys who have always been incredible with whatever yo-yo (nate sutter, miggy, gabe lozano, gary longoria...) battling each other in fixed axle horse.

stall tricks are a great example of undiscovered territory. the first time i can remember intentionally stalling a tug-responsive yo-yo was at the :50 mark of my first no jive video. since then, SO MANY stall tricks have become apparent it's ridiculous. it's particularly suited to fixed axle because of the response and the necessity of regenerating due to the ephemeral spin. bucket stalls, triangle stalls, new stop-n-go's, reverse-spin stalls... it's like finding an island of tricks that's been there forever but which everyone ignores. players are so concerned with how long their yo-yo spins that the idea of focusing on stopping it seems absurd.

i'm focusing on stalls, because it's a big part of what i like to do, but really, EVERY facet of yo-yoing is like this. sideways tricks have become a bit overblown in recent years (just like off-plane did before them), but that well isn't dry. for people who really want to find a new and different way to approach yo-yoing, the only restrictions are internal.

i think when we're all old yo-yo geezers, we'll look back on these days and perceive the unimaginable vastness of what lay before us, as yet undiscovered. we'll appreciate in a way that's impossible within the frenetic microcosm of today the purity with which we sifted through the possible. we'll look at the up-and-coming players and not dismiss their "post-new-school" tricks as ugly or derivative, but understand that we're all exploring the same unconquerable frontier, that every throw hides a piece of the mystery, and that every age is golden.

beautiful inconsistencies and the end of frivolous wandering

yesterday i had one of my first "structural" catastrophes so far. the 'eh' was lounging comfortably in the left pocket of my jean jacket, which was draped over a chair at the kitchen table. when i plopped myself down upon it, i felt the subtle, yo-yo shaped indentation a millisecond before the full weight of my posterior transferred itself. though i was proud of my reflexes, the damage had been done. on the next throw, something was off, and when you spend all of your time throwing one yo-yo, having something 'off', even by a little, is like a toxic splinter lodged deep within your mind.

the 'eh' had picked up a slight flutter, and i immediately realized that my ineptitude at the table had resulted in a very slight bend, either to the axle or (more critically AND more likely) to one of the set screws inside the halves. when i pulled out the replaceable axle (my last good one), i saw that it was warped like the tour. i've bent the bejeezus out of wooden yo-yo's before, but it's a little less stressful when you've got 50 other 3-in-1's just like it (and a near-unlimited supply of axles). with patience and intensity that i'm sure my cats thought were ridiculous, i bent the shape back as well as i could and changed the axle sleeve. i had to shim it and remove the dead sticker i'd been using because the gap was a bit on the thin side. it was a pity, because earlier, i had the thing playing perfectly.

so far, it's behaving. no real vibe or inconsistency, but yo-yo's don't heal, and if i screwed something up it'll show its face again. it's funny. if i ever have to switch to my backup, it'll really kill me to have worked in the finish so well. they are really two totally different yo-yo's now. not unlike the human condition, the fragility and transiency of a wooden yo-yo never ceases to inspire me.

years ago, jason tracy (one of the late 90's best yo-yoers and even more a wood fanatic than myself) told me that what he liked best about wood yo-yo's is the fact that you have to accept the inconsistency. your yo-yo is not going to feel the same on a hot, muggy day as it does on a dry, wintery one. a microscopic change to the axle or inside-profile, and tricks will go from being your bread and butter to straight-up unthinkable. i delight in developing the skill to minimize those issues, but it never goes away. and while i understand that most yo-yo players have gear on the brain so as to never have to worry about issues with consistency, the natural variability of wood is one of the aspects of yo-yoing i find most compelling.

with a bit of practice, anybody can surf in a wave-tank. always the same shape, temperature, lack of chop. but surfing is about coming to understand not so much the technique as the ocean. somedays it'll be big and burly. some days it'll be tiny and unassuming. very rarely is it 'perfect' (and when it is, you feel all the more blessed if you come to it through difficulty). it's about coming to terms with all of the vast factors outside of your control, and being the best version of yourself in spite of them. accepting your place not as master and commander, but just part of the "ocean"- the greater mystery - is what playing wood is all about.

the re-evaluation of my miniscule jurisdiction of control aside, one of the aspects of this project which i'm finding most challenging is my method for developing new tricks. there's a whole class of yo-yo tricks (like stalls and stop-n-go's and other regens) for which this sort of yo-yo is perfectly suited. i love those tricks, but i'm also trying to push my regular old 1a forward concurrently, and that's tough. this yo-yo sleeps fine for wood, but depending on the string and gap i'm using, i have about 20 seconds of MAXIMUM exploration time before i'm out of spin. (i might be able to eek out double that on a straight sleeper, but not if i'm making my way through some hold.)

as a result, the 1a tricks i'm coming up with are much less 'exploratory' and much more 'theoretical' (if that distinction makes sense). with a bearing, i'd follow the tried and true process of starting a trick or combo i know and purposely 'messing it up' to explore a new concept. i don't have time for that anymore. by the time i even know where i am, my spin is dying, and i have to see the exit like a chess game, a few moves ahead, or else try to complete the trick with a dead yo-yo (a technique i've seen henry dineen employ frequently).

today, while lying in bed and listening to npr, i worked out an entire trick in my head, from mount to flyaway. i've been trying to do something new with escolar's pure143 mount for weeks, and i dunno... i guess something about the rick santorum story really inspired me to focus on... anything else.

i went downstairs with a whole trick in my head, but no idea if my tools (or skills) were up to the holds. i've definitely done this with individual moves before, but never a complete trick, and it was pretty neat to have the whole concept together before i even threw down (particularly since i'd been grappling with the entry). it took me over an hour to get through a 10 second trick, but it was so rewarding. as a yo-yoer, i've never really been much of a theoretician. i try stuff, and since most of the stuff i try is extremely short and to-the-point, it doesn't require much in the way of forethought. i just do it till i land it, and if i happen to find a new path along the way, i'll stroll down and check it out. now that i no longer have the capacity for such idle meanderings, i can feel my trick ideas becoming more focused and centered. it's neat to have necessity dictate the terms of your approach to a new trick.

i've never really thought that yo-yo tricks need to have a 'point', and yet my tricks' content are suddenly dependent upon them, as idly 'following leads' runs me out of gas every time. it's one thing to call out a mount and then synthesize real-time feedback as you see and feel where it goes in front of you. to connect an entry, a series of holds, and a relevant escape and THEN get it under your fingers is a skill for which i find myself grossly (and delightfully) unprepared.

i could have told you that this experience would cause me to reevaluate aspects of my playing, but i could never have predicted which aspects those would be. even after years of playing wood, it never really occurred to me how dependent i was, creatively, upon using a bearing yo-yo to figure out ideas before migrating the technique to more a difficult medium.

in other news, my friend Luke Hildebrand sent me one of his yo-yo creations, which i received in the post this afternoon. a 1-piece cocobolo beauty with embedded buffalo nickels, i can safely say that this is the first yo-yo i've been tempted to play since i started with the 'eh'. i think they're sold out at hildybros.com, but you should check out the blog regardless.

1/12 of the way to forever

well... february. it's officially a month. technically a bit more since i started before xmas. i'm not sure what the longest period i've ever played only one yo-yo has been, but i'm certain i've eclipsed it.

i'm very excited about yo-yoing. i feel as though i'm closer to the core of how i "mean to play" than i ever have been. i was a little nervous about just doing the same tricks over and over, but i LIKE to play so much that i'm coming up with things that amp me by accident. that's the way it should be. i blame part of that increased sense-of-stoke on 365yoyotricks.com. watching my pals throw down big tricks every day (and no lack of them fixed axle) makes yo-yo doldrums incomprehensible.

i'm struck by the fact that i really haven't had a reason to touch or even look at other yo-yo's during this time. i compared my 'eh' and its developing patina (do you call it 'patina' if it's wood?) with my backup (which sits idly on a rack). it's amazing the dirt and joy that just a month of play can enclose within porous oak. i am not a delicate person, and i do not always treat my 'nice things' with appropriate care. i asked steve for this yo-yo knowing it would have to become an extension of my body, and i'm not really happy if my body isn't being beat up a bit. as such, the 'eh' has seen its share of spills and tumbles, caroming off of concrete and brick... occasionally running into an oblivious passer-by ("i never hit anyone accidentally" - great 'quarter trick' line).

lately, i've shifted back to my old type 10 'cones to balls' string. the cone, given to me by steve brown, still has some heft, and the string encircling it retains all of the spring and snap it must have had when it was originally wound in some lost age. i've scorched through a few axles, and snapped a few strings. i'm feeling good about how i've dialed the gap and response into reluctant harmony.

my kids at school do not understand, and i'm kind of glad of it. they ask me why the same yo-yo every day, and why wood, and why no bearing. my best answer is that i wanted a challenge (the more complicated truth that 'it's the path toward how i want to play' is not how you answer a 10 year-old asking about a yo-yo). to them, triple or nothing is a challenge. a single, staccato eli-hop is a challenge. a decent, stable sleeper is a challenge.

somewhere, deep inside each of those things, there is a challenge for me too. the challenge of throwing a sleeper and really living within the ephemeral friction... embracing the anxious reality that every eli hop could impotently miss the string... the challenge of really BEING THERE as the yoyo revolves in sacred ellipses, falling toward the string on triple or nothing. i want to hit hard tricks. i want to make up hard tricks. but what i'm noticing is that with bearings, i tend to miss the simple stuff. not that i fail to hit the tricks, but i fail to take notice of them. the simple beauty of a well-executed ripcord or the thwack of a flyaway. the smell of an axle you've set smoking and the feel of wood chastising lackadaisical knuckles. it just feels more real and contiguous than ever to me right now.

living and playing in this way, a month kind of snuck up on me. will a year do the same? and then what? if tomorrow were 12/31/12, i would have no desire to go back to ball bearings. i don't care for how they sound. i don't care for how they feel. i don't care for the complacent, take-it-for-granted way that i find myself playing them by comparison. my friends pull it off, but it makes me feel like a phony. i'm not a big proponent of 'forever'. i think 'right now' is the real commitment, the ultimate challenge, and the greater underlying purpose to this exercise in indulgent self-exploration...

but so far... so very good.

string-ball 2

so i've been at it a week.

so far everything is hunky-dory... ducky, as it were. there are definitely a few short tricks that i had down on metal yo-yo's that i simply can't do on wood (mostly protracted combos i made up), and a metric ton more that take major concentration. i don't 'miss' being able to throw without the need to be fully committed to every trick, but i definitely notice it. i can eek out an 17-18 second 'trick' on this yo-yo so far. haven't tried a long sleeper, but i'd bet my max right now is about twice that long.

besides the time/spin constraint, wood reminds you that it's perpetually prepared to snap back on you. pretty much every 'reasonable' trick (i.e. no triple-lindy's or crazy layers in the gap) can be worked through with mega-aggressive response. you just have to know the how to 'see' the string formation in a way that reveals where the slack will play near the axle. by 'slack', i don't mean a big section of string swinging lazily through the air; i mean the circumference about 1mm above the axle that starts the response chain-reaction. getting back in tune with that little zone has been fun, especially since it's been limited to getting to know the dimensions of a single yo-yo.

i started a string-ball this weekend, from the discarded cotton strings i'd left on our guest bed (you're welcome stacy). i've been using type 8 cotton mostly. i have a skein that feels just right, but it only lasts about half as long as my type 10 cone. as a guess, i think i'm getting about 45m of throw-time before the string looks raw and decrepit around the axle. the dead duncan friction sticker i've added for augmented snap definitely accelerates the string's demise. from how i'm starting off, i think this ball will be significantly larger than the one i generated from cones to balls, but we'll see.

i haven't considered being 'unfaithful' yet. my yo-yo room is still fun to be in despite not being able to reach for any of the throws therein. that said, i have almost thrown a few other yo-yo's. when in my daughter's room the other day, i noticed she left a projam on the floor, and i reached down to pick it up. i was moments away from giving it a perfunctory throw down before i caught myself. at school, a student asked to give the 'eh' a toss, and when i gave it to him he handed me his solaris. i'm so used to the ritual of momentarily trading yo-yo's at contests and club meets, that i had started to put on the slipknot before i realized it. the weirdly alien feeling of holding metal for the first time in almost 3 weeks is what jolted me out of the routine.

more later. must throw.

resolution

i've never been one for new years resolution. i guess i'm of the 'calvin & hobbes' mindset that the rest of the world should resolve to bend itself more to my own likeness. not really, but everyone is like that on some level (which is why it's a funny comic).

this year though, i have an obvious one, and it's caused me to be a bit more reflective and try to impose some more upon myself. so here we are. starting tomorrow, i resolve to:

• throw one wooden yo-yo for the entire year of 2012 (or until the world ends, whichever comes first). see previous entries for details.
• completely give up drinking soda pop. i've done this before, but always seem to squeak little exceptions by myself until i find myself holding an empty 64oz 'thirst-slayer' from 7-11.
• keep a journal by my bedside wherein i will write down all the foods i ate during the day. i don't really want to diet; i just want to be more aware of what i'm taking in.
• sit an hour of zazen per week. i have become lax in this practice.
• work on my iai kata at least twice a week, lest i forget how to tie on my hakama.

as for the 'one yo-yo' bit, which is clearly most pertinent to this blog, i last threw a bearing yo-yo on christmas eve. i thought about doing some sort of elaborate 'goodbye bearings' 11:59pm thing, but it would be superfluous. i'm sure the time will come this year when i sincerely miss throwing my other yo-yo's, but right now i'm still really excited to be narrowing everything down to the simplicity of the spyy 'eh'. i've been throwing it almost non-stop since i got it, and i'm as enamored of it as i could be any yo-yo.

it's going to be tough with all of the temptation i have in our 'yo-yo room' (see pics embedded throughout). i have no idea how many radical yo-yo's i have on display or in storage. a few hundred i guess. and though i feel like i should make some kind of elaborate gesture in bidding them adieu for the year, it just feels silly. i don't want to lock them up in a closet. i want the temptation (and to overcome it).

so i guess, 11:59 is going to come and go without much changing at all. i'll keep throwing the same yo-yo i have for the last week, perhaps a bit more excited to be 'officially' beginning on a journey, the end of which is unclear. i don't have any goal in mind for how i will play at the end of it, or for whether i'll want to go back to ball bearings (or other woodies) in 2013. this is about coming closer to who i feel i am as a yo-yo player, about determining what i need and where i want to go, and about stepping off of a path that i feel is adequately trodden without my footsteps.

first touch.

the eh arrived this morning around 11:02est. steve included the backup, along with a couple of other spyy treats (which i'll only get to enjoy for a few days before the journey officially begins) and a nifty jig for evenly sanding axles to desired length.

the entire parcel smelled like burned wood (steve lasered these just a day ago). the smell will gradually fade, and i'm sorry for that because it's wonderful. on a throw, the eh is incredibly smooth. it doesn't spin quite as long as my tmbr irving pro (which sports a wider profile & diameter and a walnut axle), but it's smoother and snappier.

as soon as i felt the spin, first trick i tried was spirit bomb, which is the string trick i use to evaluate pretty much any wood yo-yo. video here. it surpassed expectations. the oak is pretty slick and felt just a little loose on flyaway dismounts, so i've sanded a couple of the replaceable axles and am in the process of getting things dialed. pretty confident that i can hit whatever i want on it, though maybe that's the new-yoyo hubris talking.

it's a huge relief to have the thing in my hand and know that i can make it work how i want and make it last.

SPYY 'eh': completion

this guy is leaving his home in canada tomorrow and will arrive the 23rd (merry christmas, me)!

made of solid oak, take-apart design, and replaceable hemlock axles, this is it. this is the yo-yo i'm using for the entire year of 2012. i do have an identical backup if i should destroy one utterly, but both of my glued-axle oak spyys are still kicking after 6 months, so i should make this guy last.

these are not for sale. they are not being produced. making this kind of fixed axle yo-yo is time consuming and not cost-effective. i have a spare and steve has one of his own, but beyond that, there are no plans to revisit this on any kind of scale. my apologies if you were hoping they'd be on yoyoexpert for $19.99 or something.

there's a great chapter in the book 'the princess bride' by william goldman (the book is arguably better than the movie, which is a classic), in which background is given for the character, inigo. though it didn't make the film, it describes his life as the son of a master swordmaker living quietly in the hills above toledo. domingo montoya makes the greatest swords since excalibur, but, in the effort to avoid attention which might detract from his craft (he doesn't call himself an artist), he allows another maker to sell his swords as his own.

somehow it gets out to a rich swordmaster that domingo is the real deal, and count rugen shows up requesting a sword which would match his 'peculiarities'. domingo denies having any great skill and tries to persuade rugen to visit yeste in madrid, until rugen shows his 6-fingered right hand. then it's on. not only does domingo admit to being the 'genius of the hills', he accepts the job for nothing (allowing a single gold-piece as a deposit, at rugens urging), and tells the count to 'come back in a year'.

then, for the next year, inigo watches as his father essentially beats himself into ruin in making the sword. he took the job due to the implicit challenge of making a perfect sword for a 6-fingered hand. for an amateur, any long-handled cleaver would be fine. but for a master to reach his potential, the entire sword would have to be reimagined from the ground up. all of the measurements would have to balance each other seamlessly. in the end, after peaks of elation and valleys of terrible frustration, inigo wakes in the night to find his father staring, becalmed, at his creation. 'finally, inigo,' he says, 'i am an artist.'

i'm not a master. i don't have 6 fingers. i'm also not going to kill steve like rugen did domingo and provoke the eternal revenge of his sons who would eventually do me in (god, i love that movie).

in terms of how this whole affair pertains to steve's craft, though... i feel like there's some balance. i went to him with what i thought was a simple request; to basically punch out a few more wood halves from his drill press. he did like a hundred for his wedding. we cranked out 12 or so in an hour at canada nats. he could have settled.

instead, he hit it with trial and error for a month, working late into the night and giving up his lunch breaks to make, essentially, the best all-wood yo-yo he could. everybody has something they really care about (or everybody should). i think in some aspect of our lives, we all need to adopt that stance of 'no-compromise' to arrive at our potential (as craftsman, as artists, as yo-yoers, or just as people). compromise is not a bad thing, but in terms of our approach to ourselves; our self-improvement and sense of self-worth, it's a tantalizing poison.

i guess this whole project germinated from the idea of no-compromise (of a different sort), and i'm thrilled that the same spirit was present through the birth of this yo-yo.

365

did i mention that i have a problem with year-long commitments?

... not in breaking them, mind you... in MAKING them.

in addition to the whole "one wood yo-yo for a year" thing, i'm also joining the crew of 365yoyotricks.com. besides me, some of my best friends in the world will be sharing a trick every week. Nate Sutter, Drew Tetz, David Ung, and Sebastian Brock have all signed on (Steve Brown will be contributing 2 tricks/week). besides the companies those guys represent, yoyoexpert.com will also be sponsoring. frickin' wicked.

part of me is a bit nervous about getting 52 [good] tricks on video using just a simple wood yo-yo, but the other (bigger) part of me knows that the floodgates will open, and is thrilled to all hell about being part of a crew this radical. i look up to all those guys like crazy, and trying to keep pace with their creativity will be the most wonderful kind of "daunting" imaginable.

getting back to the yo-yo, it's coming along nicely. ironing out things like the shape of the corners, the axle material, the wood density, etc. it kind of feels like i'm a 60's north shore surfer whose shaper is hard at work finalizing the details of their big-wave gun... getting the pintail just so, setting the rocker so it won't pearl on big walls... until i remember i'm a yo-yo player.

actually, even after i remember i'm a yo-yo player, it's still a lot like that.