…On Saturday, apre ski, we hit the gym. First off, the sound system was sick. My friend Ken came in and DJ’ed through a monstrous reggae collection. For the first three hours we all jammed and dusted off the winter crust. Then we assembled the judges. For the first time in the history of the US Indoors, Z was not here to judge. However, Jonathan Willett wore the head judge hat in his honor. Two other New Yorkers judged alongside him, Jason Cooper and Jill Simon (or is it Jill Hanson-Fresh?) Anyway, leading off were Seattleites Bob Boulware and John Titcomb. They started off co-oping well together, moving into a series of indies. Both of them were going for their A-game, but a few in the hand drops hurt their chances.

Next up were Tom and I, we played to a mix of Burning Spear and Marley. We had some good speedflow until I dropped a bad attitude off Tom’s bad attitude overhand wristflip throw. Then we went full out. One of my neighbors said to me,”your partner is really good-perpetual motion man.” I corrected her a little saying,”Consecutive motion man.” I was a little gitis happy, but when you’re peeling why wouldn’t you be? We ended up playing about 6 minutes, mostly ripping.

Then Doug E and Rob came on. As usual they pulled out smooth, flowing and airy play. Their use of space and the variety of styles they take you through is pretty amazing. Rob Fried rips with anyone, and Doug not only knows where to be, he knows how, when and what to be as well. The only drop they had that wasn’t in the hand was when Rob went for a mind blowing upside down osis pull. After that, we just jammed another couple hours, then went to the Cafe 245 for a sweet meal with homebrews.

Sunday was more low key. Ken could only play the reggae one day, so we plugged in Keller Williams Mardi Gras 2000 live and jammed heinously until we couldn’t play any longer. By that time Rob was injured and couldn’t play, so he filmed the jam.