Another easy trick to help the environment, while saving money

Tire pressure, I know it's a pain to check it out. We're supposed to do it once a month. If only all the tires were at the right pressure it would save 4 millions of gallons of gas a day in the US only. That also means it would be cheaper for you to drive. So get the little tool and check it out once in a while would you?

Peace on earth

Peace on earth, peace on earth, peace on earth. It's my last 30 seconds Mantra. I had negative thoughts about an ex-friend and then I thought what the hell! I don't have time or energy to loose with that. It made me come back in the 70's when I was having a blast listening to intelligent and articulate music. When I thought that I was gonna be a musician (bass player) playing Jazz-Rock-Progressive compositions for the rest of my life. When I thought that we could change the world and that it was still cool to say "Peace"

Well, it still is. Peace on earth, peace on earth, peace on earth!

Tales from the trip, European Footbag Championships 2000 in Paris

My partner Sébastien Perron has a blog referring to his numerous adventures while touring for demonstrating the Handsack game.

I had some pretty amazing stories happening to me while traveling for Footbag. For example in 2000 I went to the European Championships in Paris. You have to know that I have to wear knee braces to play after pretty extensive surgeries. At the time I had a brace on my right knee and I had just exploded it after sliding to try to retrieve an out of control Footbag. That had happened at the Quebec tournement. So we were practicing on july 14th, kind of a general warm-up before the tournament. Another ball was shanked far away from me and I rushed to it to try to kick it back to my partner. I slid again and exploded my brace one more time. July 14th is the national day of France so, as you can imagine, everything is closed. There was no question in my mind that without my brace I had to skip the tournament which would have been heartbreaking as I traveled specifically for that. I was also the 1999 singles net champion and I really wanted to defend.

So I asked around to the organizers and other frenchmen. They suggested that I asked the Park guardians, which I did. Something magical happened right there, the first guy I talked to had a little motorbike repair shop in its garage. He was in a small club of bike lovers and they were doing their own tweaking of engines etc... I explained how he could easily fix it by drilling a couple of hole and joining the ruptured side metal bar side with a smaller metal piece and 2 screws. One hour later the guy came back with the brace fixed, never wanted me to pay him or anything and was just very modest about it.

I finally ended up winning singles and doubles net (with danish player Jakob Hall) at this tournament and I had a blast. It's common to hear that Parisians are nasty and rude, well don't count me in to propagate that image because besides that particular story I've always been treated great in the city of lights.

Today I finally took my bike out of the basement

Wow! We had so much snow this winter that I had to leave my bike stored in the basement. It was the first time in years that I couldn't ride in the winter although I saw some real courageous people pedaling in the ice and snow. This was just too much for me. But today the freedom came back. There's nothing like feeling the air while you create your own locomotion. Of course I would feel guilty not to do it as much as I can. Even if I own a car it's not an excuse to become lazy. Who knows I might even get fat :-)

Of course I want to have the smallest possible print on my planet's environment and that's why bicyle is part of my top 10 greatest inventions of all time. As a semi-professional athlete I also use biking as part of my training routine.

Part of living in Montreal is having to deal with people stealing bicycles. It's a pleague and that's why I have a real shitty looking 2 wheeler. It's not handling great but I always put a hundred bucks or more every summer to make it bearable without having to worry about its dissapearance.

So that all for now folks, I have to take off for my Footbag practice, which I'm gonna ride to...on my bike!

Skills games on ProKicker

For the past 26 years I've been involved in selling and promoting Footbag. It's basically a cheap way to get in shape. Recently I've added some more skills games to my web site. In 1990 I've been part of the first National Takraw school tour in the US. Takraw is very popular in southeast Asia, it's a really fun mix of soccer and volleyball. It's now available on ProKicker as well as two other cool games.

I discovered Peteca a few years ago at Footbag tournaments. It's a brazilian game played with a big shuttlecock over a net similar to a volleyball net. Very inexpensive it makes kids moooove! The other game is the Handsack, you can make all sorts of tricks while catching this object with the back of the hand. Nice!

I'm not against video games per say, but a few hours a week doing something healthier can make for more balanced lifestyle fir kids.

Check out this Peteca video

The 2008 ProKicker Windchill, Footbag tournament is approching fast

The 2008 Montreal winter tournament is arriving soon. On april 12th and 13th the best Montreal players and a few special guests will display their skills on the court to try to win this 18th edition. We would like to invite anyone that would happen to be in the vicinity and who likes sports to attend. The entrance is free for spectators more details on the tournament home page.

Note that ProKicker will provide the official footbag for this event. The footbags used for Net are much harder and rounder than the average ''Hacky Sack''. This way we can have real fast play over the badminton net although we're playing with feet only.

Here's a taste of how the 2007 finals went down.

Of course you can see the same video, and a couple more, in full screen if you navigate to the tournament page on ProKicker

Memphis Footworks: April 5th and 6th Tournament Officially IFPA Sanctioned!

Memphis Footworks: April 5th and 6th Tournament Officially IFPA Sanctioned! Hope to see as many kickers as possible at this Footbag tournament. I'll be there, and will try my best to win it.

This video is from the 2006 Southeastern


or, if you're not lazy right now you can go to ProKicker and you'll be able to view it in full screen at a very good resolution.

I also write about this tournament in my main blog. Look for the Footbag posts in NutZ.

The Montreal Canadiens beat the Ottawa Senators

The mighty Canadiens were flying to a crushing victory over Ottawa, leading 7-1 after 2 periods. They lost a lot of their intensity and Ottawa came back scoring 4 goals in a row. Nonetheless Montreal finally won this very important game when approaching the post-season. With this win the Canadiens managed to clinch a sure place in the series. Montrealers are thrilled about their club and now we just hope that they'll go far, and who knows maybe even win the Stanley cup, although I wouldn't bet on it.