With a projected 7 hour drive in front of us we set off from Auckland headed south and missed a turn off at Ohakune. Braving rock slides we continued through the Wanganui river gorge to Wanganui then fought through fog (so thick you couldn't see the person in the back seat of the car) to arrive in Palmerston North at 10:45.
Next morning we packed ourselves into the 'Juggla' mobile piloted by Julie Daniels, up from Wellington and got royally lost in Palmy trying to find the university (Chris knew where it was - he used to work there! Julie knew too - she just wanted to go a different way...). On arriving at the University Rec Center we were joined once again by Steve (which was kind of suprising as we were supposed to tell him where he had to go but had left before he phoned...).
We were in what was called the Arts room in the rec center to start with. It has a pretty high ceilling but wasn't all that large (5 people passing clubs in a star pretty much filled it). It was situated just by the C....... W...! (Which a few of the jugglers had a play on from time to time but doesn't get a mention here as we were here to JUGGLE! ...pretty good c....... w... though). From 11:30 to 1 we had half the main hall where we got a reasonable audience from time to time.
The gathering had been announced on local radio and news papers so some locals turned up who were not aware of the local club. During the day a number of locals regulars turned up and were given the chance to juggle equipment that they didn't normally have access to and help from various people. In particular Julie and Chris managed to inflict Mill's Mess on half a dozen people, one of which managed to pick it up in about 10 minutes. Also, a couple of local guys, introduced to clubs for the first time, got pretty handy with them in a DISCUSTINGLY short time! (Can someone remember to get addresses for people like this next time? It costs more to take out a contract on someone with just their phone number...)
Other attendees for the days festivities included Leela, (up from Wellington) and Shad (of no fixed abode but at least in the right island for this gathering). Giles made the trip from Wellington to arrive in time to watch a couple of videos at Chris' brothers place where we went to devour pizza, make balloon animals and put up with each others card tricks way into the night...
After dragging my self out of bed the next morning at about 9, Steve arrived and we headed back to the uni for a bit more of a juggle. Unfortunately, the rec center didn't open until 12 so we didn't. Instead we headed back to Chris' parents, separated him from Julie and headed north arriving back at Auckland without making any wrong turns!
So I didn't tell you much about the juggling. Tough! It was fun and many of the relative newbie's made awesome progress. I personally went from a previous best of 14 catches in a 4 ball shower to 24 catches [GAM: leave that bit out of the FK or maybe change it to 140 and 240, can't have people finding out how mediocre I actually am!] but nothing really astounding happened otherwise.
Considering where Palmerston North is in relationship to Auckland and Wellington I was kind of suprised that the Aucklanders out numbered the Wellingtonians (not counting Giles, who didn't get to pass a club on Saturday, or Shad, of no fixed abode but nonimally an Aucklander). Something harsh, slightly insulting and possibly even abusive needs to be said about the Wellington jugglers who didn't show (or watched the soccer and turned up rather later than 'a bit') but I don't know what it is at the moment.
As "Steve the Juggler", "Chrispy the-guy-who-does-Shad's-balloon-animals" and "the Vamous Bruce Benson" headed north, late, Sunday morning there was a discussion on the merits of teaching tricks to beginners. It was generally decided that this was important to stop them becoming completely inflexible in their juggling and never graduate beyond a 3 ball cascade (or 4 ball shower...). To this end such publisised gatherings as this are probably very important to the development of juggling in NZ by catching newbies who might otherwise get stuck in the 3 ball cascade rut and not continue. About now I started catching up on some of the sleep I had missed out on during the weekend and didn't wakeup until we stoped for food in Tauramanui...
Two final points:
Disclaimer: If anyone has told you anything about this it probably conflicts with the above in some way. Even if their version is true I'll bet that it wasn't as exciting as mine!
--- Bruce Benson. ,_o ,__o Department of Computer Science. _-\_\,\_<, University of Auckland. (*)/'--/'(*) Office: Maths/Physics Building rm 111. Phone: (64 9) 373 7599 x 7075 b_benson@cs.auckland.ac.nz