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[the Earl of Whirl]

Thanks for your words of confidence, lincolnrick.  If they were stuck I would help out but Keith Nelson is all set to run it.  Jim Neff and I will be there to add some support.

I am virtually unknown around these parts for my top spinning.  There seems to be very little crossover between the IJA fest and World yoyo contest.  I have seen a few people yoyoing but they say they have never been to worlds.  And as I look around I do not see anyone here I have ever seen at worlds.  Just like at worlds there seems to be no one who goes to the IJA (except Mark and occasionally that tall guy who juggles 5 and 6 clubs).

Anna from Russia and Houston came back to learn more about spinning.  She brought a special bag as a gift to Jim for using some of his tops.  She learned how to wrap and throw spinners on the ground and is now working on the sky rocket.

Glad to hear about the Mike Levy and mailman connection.  He has asked me for a top since there are none for sale around here (what kind of a place is this).

I went to the welcome show tonight.  For $20 it was a fun show but the price suddenly was worth it when one of the acts centered on a spin top.  It looked like a trompo grande bearing from Spintastics.  He had some fun puns about the string and the top "meeting" and the top being strung along and then becoming "engaged" and the string coming from a long line of that sort.  Everyone ooed and awed at the tricks although they were not too difficult.  As you can imagine, they loved the three wrap corkscrew!!!

I looked up his name and it is a guy from Portland.  His name is Curtis Carlyle.  Also, Dwayne Campbell from Austin says hello to ta0.  He says you might remember his wife Debra better.  Dwayne was out riding his 36 inch unicycle around the campus.

Time to head back to my hotel.  Jim Neff has already left.  One last item I want to mention concerns the bathrooms on the far end.  I am curious as to what lincolnrick thinks of them.  They look like the fanciest bathrooms ever for a college campus.  Kind of makes you happy to go there.

[ta0]

How do you say spinning top in Russian?  That is what we were asked by Anna from Russia who now lives in Houston.  She is caught up in the spinning bug.  "Where is your friend" she asked me when Jim stepped out for a bit.  She obviously cannot wait for him to open his equipment bag again.

According to Russian board member Maxim:

. . . Yes, kubar is the word for russian whip top. This toy was very popular in Ancient Russia and is almost unknown now. A lot of people in Russia don't have any idea of what kubar is.

Volchok is used to name any spinning tops at the present time. Kubar is also volchok as well as finger top, peg top, whip top, etc. In russian all these tops are volchok. Moreover only finger tops are widely known. Other types are known only for fans like me.
. . .

Say hi to Dwayne.  If I am not mistaken, Debra took one of the first spintop workshops I gave.
I need to go to an IJA meeting one day. At least this year I became a member.

[the Earl of Whirl]

Just two more hours until the top spinning workshop.  I checked to see where it was and I saw the title of it was top spinning breakout.  It meets at the classroom.  I went to see the classroom and it is just a section of the gym with a banner that says 'classroom'.  Looks like the floors will be wood.

Jim Neff showed up today with a t-shirt that says "you spin tops?" over a picture of Groucho Marx.  Underneath the image it says "Your parents must be proud!"  I asked him where he got it and he said he had it specially made.

I got an old trompo grande bearing top to Mike Levy.  He seemed happy and has been throwing it here and there.  Played any ukelele lately, mailman?  Have some ukes too (like 10) and we had a ukelele chorus in church a couple of weeks ago.  I also hear that you were unjustly charged with a speeding ticket when you were only going 82 in an 81 zone.  Or was that route 81?

JNeff will be back from lunch soon and we will have some more top play time before the workshop.  By this evening I should have a lot to report about.

[the Earl of Whirl]

Just met Don Shurlow (toysfromtimespast.com) and his wife Dawn from Midland, Michigan.  He said he has been throwing tops since he was a boy (he looked to be 60 or so) and made a lot of tops for years.  Now he mostly does just furniture.  He said he still had a thousand tips somewhere!!!

We were on our way outside when we saw him.  I introduced JNeff to two larger sizes of johnm tops and he let me throw his large Alan Gray creation "cyclone". 

I am looking at a crazy big unicycle with five steps to climb to get to the seat!

[ta0]

Looks like a fair amount of top-related stuff.
Did you have an opportunity to talk with that Curtis Carlisle who did the show?

I am enjoying your reporting.

[the Earl of Whirl]

Curtis was in the workshop, which went very well by the way.  We started with 7 or 8 and had about twenty when we finished.  Great leadership by Keith Nelson (bindlestiff).  About a half dozen had never thrown before.  Everyone else had some sort of background but only a couple could do more than a few tricks.  One highlight for me was finding plastic footstool/benches with a concave top.  They worked well for battling.  Knollstudio looked like the name on the bottom.  The Hout house needs a couple of these.

A second highlight was Jim doing a long wire walker at the end.  That is a sight to behold.  Curtis stayed and was a part of it.  He had some great stories about the Portland juggling club which is very strong.  There are like forty locals in the group and when the college students come the group is like 80 to 90.  Their festival is very well attended, as you might imagine.

Jack....how close are you to Quebec City.  You will not believe what is coming your way.  It is a dream come true!!!  The 2015 IJA fest will be there and Jim Neff will be coming with his traveling top circus.  Ta0......you are the winner of the other drawing.  2016 is in El Paso!

[Jack]

Jack....how close are you to Quebec City.  You will not believe what is coming your way.  It is a dream come true!!!  The 2015 IJA fest will be there and Jim Neff will be coming with his traveling top circus

vive le quebec!!!!!!!! unfortunatly i dont vivre au Québec lol (ahh french class never thought id need u  ) well it seams im an unfortunate cookie but toronto is quite a ways from the rogue province of quebec lol plus ive pretty much bankrupted myself ordering tops recently looooooool oh well thats ok i still hold out hope that sense will prevail and theyll finally move the canadian yoyo championships to toronto instead of saskatchewan do you know whats in saskatchewan??? ill tell you whats in saskatchewan..........NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!  thats whats in saskatchewan......im sorry im sure the people of saskatchewan are nice but come on seriously why is that waaaaay out there when toronto is literally the biggest city in canada @_@ eh??? eh? im probably gonna meet a nice girl from saskatchewan and she'll find this post and ask whats this??? and i will say: honey........look at how many times i spelled saskatchewan correctly without having to use autocorrect see???.........be that as it may, ya no unfortuantly too far of a trip for me  thanks mike for telling me ill mention it to some of my ppl up at ottawa there a lil closer, jim sorry we couldnt meet it would have been a treat but we aint dead yet  lol btw i enjoyed reading your posts on this event 
lol i just relized i have a pkg of tops in montreal right now in transit to me 

[the Earl of Whirl]

Looks like it is about the same distance to go from Toronto to Quebec City as it is from San Antonio to El Paso.  Also, Jim Neff traveled farther from Buffalo to Purdue University, from what he said.  Don't give up hope yet, Jack.  There may be someone going that way you can hitch a ride with!

Anna from Russia came back later today and was sad she missed the top spinning workshop.  Everyone else headed out to the junior championships (the word is that there are exceptional juniors this year) so she and I threw smaller battle tops for a long time.  She is ready for you, ta0.  It sounds like she will be at the Austin fest next year and has two battle tops to practice.

By the way, the word I heard is that 2017 could be in either Athens, Georgia or Debuque, Iowa.  How that sound to everybody?

I am at a local sports bar for dinner.  I think I will go back for some late night action but maybe not much top spinning.  And tomorrow morning I am driving to Champaign, Illinois to see where they make vaulting poles.  So, there may not be much to report for a while.

[Jack]

Looks like it is about the same distance to go from Toronto to Quebec City as it is from San Antonio to El Paso.  Also, Jim Neff traveled farther from Buffalo to Purdue University, from what he said.  Don't give up hope yet, Jack.  There may be someone going that way you can hitch a ride with!

thank you for your encouragement maybe it will happen but i must warn you us upper canada boys dont like to travel....just isnt done. heres what happens: getup get some shreddies go out play some hockey dont confuse me with the facts if its summer dammit were playing hockey thats all there is to it get out the way then go have a beer with friends if there still alive tday then watch a hockey game if its not the senators playin then whatever happens it was a good game allswell if however the sens are playin theres gonna be either party later or sum very unhappy campers for awhile eh @-@ after that lay down alone most likely aaaaaaand do it all over again  pretty much thats what happens more often then not and as you will see i did not mention travel in that itinerary and thats simply because we dont unless we are forced by some unforeseen problem long story short watch fubar and fubar2 and ull get a pretty good idea  , jim is a better man than i. i hope you enjoyed your meal last night mike    mark my words sir i will shake your hand some day and a good day itll be @-@

[the Earl of Whirl]

Yippee!  Rick Prevett made it in last night and we got to throw some tops before hitting the sack.  I showed him my smaller buckeye colored johnm top.  Then surprised him with the bigger size.  He sure knows a lot of people.  It was hard to get much throwing done in between all the people waiting in line to greet him.  And I guess I am one of those in his fan club!  We figured out the last time we were together was the Davenport IJA of 2005 and the only other time was the Madison IJA a couple of years before that.  We will have to work on improving that frequency.

I took some time off this morning to drive an hour and a half to watch them make vaulting poles in Champaign, Illinois.  Wow, that was amazing.  I got back in time to see Jim and Rick throwing and spinning crazy things.  I haven't told you some of the things because I wanted to surprise Rick.  There is a monobolo attached to a bike wheel.  There is a two person Kongzhu.  There is a cheese grater with spoons dangling.  There is a monobolo attached to a kettle.  And there are spinning plates and spinning things from the kitchen of all shapes and sizes.  Whew!

Several people joined in on the top action.  One was a friend from years ago.  Kathy Glynn (now Schearrer I believe) had the mile joggling record in Guinness for 24 years.  It was just broken last year.  She stopped by with her kids and spun for quite a while.  She says she has a top from the 1992 IJA fest in Montreal and I am begging her for it.

[the Earl of Whirl]

Rick is giving string instruction.  Trivia question: how many parts are there to a string?

[mailman]

*snip*
  We figured out the last time we were together was the Davenport IJA of 2005 and the only other time was the Madison IJA a couple of years before that.
*snip* 

Now, how cool is that?  Davenport was one of the IJA festivals I attended!  Spin tops were completely off of my radar back then, apparently.

Hope you're having a great time at this one....

[Jack]

Rick is giving string instruction.  Trivia question: how many parts are there to a string?

hmm i would say 4 unless ure counting the button in which case 5 

[the Earl of Whirl]

Mailman?  You were in Davenport!!!?  What a small world.

Rick says the answer is four parts to a string.  The button.  The string.  The knot and the fray.  He said this is a Chris Neff thing and the fray is important because it is used by the thumb to hold the string when starting.

The last few hours have been a whirlwind.  I finally got away but not before I grabbed everything I could in my bag and juggled it.  That way I could say yes when my wife asks me if I used all the stuff I took.  Jason Snow from Austin must have recognized what I was doing so he went and grabbed his clubs and passed for a few seconds with me.

Gotta get something to eat before I hit the road but I still need to talk about rascals (oh no, those again), the big Autograph top, Curtis, combat, Anna, Jim rat and more. 

Chipotle, here I come!!!

[the Earl of Whirl]

I had a short conversation with Scot Sorenson when I was sitting by his stuff.  He has been a multiple multiple numbers gold medalist over the years.  Looking at this stack I said "How many rings do you have."  Oh, let me count.....17.

How many clubs do you have.......18.

So you have more clubs than rings.  Oh, I did not count my smaller rings.  16 there so my total is 33.

What?  I said with obvious horror.  He replied "you should feel my ball bag".  He tossed this giant canvas bag my way and it landed with a thump in my lap.  It had to be 30 pounds or so.  And I was still looking at dozens of spinning balls.

I told this story to Jim Neff and he said "I thought I was bad".