Teale and I both love our dogs very much, so they hang out with us while we work. They however are not allowed in the sewing shop or near products so they stay on the main floor of the house. For the most part, they play in the backyard or hang out at the top of the stairs while we work, but when it comes time for carrying the day’s packages out to the curb for pickup, things occasionally get dicey. You see, Beuford (Teale’s Golden Lab Mix) loves to run and explore. When he gets loose, he usually tries running in a straight line which makes him quite hard to catch due to his speed. Haley (my Australian Shepherd) on the other hand, usually stays close but keeps running back and forth in a “you can’t catch me and I’m not coming back inside until I’m tired of running circles around you” dance. Individually, either one is hard enough to catch, but when they both get out together, it’s both very difficult and extremely comical. Since Haley is a herding dog she’ll immediately start nipping at Beuford’s heels and trying to tackle him despite the fact he’s double her size. The end result is Beuford running even faster in a bizarre pattern trying to dodge both Haley and whoever is trying to get his leash back on him and Haley is having a ball because she has something fast to chase in a big open space.

Last week, they slipped by a newly hired employee as we were taking out postal packages and they were 1.5 miles before I was able to catch them while on my bike. They only had a 30 second head start before I was on my bike, but they bolted in a direction where I couldn’t tell which way they went).

We have other doggy gates blocking off other areas but the problem is that almost all doggy gates are really just child gates that kind of wedge themselves in a doorway, leaving you to either take 60 seconds of taking it down, stepping through and re-installing it, or in our case, optimistically trying to step over it with an arm full of boxes. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I fell hard enough to dent the drywall earlier this month and was lucky not to have broken my arm. There are rather expensive swinging gate child gates that are for the top of stairs and such, but they aren’t well made and unfortunately Haley being rather clever meant she’s figured out how to open most latches that are push button based. It only took her one day to figure out how to open the swinging ones.

The other problem is that our hallway to the front door is extra wide, no commercially available gates fit it and instead you’d have to go with the ones that are designed to make a corral or dog pen, neither of which are usually either high enough to keep our dogs from jumping it, or so high we can’t step over them. So, I skipped work today and build our new custom sized, auto closing doggy gate that has some nice trim. It’s tall enough that they can’t jump it and the hidden spring system is strong enough to keep them from nosing it open. On the plus side, it’s a one way gate that can easily be opened with a hip to bring parts in and it can lock in an open position for when the dogs aren’t inside. On testing, it’s easy to open with a spare finger while you’ve got your hands full of boxes, slip through and it shuts behind you securely making the process much easier. When not in use, it can sit flush with the wall out of the way.

I’ve posted some photos below, if you look carefully you can see where our previous gates caused us to trip and it damaged the drywall. Fixing that is on my to-do list.

Click on the photo to enlarge.

So far, I’m pretty happy with our new gate, even if the dogs are less than thrilled.

Balance In Life,

Joe Kuster

I’ve even seen newspaper articles where slackers were interviewed and they claimed that they were the first to invent such and such trick – sometimes something that we’d already had videos up on for years. I have to hope that this was just bad reporting, but it has happened. I’ve even received emails of folks trying to submit a “new” slackline trick or pose that they named after themselves and have it posted on our site – but it’s something I’ve seen done by dozens of slackers and I’m sure someone did back in the 80’s before this person was born. Normally, I won’t even attempt to claim a “first” even if it’s something highly original because frankly, it’s probably been done by a skilled slacker in their backyard who didn’t need the ego boost that the video posters do.

What are your thoughts? Is this a constructive outlet that encourages pushing the limits or is it just the ego driven people trying to take something that probably wasn’t theirs. Part of the fundamental problem is that it is essentially impossible to verify. Our sport is disconnected. Much of the real progress being in local parks and backyards across the world. The only major common thread most of us has is the internet. Does that mean I start posting videos of back in ‘03 when I landed 6 Vertical Jumps On A Slackline in a Row? Or, back in ‘04 when I bumped that up to 12 in a row and each one cleared the line by a larger amount, I even finished it with a 360 dismount for style. Legitimately, that might have been a world’s first for a slackline. Problem is, how could I know for sure it’s the “first”, even if I have it on video, should I be conceited enough to assume that no one else has ever landed it in their backyard before?

To make matters even more confusing, what about tight rope and slack rope and slack wire? As much as we slackers don’t consider ourselves performing artists, our skills do cross over well. Matter of fact, I did the same 12 jumps on a slack rope and thought it was much harder, does that mean we’re competing against Cirque Du Soleil? If that’s the case, we don’t have a prayer.

Post up in the comments and let’s hear what the real slackline community thinks.

Balance In Life,

Joe Kuster

For me, I never feel like I need the public’s acknowledgement to know I’m a decent slacker and I try to encourage that stance with my crew. I can usually bust out the tricks with the best of the competitors at the comps we’ve been to, but it feels a bit hollow – like I’m stealing someone else’s thunder so I avoid doing too much at demos and instead try and coach people to reach for a new level. I feel more comfortable teaching Slackline Lessons and being a coach, encourager and trainer.

On the other hand, I still feel like competitions offer something to people who thrive from seeing a new challenge and I’m all up for them continuing to improve. Some see it as a way to meet and greet others from the sport and as a venue for healthy encouragement of improving. For others, I think the competitions bring out the worst in them. Many are really nice folks, but they make an idiot of themselves trying to claim greatness in what is a truly free-style sport. They become domineering and elitist jerks.

The worst offender’s I’ve witnessed was actual organizers of a certain slackline competition. They usually had a small group of fairly talented slacker friends and decide to organize a slack-off in their area. The bone I have to pick is that they decided that instead of hosting a comp that encourages all levels of skills, they attempt to create an elite level competition and decided that they would all compete in it. This of course had the effect that they would try and crush out any other local talent. With the organizers competing on the lines they had been practicing on well in advance, of course they dominated and walked away with nearly all the prizes. They essentially organized a comp where they sent out flyers, collected swag from vendors and staged a comp to show how “awesome” they were and get free gear to boot. I can’t help but feel that their selfish pursuit of petty glory harmed their local slackline culture into something less than welcoming to entry level slackers and I can say that we won’t be sponsoring their comp again.

I still believe that the best competitions offer something for everyone at all levels but is our sport large enough to have elite level competitions? For many references, skateboarding serves as a good benchmark and it took several decades of popularity before it grew stable enough to host high level competitions that didn’t discourage entry level participants. Nowadays, skateboarding can actually be a profession, but only to a elite few. However, before this happened, skate parks all over the US were popping up to support the sport’s beginner and intermediate level skaters. Without that infrastructure in place, it’d be hard to maintain a culture large enough to be dividing and clique-ish. Their participating population far exceeds our own, but at what level are cash prize comps a viable option without encouraging elitism?

The fact is, that money comps are happening now (mostly in Europe), but only a few per year and almost all sponsored by vendors looking to cash in on any “hip” activity and have nothing to do with slacklining. Frankly, costs of flying to the worldwide comps are still higher than expected payouts, but we can only expect the pots to grow. But is this healthy for our sport? Hopefully, in the future there will be enough of a slacker population to serve as buffer between the elitists and the beginners, but are we there yet?

Until we get that figured out, don’t expect to see anyone from Slackline Express competing in these events (even if we could kick some ass).

Balance In Life,

Joe Kuster

• The number of out of focus or blurred shots is < 1%
• It’s fast enough to catch wild action on slacklines (see below)
• At 11mb per raw photo it blows through memory cards like crazy
• My external photo bank doesn’t support HC SD cards
• I really can live without framing photos using an LCD.
• Raw files are cool for loss-less editing and all, but take a lot of time to convert to usable jpgs in large batches.
• If you figure out your camera settings you can forgo Photoshop adjustments altogether.
• I have a lot to learn.

Balance in Life,

Joe Kuster

Tips: http://www.slacklineexpress.com/tips.htm

Tricks: http://www.slacklineexpress.com/tricks.htm

Blog: http://www.slacklineexpress.com/blog

Videos: http://www.slacklineexpress.com/movies.htm

Highline Rigging: http://www.slacklineexpress.com/highline.htm

Setting up a Slackline Without Trees http://www.slacklineexpress.com/notrees.htm

The big list of our gear: http://www.slacklineexpress.com/products.htm 

Sorry there isn’t pretty pictures in this post, I’m posting it from my phone while we are traveling.

Joe Kuster

Slackline Express