For those of you that have been interested in seeing Forest perform, these days he’s usually willing to do some basic tricks and may do a vault or two, but he’s never too excited to do any big tricks, nor do I want to push him very hard as his joints and bones are more fragile. But I did pull up some old videos from years ago, do you recognize us? Here we are, with a few of Forest’s tricks:

“A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” - Lao Tzu
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Now, I’ve been to both San Antonio and Austin before, and I remember quite well that I wasn’t a huge fan of San Antonio but I loved Austin. My original plan was to go to Austin for Cinco de Mayo, but several people I mentioned that to said I should check out San Antonio’s festival, so that’s what I did. First thing in the morning I headed into San Antonio, found the first parking spot within a mile of the market square and limped my way into the city. Oh, I felt awful, my knee wasn’t in screaming pain, but just uncomfortable enough that it was very difficult to walk. I made my way to the Market square district and found somewhere to sit down in the park, I got bored. So I walked into the market square and sat down there, wasn’t much happening there.

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It may seem obvious, I’m sure others have tried it, and maybe I’m just on the wrong beach at the wrong time of year, though I got more cheers and compliments than anywhere else, and Forest was more willing to perform as he was able to cool off in the ocean every few minutes, the beach is not the place to make money.

I started off the morning by putting the kayak in on the bay side of San Luis Pass, originally planning on crossing the pass and exploring the other side. The water was extremely shallow and I had to walk the kayak out about half a mile before actually being able to paddle. I paddled around a few islands and watched the pelicans fishing and all the other birds doing their thing, most of them were chattering about something. When I got to the pass, I was surprised at how big the water was, I knew I could cross it at that point, but I hesitated because, what if the wind picked up? I wouldn’t be able to cross it a second time, so I decided not to cross, and spent some time exploring this side of the bay. I paddled down the shore, towards the city, passing many fishermen in front of condos, but mostly uninteresting. I soon returned to the van after a journey of about 3 miles according to the GPS.

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This post is backdated as I haven’t had much time to write, or have been too exhausted to write. So, today, I sit on the beautiful beaches outside of Galveston, TX reflecting on just how I got here. The following is a true story (everything I write is true, I only say that because throughout this entire experience I had to keep reminding myself that it was real, I wasn’t dreaming, even when I woke up in the morning I thought it was a dream until I looked around). I apologize that there are very few pictures to go along with this story, as I headed out on the street I was worried about the threat of thunderstorms and didn’t want to jeopardize my camera, but in retrospect there’s no way bringing a camera into New Olreans is any more dangerous than carrying it through the mountains for a month. In all, the thought of taking a picture crossed my mind a few times, and I do wish I would have, but now I have to live with the fact that there are going to be very few illustrations to go with this story.

Best buckle your seat belt, and set aside a chunk of time for this one, it’s one wild ride.

Let me begin with a plug for dgcoursereview.com, a wonderful website for disc golfers, and even better for disc golf travelers, you can find all of my reviews on that site as well as this one. I joined the site just a few days ago, it seems like a great community, a great place to meet fellow disc golfers, and a perfect resource for a traveling disc golfer. I introduced myself on their forums the other day and got a variety of responses, including one from Midnightbiker who said, if you’re ever in Houston, give me a shout. So, I took note of this and let him know that I was considering coming that direction at some point, I didn’t know when it would be – but I had a vague idea that I wanted to check out Texas in the summer as I’d only been there in the winter, and I wanted to check out some area kayaking. Now, I don’t mention the site because I’m affiliated with them at all, or to impress the DGCR members but only because it’s relevant to the end of this story.

Saturday came around, I was hoping that this would be my busiest day on the street. Now let me say that busking on the street is one of the most incredible experiences of my life, it has completely blown my mind thus far. I began just before noon, I made it to the river walk and let Forest take a swim to cool off and psyche himself up for another day on the street. I could only hope that he would perform better than yesterday. I set up shop on Jackson square, halfway down the block, giving myself enough room to perform, yet hopefully be able to intercept enough pedestrian flow.

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Busking. The art of performing on the street for tips. What an adventure that is! We’ll get there.

I started the morning in the National Forest in Southern Mississippi, about two hours out of New Orleans, camped in that favorite spot with my own private disc golf course – so I began the morning by of course throwing a round, it went well and I really do like that course despite the lack of maintenance. I shot a 58. The entire time the anticipation of busking was keeping my heart thumping. Upon finishing, I started heading towards NOLA.

Now for an off topic rant. What’s with the ice conspiracy? I mean, I guess it’s business sense to make an inferior product that doesn’t last as long so people will constantly need to buy new ones. But really with ice too? What I mean is, why is it sooo difficult to find block ice? It’s so much better than bags of cubes, a block of ice lasts days longer than cubes, and even chipping off pieces to put in a drink has better results that using cubes in a drink. Maybe I’m just not looking in the right place, maybe there’s a specific gas station or grocery store that always has blocks of ice, but in my search today, I had zero luck. I must have stopped at about 10 gas stations, no blocks of ice. Ice conspiracy I tell you! Forcing me to buy an inferior product.

Anyway, back to New Orleans, no problem getting here, pulled right into my favorite parking garage. My kayak is about an inch too tall to clear the “clearance” bar, I pulled through that, the bar swung out of the way and I continued into the garage, I had to fold the seat down of the kayak (I figured if I didn’t make it, I could take the kayak off and shove it inside until I parked) each beam I crossed under I slowed down and watched the kayak just clear it, within half an inch sometimes, and I think the tail of the kayak brushed against one of the beams at one point. But, I made it all the way to the top floor, or just below the top floor as I wanted some protection from the rain.

Almost as soon as I parked it began to rain, I checked the radar and decided it would be best to wait it out here. A perfect place to watch a thunderstorm, I’d be quite safe here no matter how severe the storm got I think. I sat just under the ledge and watched it rain, watched the lightning strike all around. Forest was a little nervous about the thunder, as some of it was real loud. The rain seemed to continue on forever, the anticipation of hitting the street was killing me, I was pacing back and forth, eventually I sat down and wrote another disc golf course review for Ashe Lake, and by the time I had finished that, the rain was basically over. The flash flooding was rather impressive, from my vantage above the city I could see streets under water and many vehicles struggling through the deep puddles.

So, I grabbed my stuff and headed out for my first busking experience, at least since the spontaneous spell during Mardi Gras. I walked down, grabbed a spot in Jackson square and got to it. Our first audience was a couple, and two other people by themselves, a 4 person audience. They got into it, and Forest was performing well, we got an applause and some cheers, and made a total of $1 from the couple as they moved on. I could tell Forest wasn’t into it hardly at all though, as he reluctantly performed his tricks. I need to figure out what fires him up, as some days during practice he’ll go for hours performing well, while others he just wants to lay around.

Our second audience was a pair of guys, one guy wasn’t interested at all and he just kept walking, so I guess the audience was really only one guy. He was impressed, even though Forest was very reluctant do do anything, he forced out a few tricks, and the guy tipped well. We started out with a bang, a few more passers by gave us some tips, and we had made nearly $20 in 20 minutes. The evening went downhill from there.

Forest was only able to force out about three acceptable performances, then we made fools of ourselves. A group of about eight guys passed, one of the guys said “hey, tricks! we have to watch!” I tried to start the performance with a bang, but it ended up being more of a crash. Forest went in for a leg vault, but instead stopped halfway through and kind of fell into my arms, we both fell onto the ground. All we got were some laughs and a deflated ego. The next audience, we tried a simple “over” where forest would jump over my body, instead – he crashed into me. More laughs.

Maybe he’s too hot, I brought him to the river to cool off. It really wasn’t hot out, and he wasn’t panting or acting hot, but I needed to get him fired up! No such luck, now I just had a soaking wet dog crashing into me. He had nothing, he wouldn’t weave, he wouldn’t roll over, or even sit! He did a decent job of playing dead though. Poor Forest, I don’t know what it is, like I said some days he’s completely fired up and will go for hours, today, he was not in it at all. Maybe its his diet, or he needs vitamins, or maybe he just needs to rest, or he’s too old for this.

The rest of the evening didn’t go very well, we got some sympathy tips, I tried just simply balancing the hat on his head for tips, but the wind kept blowing it off. That’s how we made our money during Mardi Gras, basically all he was doing was balancing a cup on his head for tips.

Personally, I could improve in several areas as well, mostly in my people skills, talking to people and just being a friendly personable person could help tremendously, I need to be prepared to answer questions, and learn to shake off the laughs. I’m persistent though, I’ll be out there again Saturday. One heck of a busking adventure.