June 2006

This is me just now after a 2am bike ride home from archery.

The visor is fogged up from my breath, plus the flash made it worse.
It’s a great ride at that time. It’s a little foggy in parts, but no traffic gets in your way. On the good (non foggy) corners you can do them technically. Leaning a lot, looking ahead, not at the road beneath the front wheel, and keeping a steady pace. Most of the corners you don’t need to slow down for (speed limit is 70, though I acidentally do 80 too much).

I’m wearing my new winter gloves, now my hands are warmer then my feet (which are in massive boots and woolly socks). They were definitely worth it.

I ordered a book by a famous Korean archery coach (in archery anyway).

Until it arrives however I’m stuck on my own. I shot for about an hour, using a camera connected to a dvd/hdd recorder and tv (the club has this), it plays back on a delay (I set it to about 10 seconds).

I tried it from behind for a while.

Then I tried it side on looking at my back, with my shirt off. It revealed so much. You can tell when the shoulders aren’t aligned, and when the spine isn’t straight.

I’ve identified some of my most common problems.

I often lean forward (over compensating, ie paranoia) too much. It starts at the hips then curves back so that my shoulders are level. This seems to often combine with a slight backwards arch. It causes all sorts of problems. Eg. Making it more difficult to keep my front shoulder low.

Another thing I seem to do is after the draw my back shoulder is too high. Meaning higher the my front shoulder by quite a bit. This leaves my draw arm high too of course, but also means my shoulder blades aren’t symmetrical until after the release (if at all). The rememdy to this seems to draw downwards as usual with my draw hand coming below my chin and bringing the rear shoulder down at the same time, then raise the hand to the anchor without moving the shoulder or shoulder blade. This is actually quite a natural movement although it doesn’t sound it. Before I’d seen this on my own back from behind I’d no idea what this really meant. When you do this, the draw (pre anchor) lines up both your shoulders height wise, and your shoulder blade. Then moving the hand up into anchor coincides with the steadying of the shot. The final squeeze through of the back muscles makes much more sense and is much more natural if the shoulder blades are in proper alignment. When I did this correctly I could actually see my shoulder blades being pulled slowly together. This is only possible if my spine is straight. Otherwise the final step never works. It gets faked.

I ordered ‘The Gun Seller’ in, and have been reading it all day today.

During the weekend just gone I visited old friends I haven’t seen in a year or so+. Many have been in different states, and I’ve mostly just been really lazy.

I rode there by motorbike. ’twas a 2 hour ride in the biting cold, first long ride I’ve ever done. Met some new dogs. Had some cheese on toast. Saw some folky music, donated to a cause.

Going back to the land I grew up in is always a testing experience. I think I passed adequately this time.

The Red Hot Chilli Peppers have always been special for me.

A great friend of mine made me love them.

Every album I’ve been interested in even though I drifted away for Californication, but Stadium Arcadium has sparked my interest more then ever before. I’ve been listening to it on my mp3 player constantly. I shoot archery to it sometimes.

They really made an awesome album. I have so much I want to say about it, but I have to go.

I’ve been playing PES5 recently.

I was originally playing Fifa 2006, since I remember playing soccer games on my megadrive as a kid. It was pretty arcadey and a little annoying. Then I heard of PES5.

It’s fantastic, it has definitely satisfied my football hunger that’s been generated because of Australia making it to the world cup, and West Ham making it to the FA cup final.

It was a little irritating playing on a keyboard especially when I discovered there was a whole set of moves you couldn’t even do without an analog stick. So I bought a madcatz imitation xbox 360 controller. Now I’m hooked. It’s amazing trying to build up a crappy team and grow it into the best team you can conceive of.

So that’s how I eat my evenings up when they need to be lately.