The place: Sweden
The year: 1998 AD
The weather: Pretty darn nice. I was afraid the last week's chill 'n' rain spell would put a damper on the...
Stockholm, Sweden, May 29-June 1
Considering the weather I feel a bit silly carrying around a jacket, but knowing the Swedish spring weather I might find use for it. Unlike the two previous conventions, this one was held in Stockholm, which meant the trip only took about an hour by train, rather than a whole day. I arrive just a few minutes before the doors open, and after some confusion - the sleeping area is in a different building - I find somewhere to leave most of my stuff. So far, so good.
The rest of the day is spent in the usual juggling convention style: in a gym filled with people doing more-or-less juggling-related stuff, some of which is very impressive. There seem to be a lot more five club jugglers around than I remember from earlier years, but maybe that's just because the fanatics have arrived early.
Around 10 o'clock (wimp!) I feel tired enough to prepare for sleep. I hope tomorrow will see more outdoor juggling. The lightning in the gym will take some time to get used to.
Random observation: The lengths some people go to in order to learn the Mills Mess. I saw a guy with the ladder notation for it tattooed around his arm!
I haven't had the time to write anything this day, so here I am, at 40 minutes past midnight, trying to summarize my impressions. Part of the reason for this, I suppose, is that some other Uppsala jugglers, some of whom I hadn't seen for some time, showed up today. For a while I was afraid I'd be the only one, as usual.
Apart from this, nothing much of interest happened before the parade. I enjoy parades, partly because that's one of the times where I notice that I actually did improve my juggling during the year. I even manage some short bursts of the five ball cascade during it, but it's obvious that I'm going to need at least one more year of practicing.
The "silly games" afterwards are mildly amusing, but I spend more time enjoying the marvellous weather. It's so much nicer to juggle outdoors.
The open stage is a bit of a disappointment to me. While there are a few good bits, the boring acts seem to drag on forever. The gym, on the other hand, has some real highlights for a theoretical numbers geek (i.e. one who enjoys watching numbers juggling but probably lacks the patience to learn it).
First of all, there is the Swedish girl Hanna, practicing eight balls. I'm not sure if she managed to qualify while I was watching, but she might have. I also saw her try (I never saw her quite succeed) to flash ten balls. Later she was juggling seven with a broom balanced on her chin. As if it wasn't difficult enough without...
Later, a Swiss guy named Claudius pays a visit to the gym, demonstrating some very flashy club juggling. He appeared to have the five club cascade completely solid, and I didn't even know you could do a five club shower and still make it look good. And as if to prove just how wrong I was, he also managed short bursts (I didn't count, but it was long enough for me to try to photograph it -- I hope it turned out okay) of the six club shower. I almost hope it wasn't just lack of ceiling space that made him juggle seven clubs in the cascade pattern instead. (I counted 20+ catches in the longest runs, and he said his personal best, while he wasn't quite sure, was probably somewhere around 50.) When someone asked him about seven ball juggling, he claimed he couldn't do it. Weird! (Of course he might just have meant that he was out of practice, rather than being unable to, but still...)
I would like to add here that the only seven club juggling I've seen prior to this is an mpeg movie of Boppo doing it, and thanks to a somewhat less than state-of-the-art computer that one came out looking rather slow and dreamy (though still beautiful). I can assure you that (apart from the aforementioned beauty) the real thing does not.
Picking up my jaw from the ground, I decide that it's once again time to get some sleep.
Another day passes in the usual juggling convention style. This is the "deadly serious games" day, in which every game is combat, but I spend most of that time chatting with friends, enjoying the weather, and teaching someone the basics of the Mills Mess, and I was happy to see that he picked up the basic idea pretty quickly. I think this friendly sharing attitude is one of the things which make juggling conventions so nice.
This is also the day of the public show, which I enjoyed immensely. The arrangers had gone to the troubles of hiring a small theatre for the occasion, which might have been artistically sound but not - I learned later - financially. Eventually I get a good seat, though for a while I was afraid I would have to spend it up in the rafters, along with the bats and the opera ghosts.
I can't do justice to the acts in words. While there were some I didn't care much for, most of them were very good, and while most of them did have the occasional drop, I think only one of them had enough to actually suffer from them.
The last of the other Uppsala jugglers leave this evening, but since I don't have anything particular planned for tomorrow I decide to stay. I attend a workshop - one of the few that were held - on club swinging, but the only thing I learned was that it is indeed as difficult as it looks.
During the so-called business meeting, it is decided that the next convention will be held - again - in Denmark, but with the tentative promise that it will finally be held in Norway in the year 2000. Their first, I believe.
I'm tired so I decide to skip the fire night.
Today's lesson: If your wrist starts to hurt when you're doing five balls then GIVE THE FIVE BALL PRACTICE A REST YOU FLAMING IDIOT!!! (Easier said than done, actually. It was going pretty well, I thought.)
For some reason I sleep a bit restlessly. I later learn that the bar was open all night which might account for it, but I don't remember seeing much signs of it in the sleeping halls. Anyway, I get up at around the usual time. The showers are much warmer this morning than yesterday night. Maybe the water heater was turned off during the weekend.
The gyms have been pretty empty during the mornings so far, and today is no exception. I spend the morning doing pretty much nothing until the 11 o'clock siteswap workshop. I've seen most of it before - at least in theory - but it's still a nice way to spend the last few hours of the convention.
The jugglers are leaving Stockholm, and with them goes the warm and sunny weather. I'm stiff and tired, and I ache. Obviously I've had a wonderful time. I hope to see some familiar faces next year.