Today we had tour stops in Narragansett, RI and Brookline, MA.
The first demo was at Brainwaves Toy Shop and it was tons of fun. The folks at Brainwaves were treated with yo-yo, spin top, and juggling demos! And the little ones even got to learn some new tricks!
What do you do when you’re on the road for 11 hours in one wack? You stop at Willie’s Place. AKA, the place that has the face of the guy who wrote “On The Road Again” on it. Seriously, Willie Nelson knows how to make a place cool with a truck stop type environment. That felt strange to say but, it’s a fact.
Jonesboro, Arkansas! I don’t know if everyone knows this but, it’s an oasis of Duncan love right in the heartland of America. On the Serious, we did a demo at the Toy Castle there and it was mega good times. They have a great supply of gear and the staff can play like nobody’s business. If you find yourself anywhere near there, check it out. you owe it to yourself. Thanks to Brittany, Chelsea, Rachel and Nathan for having us. Keep at it.
I would like to follow that up with a player profile. Carey Mullins and his family are talent wrapped up in the bodies of cool people. Carey works at the Toy Castle and he holds it down better than we rarely see.They are easily the most committed people to Duncan as a movement. The Jonesboro yoyo scene would be nowhere near where it is without them. Carey has done his room up in Duncan memorabilia and throws like a champ. And Carey’s dad, Matt! The guy has a Duncan Throw Monkey Tattoo! If that isn’t commitment, I don’t know what is! They also juggle, spin tops and perform all sorts of side show tricks. They seriously have it going on.
Mr. Mullins taught Seth how to lay on a bed of nails and did some juggling for us. Seth is a beast and as brave as they come. I feel like he hasn’t been getting enough of a shout out here on the blog so here it goes. Seth, you are the best part of this tour. Keep it up! We rocked Arkansas!
Jack Ringca is on the scene! Let me start by saying that the first day out here was the very best trip I ever had to New Mexico. Nothing beats stepping off of a flight and immediately hearing a gospel choir sing “oh happy day”. LITERALLY! That is definitely a great way to end up in a great mood. Seeing Hank and Seth is the perfect way to follow that up and riding in the coolest tour van the planet has ever seen also doesn’t hurt. Basically, a huge thanks and showering of love goes out to my day #1 on this tour. I can’t wait to see what we all do to step up the rest of it. Also, a huge thanks for everyone who made it to the Toys R Us demo in Albuquerque. Great times were had by all and some people went home with their first yoyos.
Like a super one two punch, the second day of the tour has bveenjust as fantastic. We had a demo at the US Army base at Fort Bliss. This started out as a more formal demo and quickly escalated into one of the most fun demos of my life. Not only was everyone way super attentive to the demo, EVERYONE took this as the perfect chance to learn to yoyo, spin tops, juggle and diabolo. It’s really cool to see an entire room of soldiers and family members alike energized by the joy that these simple skills and toys can bring. The crowd at Fort Bliss was full of great learners and determined students of good times. If every demo was like this, the world would be a much happier and peaceful place.
Now we’re on the hefty drive through West Texas. It’s a huge expanse that could pretty easily change your perspective on the world. Beautiful and sun drenched during the day and a little lonely during the night. either way you look at it, the desert has a lot of lessons to teach us and we’ve had great conversations on that, here in the van over the miles so far. If you haven’t been on tour, you need to get out there and see as much as you can. There is nothing like it. besides, the stars at night really ARE big and bright deep int he heart of Texas.
Another busy day, but a relief compared to our 36 hour stint. The morning started with adventures involving laundry machines. Most notable about these adventures is what people like Nate and I are willing to wear around the hotel while everything else is in the machines. I wont go into to much detail, but there are definitely Hawaiian swimming trunks and euro -trashy linen shirts involved….
Anyway, our first gig was at a TRU about an hour from where we were staying. We were met by a pretty good crowd (a lot of people have been finding the website from the most random sources!) and had a lot of fun teaching, fixing yoyos, and showing off as per usual!
We had to rush to our second gig, and with traffic barely made it to set up and such. A lot of players had planned to meet us there so we had a crowd throughout and the demo overall was pretty fun. We stayed a bit late to entertain folks as the store closed and then took off for the BYU Yoyo and Juggling Club! Oh how I LOVE a good juggling club. There was plenty of yoyo, some astrojax, and I geaked hardcore with some clubs. I even managed to get 6 clubs going a couple of times and I haven’t run that in years! We’ve been pretty good about meeting up with both yo-yo and juggling clubs through out, but I hope we can do even more as we continue the tour. Its SO much fun.
We headed back North in preparation for the following day and though it took us a while to find the place we finally ate and settled in for the night. Still recovering from the SUPER long day we hit the sack pretty quickly, though 6 hours later I was up for a Radio Interview!
Wow, when Nate rolled into Indy it was the most west he had ever been! They spent three full days in Indy and I tried to cram as much stuff in as possible. Here’s the proof!
Special thanks to Connor Ebbinghouse and Bradd Collins for hanging out with us 
Also, remember this picture? It’s pretty awesome, I know. THANK YOU ISHPHOTO.COM
We all jumped and extended our poses as best we could, but Emil definitely went beyond the call of duty. This is the result from that jump.
OH!
Well guys, we’ve already covered several cities and number of venues since our last video so we wanted to post some more clips to show you what we’ve been up to. The best parts of the most recent leg have been our interaction with players and the amount of creativity that’s taken place. Whether its ridiculous juggling stunts, hilarious yo-yo competitions, or road challenges we’ve made sure to push the limits and have a great time doing it.
ENJOY!
Video Blog 3 from Emil Lamprecht on Vimeo.
While we were visiting Madison, WI we got caught up with the UWI juggling club. At some point a couple photographers came by and it looks like I made it onto one of their daily blogs. Check it out!
We didn’t have enough Duncan clubs with us so we were using an assortment of random clubs for passing purposes, but we had a lot of fun that night and even got some jugglers playing yo-yo!
Check out the rest of his pics too, they’re pretty sweet.
So after a couple hours of sleep we checked out of the hotel (with the same person we checked in with, they were shocked) and got on the road again towards Minneapolis and the largest mall in the Northern Hemisphere. We had been drilling so hard that we actually got there a little early which gave us some time to get breakfast-namely coffee-and walk around a bit. I have to say, seeing multiple roller coasters running between shops like Forever 21 and Best Buy is a bit intense.
Come demo time we headed over to the Games By James on the third floor and met the manager there, Bow, who was a really cool dude. James, myself and Nate geeked out over board games and then set up in front of the store for a couple hours. Mall traffic that early in the day was inconsistent, but using our iPod speakers and announcer voices we got some attention and laughs. We definitely drove a few yo-yo sales for the store too which was great! Then 3A Alex showed up!
As someone new to the scene I had never heard of or seen this guy before but Alex ended up hanging out with us for most of the day and was totally cool. He’s blocked off the few days that we’re here to come hang with us which is awesome, and by the end of the day he had taught me two new tricks!
From Games by James we had lunch with Alex and then wandered the mall up and down for an hour before setting up the next gig. Air Traffic was on the other side of the mall from Games by James and though there is some cross over in products their specialties are different. As a juggler, I totally geeked out a Air Traffic. They had a ton of skill toy stuff including a lot of really high-end juggling equipment, namely clubs (which I prefer to juggle but haven’t been able to for a while since mine were stolen 
). Anyway, since it was now after school hours we also had a group of players show up, and in the end had quiet the crowd of people throwing. Demo went awesome as a result, and everyone had a really great time.
I have to say that the players that have been coming out and meeting up with us are making this tour AWESOME. If we’ve met up with you already, Thank You; and if you’re planning on meeting up with us I can’t wait to meet you. Its been so cool to find people everywhere we go who are just cool and want to throw and hang out. I dedicate a lot of the tour’s success to having more players around as it keeps us awake and excited and really shows the world how social and communal the Yo-yo world is.
After packing up we ended the day by taking a little time to rock climb before dinner. It put us in a GREAT mood and then we met up with Josh of Sting Burn Live for Juicy Lucy burgers of deliciousness. Overall a really successful day, which I have to say we’re getting good at now. We’re constantly gaining momentum and I’m moving so fast I think I’m slightly blurred wherever I go. We’re now setting up our light speed capabilities. Jump on, and buckle your seat belt.
Talk about an incredible story. Ok first of all, day 16 of this tour (the 10th) was my Birthday. I turned 22 years old and while I’m not much of a birthday celebrator I managed to have an awesome day on tour with my friends and people we met along the way. Once we started the day we headed into downtown Madison to check it out and drive the van around, play yo-yo etc. We ended up walking down State St. which is the big avenue with stores and restaurants that is basically the village for UWI which is a truly humongous university. Anyway, we got ourselves some squeaky cheese, which we had been waiting for since Takeshi told us about it (you bite it, and it squeaks, its pretty hilarious), some Jamba Juice (one of my personal favorites) and wandered down towards campus in the beautiful weather.
So check this out, we’re walking onto the actual campus, we’re about 10 yards in and walking straight at me is Elliot! Elliot is a juggler who I met at the European Juggling Convention (EJC) in Spain a couple months ago. Though we ended the convention super friendly, he and I haven’t talked since and I completely forgot that he was a grad student at UWI; and there he was!! At a school of tens of thousands it was so incredible to run into the one person I knew. Not only that, but the juggling club was later that evening and our gig for the day ended with perfect time for us to come join it.
So we went and did lunch, I did some accounting, etc. We packed up and headed off to our gig and at first we were a little skeptical because even though the store was really nice and there seemed to be nice people working there and signs about our coming… the mall was deeaaaaad. For the first 15 minutes or so Nate and I kept meeting eyes worriedly, but low and behold after that things picked up quiet a bit! Not only did after school foot traffic pick up but suddenly a whole bunch of players appeared on the scene. Not only that, but the guy who does all the international ordering for Duncan at the Bariboo, WI Flambeau offices stopped by! Super super nice dude who I chatted with for probably 10+ minutes straight.
I’ll now relate to you another coincidence. The night before this gig when we were checking into the hotel the clerk at the Best Western spotted what Nate’s shirt said (Duncan, duh) and was like “No Way!”. It turns out Zach had just started playing yo-yo himself and was planning on coming by the next day to join us, which he did! So we had Zach, and then a total of 3-4 more players that showed and a few people who had planned to come watch. It was great. To top it off nicely I did some juggling to warm up for the club later and came up with some more new crazy tricks I hadn’t done. I’m having a really good time juggling and learning new yo-yo tricks at the moment, its fantastic.
Ok, Ok (as if this post isn’t long enough!) so we left the gig pretty pleased and headed straight to the juggling club. We were a bit early so we did some pics and video stuff but then people trickled in. It turned out to be a ton of fun, and even Jame and Nate really enjoyed it though they don’t juggle much. We showed off yo-yo, Nate and James learned a lot of juggling stuff, I TOTALLY geeked out for a couple hours. I even got to meet Luke Emery (a legendary club passer) who I had never had the pleasure of throwing things with. We did a bunch of cool brain-pain patterns and I learned some group pattern stuff which is not something I’ve done much of. By the end of the night I was back to trying just the craziest most random 1-3 club tricks I could think of and had an AWESOME time.
We ended the night with one more coincidence. We left the club finally to go to dinner before starting the drive north and ended up in a little Italian restaurant up the street. About 5 minutes after we sit down our waitress looks at me and says “are you a professional yo-yo player?”. Keep in mind that for once we hadn’t brought out yo-yos since entering the establishment, so we were a little surprised that my Duncan shirt triggered this question. Of course we responded yes, and it turns out that she was the girlfriend of one of the players that hung out with us at the gig! Not only that, but that same guy is now equipped with a brand new shiny MayheM! It was just too funny.
To finish the night we got on the road to Minnesota, but it got dangerous because we were so tired and just booked what ever we could find about half way through the drive. We slept about 4-5 hours before jumping out of bed, back on the road and heading out to the Mall of America, which is where our next post will take us.
Admittedly, we’ve been so busy and active that taking pictures sometimes isn’t priority so there aren’t as many of them as usual, but some cool ones none the less. Check it out!
Jason Lavengood sent along a second batch of edited photos from our shoot in Indiana today! Check them out, and let me know which ones you like!
