Glasseye's Trip to Chico October 6-8, 2000 (part 2)

After talking with Higby, I headed on over to the Yo-Yo Jam booth to check out their new merchandise. They had their usual lot of Faktors and had a few of them in limited colors. They also had the new Jon Gates spin top. Pretty cool looking, had a nice weight to it, but I haven't had a chance to throw mine yet. I noticed Rick Wyatt behind the booth practicing for the Sleep record so I headed on over and hung out a little. Not much of a conversation transpired as you can see from the picture, but that's cool, the guy needed to practice for his world record attempt. More power to him.

Started doing the rounds and did more catching up with friends. It was weird knowing so many people from all over the world that you've never actually met in person. Did that make sense. Ah who cares, you know what I mean. I finally ended up over at the spin top contest. I finally got to meet Jon Gates and pestered him with all kinds of questions about the contest tricks. He even did the "Chicago Crew" thing and had three tops spinning on top of each other, but on top of that, they were spinning in his hand. I also met Herman Lau who was also a great guy. Luis showed me a tight trick called "Asteroid" and did a Behind the Back Boomerang to Lasso. I'll try top put up a video of "Asteroid" in the next couple of days. Looking back I wish I had spent more time learning from these guys instead of focusing on the contest. But hey, it was my first time at the Nationals and I wanted a trophy (Note: I didn't place). Looking on the brighter side, at least I polished up the tricks that were on the Advanced list. Before the contest I couldn't do Hop the Fence, 13th Floor, and Subway. Kinda ironic that I got those tricks but goofed up on the easier ones. Kalani and Raver also entered the advanced division and ended up placing 2nd and 3rd. Rich from the Area 51 club also did well in his division.

Tired from the aggrivation of competition, Sib and I headed on over to the BC booth to hang out with Jason Tracy, Eric Niles, and the Flare girl in training. Only until she put on more than 15 pieces of flare did she earn the title of "Flare Girl." We had people come by and jump rope to win yo-yos and other BC toys. It's amazing how much humiliation people will go through to get free stuff. You can go practically anywhere in America and yell "Free Stuff!" and all of a sudden people lose all there sense of dignity. But alot of the little ones went home smiling and hopefully we sparked some interest in these kids.

Since the BC booth was right next to where Rick Wyatt was practicing, I went over to hang out with him some more. After that Sib and I went to go get lunch. We ended up at some Pizza place and one of the workers asked me to do "Split The Atom." So, like a monkey, I did and he hooked me up with a free drink. Hmmm... this story reminds me of something. Anyways, on our way back to the park, we dropped by Bird in the Hand and I took some pictures of the National Yo-Yo Museum. It was alot smaller than I expected, but it was still cool to see some of their old stuff. Check out the Visual R&D page for the pictures. Trump was also there checking out the fabulous merchandise and I had a chance to talk to him a little more. He's definitely good people.