After finally getting home I am now officially off for the summer. It took a bit longer than I thought due to my grandmother passing away and having to fly out to California for the Memorial service. She had her 93rd birthday shortly before passing on. It got me to thinking about how much things have changed since she was young. I can't even imagine how odd our world today would seem to someone that was born in 1915. I just marvel at it.
I have some big news coming up next week, but I think I'll wait until then to give it. Have a great 4th of July! I'm going to play some disk golf and clean out a garage, yippee!

I'm sitting in New York at one of the final schools for this school year's tour. The students are preparing for a concert and I'm waiting for them to finish up so I can get warmed up for my show. What a great year this has been, it's crazy to think that I've performed about 360 programs in the past 9 months and I'm still standing! I can definitely feel that my legs are quite tired and I need a break. This weekend I get 3 whole days off before I have a program back in Oklahoma for a library, but after that I'll have a few weeks off without jumping.
I've got a load of projects that I'll be working on over the summer so I'm not worried about getting bored. The brand new Double Dutch DVD's are out if you are interested in picking up a copy, plus we've got the first year of the videoKast available on DVD as well. The second season has started so make sure you swing by to check that out. Have a great week, I'll be making the most of my last few schools.

I'm sure you've been worried about me if you read this blog somewhat consistently, since I haven't posted in quite some time. I've been taking a bit of a break from some of the computer stuff for the last couple weeks so I can recoup. I finally finished the Double Dutch and Chinese Wheel Instructional DVD, it got mailed off to the printer and they're supposed to get them shipped back to me sometime this week. They were scheduled to be mailed 2 days ago, but the printer had a problem with one of their machines and had to push back my release date for a few days to fix it. Things like that happen so I'm not worried. They'll be here soon. Speaking of which, I'm offering a pre-order special on it so swing by the store to pick it up at a discounted price.
You may have noticed that the videoKast has taken a bit of a breather as well. Episode 24 actually completed a full year of them without any missed episodes so I decided to take a little while off and get ready for the second year. The first year is now available on DVD if you want to pick that up.
Anyway, I'm sitting in my car driving up to Virginia after a short weekend at a friend's house in North Carolina (and by house I do mean house, they took off to the beach and left us alone all weekend, which was fun). We'll get to meet back up with them again next weekend when I'll be shooting a bunch of episodes of the videoKast with him and another jump rope team so be watching for that. That's all for now, time to get some rest as my wife drives.

I've been sitting here between 2 computers all weekend working frantically to get the Double Dutch video completed. My goal was to have it in the mail on Friday, but certain time constraints kept that from happening. I thought it would be a quick finish on Saturday, but that certainly didn't happen. Instead I've got plenty left to do and it's almost 10 PM on Sunday, but it is almost done! Pretty much the only thing that's left, is for me to watch the entire video and make sure there are no errors in my master disks. If that goes well it will be mailed out to the printer tomorrow. I'm so excited to have this almost completed, it's been a long year since I first came up with the concept and I can't wait to get it out there for people to use. I have gone ahead and added it to the store as a pre-order item. If you'd like to purchase it now I am offering a discounted price until the time I receive the physical copies back from the printer. Don't miss out on the opportunity to pick one up at a very low price.
Due to the excessive time spent editing over the last 2 weeks, there will be no videoKast episode this week as I haven't had time to film one, but I will try to get one done this week and have it up next Monday.

A couple days ago I was driving into New York City on my way to Southold, NY (which is on the tip of Long Island about 1.5 hours past NYC). Right after I got some gas I pulled onto the road and was immediately stopped by a cop. He came up to the window and said he was pulling me over for not having a license plate on my trailer. I live in Oklahoma and license plates are not required there for trailers, so it was understandable that he would pull me over since they are required in the New York/New Jersey area. He went back, looked up some info then came back and said we could go. He did ask why we were there and I told him that I performed my jump rope act in schools around the country. He was very interested and so I decided to give him a DVD. He looked at it and asked how much they were and I told him, he said that he wanted to pay for it and help support what we were doing in schools. He was probably the nicest officer I've ever met. Alicia and I laughed about it as we drove off since how many people can say that they got paid when stopped by the cops. Fun stuff.
I'm currently rendering out the final videos for the Double Dutch video! Yeah! Once they're all exported I have to take them into the DVD authoring program and do some work to get the menus created, but things are almost done! Hopefully I'll be able to get things to the printer Monday or Tuesday.

After quite some time with no new recommendation letters uploaded, I've finally started adding new ones. I recently had a few schools I was at record some new audio recommendations for me and I've uploaded them to the site. Check them out at this page.
In other news, Alicia and I are in New York at the moment. We will be in and around the Big Apple for the next month or so. We've got quite a few shows scheduled so it should keep us rather busy. It's a beautiful day and I'm going to stay inside and work on the Double Dutch video! Sounds exciting I know, but I want to get it finished this week! Let's see what happens.

I performed at 2 very fun schools today in Pennsylvania. The state is in the midst of their tests and the schools are looking for ways to get their minds off of them when they're not forced to sit down and take them. So I have a busy week with lots of schools with somewhat stressed out kids. What a recipe for fun! Anyway, the schools I was at today were loads of fun and had to rank right up there with some of the best students I've performed for this year. The first school had one of their hallways made up to look like a tropical rainforest and I thought it looked rather rocking so I took a picture to share.
In other news, I've been teaching Alicia how to do Chinese Wheel and every few days I teach her a new trick to do during our show. Today she learned a cross-switch and we were able to make it during the afternoon show! If you don't know how to do it, make sure to check out the upcoming Double Dutch and Chinese Wheel Instructional DVD. The main editing was completed last night! I still have to build all the menus and everything, but at least the bear is done.

When you eat out every meal the goal eventually becomes...find something different. In this hunt you will find some good places and some bad ones. Normally it's just mediocre most of the time, as was the case last night. The food was good (the meatballs I ate were homemade and really good), not fantastic, not terrible, but it had a cool staircase. They had a really cool winding staircase that you took to get down to the restaurant. We ended up sitting underneath a doorbell that rung everytime someone wanted to check into the attached hotel. I took a picture of the sign they had above the staircase and posted it below.
Anyway, I'm aiming to get a bunch of work done on the Double Dutch video this weekend. I've only got a couple small sections left to edit. My goal is to get the DVD menus mostly completed. We'll see. The muffler on our car cracked yesterday and we need to get that fixed tomorrow. Have a good weekend!

When things go wrong for me, they seem to go wrong at a large scale. Friday was my day off and I had a flight scheduled to Grand Rapids, which I was expecting to go nice and smooth, a good change from driving everywhere. As it turns out there was a big snow storm forecast for the Cleveland, OH/Michigan area (amongst others) and things didn't go to plan...at all.
I was on my way to the airport in Cleveland when the airline called and told me that my flight had been cancelled. Alicia and I decided to drive to Detroit and hopefully I could catch the next stage of my itinerary. After arriving in Detroit, I checked in, went to my gate and sat around waiting. After quite a delay, they announced that my flight had been cancelled due to snow and they were putting us on a bus to Grand Rapids. This was the first time I took a bus instead of a flight and boy was it slow. Due to the 12 inches of snow fall, we ended up driving 31 MPH the entire way to Grand Rapids for a total of 5 hours. Long and boring, especially when it was supposed to be a 50 minute flight. After finally getting there, I had to sit around the airport until 3 AM waiting on my luggage. I got to my hotel about 4 AM and had to get up at 8 to make it to my show at 10.
The shows in Battle Creek went great, with over 800 people braving the weather. I headed back up to my hotel and walked into my room to find...everything was gone! I called the front desk and found out that they thought I had checked out and the housekeeper had taken all my stuff. Unfortunately, the housekeeper had left and they didn't know where my stuff had been taken to. I went to bed, got up the next morning and went to my Easter shows. The hotel called me while I was setting up and they said they had found all my stuff, whew. Anyway, I did the shows and got out of there just in time to catch my flight...one problem, I still had to go get my clothes. I went as fast as possible and grabbed the bag and headed to the airport. After a quick fill up and packing job, I dropped off my rental car and checked in. The airline was nice enough to upgrade me to first class and off to Cleveland I went.
At least the trip back went smoothly. I got into Cleveland and drove down to West Virginia for a show that I had Monday. What a crazy weekend. I'm in Pennsylvania right now and am looking forward to finally getting some sleep.

I performed at a high school in Akron, OH yesterday. I don't do a lot of high school programs, but I always enjoy them when I get the opportunity. I guess it's a hard sell to convince a principal that their students would enjoy a jump rope program, understandably of course. Oddly enough, I had 2 high schools this week and one middle school so it was an interesting mix along with the 4 grade schools I performed at. I received a really nice message from a student last night and I thought I'd put it up here.
Hello, I am one of the students at ## High School in Akron, OH. I just wanted to tell you that I thought the show was very cool. The unicycle stunt with the girl on your shoulders was amazing. I was just wondering... When you ask for a volunteer for that, do you look for the smallest girl possible? Well you did a great job, it was by far one of the best assemblies i have been to at the school.

I've been working like mad trying to get this Double Dutch video finished, today marks the first visible evidence that it's getting somewhere. The first section is now available for download! That's right, all the skills from the Double Dutch Singles section are now available at $.65 each or 2/$1. This was the first section that has been completed, other sections from the Chinese Wheel part will be up relatively soon and the rest of Double Dutch will be posted as it's completed. It takes quite a bit of work to output and upload all these files to the net so it may be a while until it's all up, but it will be there eventually. That's all for now!

I showed up at a middle school today to do a demo and there were a bunch of people at the door staring at me. After a few moments one of the ladies opened the door and asked what I wanted. I told her I was there to do a show and she quickly escorted me into the office. It turns out some guy had showed up at the local High School with a gun and then got away. The school was on lockdown until they determined where he went and arrested him. It certainly made for an interesting start for that show. Of course tonight is supposed to get 3-6 inches of snow so that will make for a fun evening and morning tomorrow. I'm sick of schools being canceled due to weather so hopefully everything will go along fine.
In other news, I made one of the biggest goof-ups of my career yesterday...I showed up almost an hour late for a show! This wasn't due to traffic or weather, I just flat out was late. I had the time down wrong for the show and when I showed up they had already canceled me and were just having the students play ball in the gym. I felt terrible, that was honestly the first time I was late for a show in my life where it was totally my fault. There are few things I detest so much as being late and there I was...doing what I hated most. Hopefully we'll be able to reschedule for later in the year.
Below are some pictures that I took while in TN 2 weeks ago, I found some really cool rock areas and decided to bust out my unicycle and see what I could do.