Post-Practice...

All I have to say is... THAT was a great practice. I ran short then medium run and felt really good. I'm so ready for this weekend.

Getting ready for my Midwest Circuit

If you've read my previous posts, you know that I'm going on a trip this weekend to compete in 3 meets in 4 days. What you don't know is Julia is going with me! She was trying to work it out with her summer class and stuff the last week and she figured it out! Also, my friend and old teammate Ryan Hays is coming with us! It'll be the three of us driving up to a River Vault in La Crosse, Wisconsin, then heading to Champaign, Illinois for the Gill Factory Vault, and lastly driving back this way to Webster Groves, Missouri (right outside of St. Louis) for the Pole Vault Explosion. It's bound to be the most vault-filled weekend of my life so far and I'm more excited than I was going to USA's! I've been jumping really well lately and I feel really close to jumping a higher bar and maybe something close to 19'. Everything would definitely have to line up perfectly, but I wouldn't be saying it on here if I didn't really believe it. Julia and I went out to Walmart last night to pick up some snacks and stuff for the trip. $50+ later, Julia dragged me out of there before I got too carried away, ha. We're all prepared for a great trip and we're planning on leaving around noon tomorrow. I'm hoping to post updates throughout the weekend but the'll be so much driving that i'm not sure. I'm gonna try to put up pictures from the meets and hopefully some video, at least that's my goal. It's gonna be about an 8 hour drive tomorrow and then the first competition is on Friday at 3. I'm planning on opening pretty high on Friday in order to take fewer jumps to save my energy for Saturday. The Factory Vault has much more prize money and competition so I'd rather be fresh for that.
Oh, and check it out! Morry Sanders, the coach of Arkansas Vault Club (AVC) liked one of my quotes that I wrote on Facebook a couple months ago and wanted to make a t-shirt out of it. I definitely let him and he actually did it! He made a shirt for his summer camp this year with my quote on the back! Here's pictures of the shirt:

Unfortunately, I don't think you can buy any, but I'll find out if he has extras to sell. I know my family said they wanna buy some. Anyway, I have vault practice tonight at 6:15pm with Coach and I think his pole vault camp will be watching. So I hope I have a good practice! ha. I'll update tomorrow before/during/or after the trip!

VaultUnited.com

I can't believe I forgot to mention this earlier. Vault United is a social networking site exclusively for vaulters, friends, and fans! It's plans are pretty large and it needs more viewers to make things happen sooner! They have a lot of good resources and it's a lot of fun to navigate through. It has a facebook-type feel to it within the networking section, but they also have several other things going on within the site. Show your support by buying a shirt or some other gear! I'll post a link on my blog permanently after I post this. But definitely check it out as there's no reason not to! And sign up to see all the member's only stuff!!
VAULT UNITED

5th Place at USA's!

5.45m/17' 10.75" may not have been the height I wanted to achieve on Saturday, but gosh did I feel good! The weather out there was unbelievable and I felt fresh and ready to jump high. I was jumping really well at the beginning of the meet on my 5m 14.1 flex pole. I think the pound rating on it is 200 lbs, but I cleared the opening height of 5.35m/17'6.5" on it on my second attempt and also my second attempt at 5.45m/17' 10.75". Then I needed to go up to my 13.7 after the first attempt at 5.54m/18' 2". But I came down on the bar my second attempt so I decided to pass my 3rd attempt to get an attempt at 5.60m/18' 4.5". I put the standards up pretty shallow to 55cm so I wouldn't come down on it again, but I actually got my chest through the take-off a little better and knocked it off on the way up. The only thing I was upset about was not getting a chance to jump at higher bars because I felt like I could've jumped a lot higher but oh well. I ended up getting 5th place and that was a success in itself. I've never placed that high at this meet before so it was really exciting to be in the mix. I was one bar away from making the World Championship Team, but I may have made the Pan-American Team. It's a meet among North America, Central America, and South America. So it's sort of a world meet but more like just half the world. It would still be quite an accomplishment to compete on a Senior Team. The only teams I've ever been on have been under-age teams, never a professional level team. I only get to go if 3 out of the top 4 guys decide not to go because they have the choice. It sounds like a long shot, but I know a couple of the guys aren't going. It just depends on the other two guys. So we'll see! Here's a video of some of the clearances from the meet posted by Jack Whitt's dad... I'm wearing a white jersey with blue shorts. I have 2 clearances on it and they start at 26 seconds and 1 minute 26 seconds:



I had a ton of fun at the meet though! It was really exciting and I felt so close technically to jumping really high. I'm looking forward to this weekend! Julia gets to go with me and so does Ryan Hays (he was one of my teammates the first 4 years of college)! So its even more exciting with more people to split up the driving and have a good time with. There's a substantial amount of prize money at all the meets this weekend so I'm hoping I can make a little bit of money while having fun!

Time to Play

Welp, I've been looking forward to this day for a while now. I just had a sub from subway and i'm gettin ready to leave for the meet! Thanks to all of you for your support up to this point and thanks for following my blog in this first week. My goals today: 
1. Have Fun
2. Drive the Chest
3. Make Aggressive Mistakes
4. Make a World Team
5. Jump 5.72m

Wish me luck! However it goes today, it wont be the end of the world! The sky's the limit...

The night before the big day

Boy was my mom right... if anyone read her comment on my last post, she pointed out that when i'm tired, i'm negative about things. And i realized that today more than anything. I got 9 hours of sleep last night and i've been ridiculously positive about every single little thing today. I cant think of how many times i kept thinking to myself, geez yesterday i woulda been pissed about that. But not today. I'm a new man and I'm gonna get plenty of sleep tonight too. I'm so excited for tomorrow, you wouldn't believe... My pre-meet warmup today was fantastic. I felt better than I've ever felt - fresh, quick, focused... I'm ready. Coach and I got our plan together for tomorrow's warmup and competition and I'm ready to execute.
Julia sent me an email earlier today of a USA logo that was really cool. It's actually the USA TV Network Logo that I added color to. She said if I had someone else to help me, it wouldn't be too difficult. Well... I probably could've asked somebody else to help, but I wanted to see if I could do it myself. So that's just what I did. I got out my paper, traced the logo, cut it out into a stencil, taped it to my head, and started outlining it onto my hair with sharpie... man that was difficult. I was determined to get it perfect, but sometimes... it just doesn't turn out the way you want. Perhaps that's my perfectionism talking, but I wish Julia was here. Her skills are un-top-able! But here it is... The red sharpie outline hasnt come out entirely yet, but hopefully tomorrow it will so the blue will look better:

And that's it. Simple, Elegant, To the Point. I suppose it's not my normal style of dying every last strand of hair some bright, ugly color, but it gets the job done for this meet and sends the message I wanna send: I'm going out there to represent my self, my team, and my country, and I plan on representing the United States of America on foreign soil once again! Ok, maybe it doesnt say all that but that's what I'm saying now.

Oh, and this gas station right beside our hotel has the best combination of snacks I've ever seen. Never before has one convenient store held possession of all my favorite snacks... Five different kinds of Sour Rips, Buffalo Sunflower Seeds, Molten Hot Wing Chips... Check it out:

Here in Oregon... Hair Ideas??

What a long trip. Every time i come out here to good old Eugene it's always a day-long adventure that never seems to end. First, it's an hour drive to the airport from Lawrence, then there's the airport wait followed by the 3h 45m flight to portland. Then there's the acquiring of baggage which usually goes by pretty quick, but obtaining the rental car/van/SUV/ always takes about an hour. THEN, when you think it's finally over, you have to drive 2 hours to Eugene. And that's all good, the day should be about over and its time for bed, but no... there's a 2 hour time warp back in time when you arrive and suddenly you have to stay awake for an extra couple hours. haha, ok but really, I'm not upset about the trip at all, it just got to me today. I was extremely tired by the time we started driving to Eugene. I absolutely love this part of the country once I get out here but dang I wish I could teleport... How much easier would life be if we could teleport?! Come on, seriously i've always wanted to teleport but then I think, welllll i bet everyone would get extremely lazy and fat and stuff, but what if teleporting was a "reward" for exercising??? Or what if it was just a lot of work to teleport? For example, you have to run at least 10 mph in order to warp into another place in the country, or 15 mph to go worldwide! Ha, I could go on but i'll save it for another time. Possibly never, where that conversation belongs. Ok so I'm in Springfield, right outside of Eugene. I have a room to myself so that's pretty awesome. I can sit here and blog all i want without another dude mackin with his girlfriend over the phone or somethin. I had an AWESOME new york style pepperoni pizza from Old Chicago today for lunch. Just had to get that in here. Then I just had Five Guys where, you just can't go wrong... When we got to the hotel today, we changed and went to the basketball arena for packet pick-up then went to the track to watch our sophomore thrower Mason Finley throw discuss. He threw great the first round and was in first place after the first flight. the second flight went and 7 of them threw further but Mason was 8th so he was the last competitor to get into finals. He really went for it all in the final round and had some promising technique but failed to throw any further. So he finished up getting 8th in the country which is fantastic! Especially at his age. He's got some big stuff coming in the next few years for sure. So between the first flight and finals, I went off to the practice track and did a warm-up and some strides. I felt really good for some reason. Usually I'm pretty tight after a day of traveling but I guess I did something right recently and it paid off. I've been trying to drink a lot more water the last couple months since I quit drinking coke. I've felt a lot better physically lately. I think my body is finally getting used to all the hydration I'm puttin in instead of carbonation, caffeine, and sugar. It really makes a difference.
Well its 11pm here so its way past my bed time in kansas. I just wanna keep everyone updated on how my trip's goin and what i'm doing. At least a few people have told me they enjoyed reading it every day and want to read more so this is for them. And I don't have to worry about the others who dont care cuz, well they wouldn't have read this far anyway... I've been watching Lopez Tonight while writing some of this and if anyone else saw it, Pitbull was awesome and NeYo really needs a computer to help his voice out i guess. It was interesting but Pitbull seems like a cool dude. Ok I'm goin to bed. And I have to be honest, I've stopped myself several times during this post from posting more little negative comments than I've already written. For some reason I'm realizing how negative my mind is today. It's not where I want my mind to be and I dont know why i'm being so pessimistic but I'm really gonna try harder to find the bright side of things cuz that's usually how I act anyway, but oh well, i'll work on it. It's gonna be a fun weekend, that's for sure! I really wanted to get out there and vault once we got to the track. I'm lookin forward to saturday and i'm not sure it could get here quick enough! Oh, and if anyone has any hair ideas, please comment on this post with your ideas! The more, the better!

Now Boarding Group B- 1 through 40

I'm at the airport waiting to board with my coach and his wife! Apparently I packed everything I could into my bag and didnt realize it cuz it was a half pound over the allowed 50 lbs. The Ticket lady was so nice that she let me check it for free anyway. Gosh I would hope so, i mean what is a half pound gonna do to anyone? But she was very adamant about letting me know it was too heavy and that she was being the nicest lady ever for letting me through. It was nice, don't get me wrong, but i dont think it was worthy of advertising by any means. Anyway, time to board. Real quick though, practice was good yesterday! just short and medium run jumping with crazy cross winds, but we got the job done and i feel confident about this weekend. Oregon, here I come!

Preparing for USA's

Welp, just got back from another bike ride with Julia! If you don't know, we love bike riding. We try going at least 5 times a week, if not every day. I've always loved riding and ride every year during the summer, when track is a little more low key. Julia and I started dating just over a year ago and she's always loved riding, but just hasn't done it much. So we started last summer and finally was able to get back into it a few weeks ago. If anyone knows anyone who wants to get rid of a "nice" road bike, let me know! We'd love to get some new bikes in the future. Sooner the better, ha. Well we did the same route we did yesterday morning and beat our time by 5 minutes ;). Ok enough bike talk for today, on to the good stuff...
I leave for Eugene, Oregon tomorrow morning at 9am! My coach, his wife, and I are flying out there to meet the rest of the KU team that's been leaving at various other times this week. I think we have 10 KU athletes competing at both the Junior and Senior Championships this year which is an awesome number! I'm REALLY looking forward to having a good time out there. I know tons of other athletes from other schools and professional and unattached athletes who I love seeing at these big meets. Eugene is without a doubt, the best place to go for a track meet, especially this time of year. In the spring it can be pretty unpredictable with rain and cold weather, but in the summer, I've had nothing but good experiences out there. There's no wonder why its called Track Town USA as it's just a classic track stadium and town. It seems like almost everyone in town comes to watch all of the track events held there throughout the year. It's always crowded with local Oregonians who just love track! The reason I'm looking forward to this particular meet more than some in the past isn't because I'm expecting to win, I'm actually only ranked 7th going into it. It's because I'm ready to start having fun again! The last couple months, I've been finishing up my collegiate career, lost, and not sure what my next move is gonna be or where my next paycheck is gonna come from. It's been rather stressful for me and I'm so excited to finally have a plan for the next 2 years! Now that I have a job lined up, classes to take, and an idea of what my life is gonna be like for a while, I can relax more while I'm vaulting and just do what I do. Vaulting under stress has always been a challenge for me, so its definitely a relief to be a ton more de-stressed. I've been doing some good things at practices lately and I hope I can keep it up this weekend. I have another vault session today at 2pm where I'm lookin to do some short run jumps, as well as some medium run jumps if I'm feeling good. My main technical goal is to plow through the takeoff with my chest forward and arms as high as possible. Whenever I do that, I either blow through the pole or have a fantastic jump. I can honestly say that if I drive through the takeoff with my chest at this meet, I'm making a team. Whether its the World Championship Team heading to Daegu, Korea or the Pan American team heading to Guadalajara, Mexico, I believe I have a good shot at jumping really high on Saturday. If I haven't mentioned it already, The Men's Elite Pole Vault will be held on Saturday at 12:00PM Pacific Time. I'll be updating my blog while I'm out in Oregon, starting tomorrow and hopefully I'll be able to report some good news Saturday night! I've been doing everything coach has wanted me to do the last few weeks and I'm feeling very confident in my vault right now. I want to thank everyone who has supported me on my journey thus far and I hope all of you can continue to have a friend/son/grandson to cheer for for a long time to come! I'm mentally, physically, and spiritually ready for this trip and all I want is to go out and have a good time and give myself a chance to jump high. Period.

Blog Updates, Wood, and so on...

I changed a couple things around. I put the pictures of my vaulter sculpture embedded in my first blog and added a picture to them. I added all of my hair styles that I have pictures for at the bottom of the blog and I added another video on the side bar. Also, here are some pictures of some of the wooden projects I've made this year. Let me know what you think and if I have a chance selling them for any profit whatsoever... I got the first box I ever made, then two wooden pens, an acrylic pen, a cutting board, and a jewelry box i made for Julia:

Our bike ride was good this morning! Aside from Julia's bike messing up a few times. That kind of stuff is just annoying. Here we are enjoying a long downhill stretch and hit a little bump and her chain pops off. I'd love to get her a new bike but we cant afford that, ha. But the rest of the ride was great! We biked about 10 miles in 57 minutes with crazy wind on the way there. Luckily it was a tailwind on the way back. I love getting up early and doing something active. It just puts me in a good mood for the rest of the day, and not to mention makes me feel physically better too. Gosh I just had a random thought... I haven't longboarded in over a month. Not since my last fall, ha. I was cruisin down a sidewalk down a hill and one of the back wheels caught the edge of the sidewalk which sent me soaring off to land on my shoulder and sliding downhill about 5 feet. Of course, that was the Monday right before our conference meet, which I seem to always hurt myself every year on that same week. Dunno how that works but its a sure thing every year. I still vaulted ok and won the meet but geez did that scrape hurt, or scrape(s) rather. There were multiple strawberries that ached at the slightest arm movement. Anyway, I'm itchin to start ridin again. It's so much fun to ride but I'm so amateur that i always feel like i'm gonna fall off even though that last fall was only the second fall in over a year of having a longboard. Ok I'm starving. Time for some pizza, my number one food source forever and always.

Welp, the greatest day of 2011 is near over...

Yup, today was the single greatest day of 2011 thus far. Everything that could have gone right, did. Before I jump back to recap my crazy day yesterday, I'll go ahead and inform you that I GOT THE G.A. POSITION!!! And not only that, but I also was accepted into grad school today!! I know what you're thinking, "you just wrote about your worries on both of these topics yesterday. what are the odds that you'll not have to worry about them just 24 hours after?!" Well it happened. I guess my patience and positive thinking paid off! I cant explain through writing how happy i was to hear all this great news today. I can just say that I had one of the best vault practices I've ever had this afternoon. More on that later, but back to yesterday...
       Yesterday I wrote the previous blog while I was at work, but what I didn't tell you was that when I got to work, I unlocked the building, walked down the hall to clock in, and realize I'm walking through puddles when I started thinking... I just walked through a couple puddles and acted like nothing was wrong. WHAT THE HECK?! I look further and see that a significant part of the hallways was wet, an exercise room had sitting water, and my office and the office next to it was both under a half inch of water. Maybe more though cuz my socks got wet through my tennis shoes. Turns out it was the same thing that happened last year around this time. Whenever it rains a whole lot, which it did the night before, pressure builds up and explodes through the floor tiles right inside one of the entrances. I know this because the exact same thing happened last year and I happened to be working during a storm when it happened that time. So anyway I called my boss and he came by to check it out. We got a cleaning crew over to take care of it and they said they sucked up over 150 gallons of water - ridiculous. Well thats not all that happened... While my boss was there, I asked him if he thought it smelled kinda funny down this one hallway I walked down earlier. It was sort of a burning plastic/tar/asphalt type smell like a machine was burned up or something. He said I should call the campus police and report it before I get off work. I call them and asked if they could send someone out to check it out and the lady on the phone said that they would send out an officer and fire unit... I was like woahhh I don't think thats necessary, but apparently its protocol. Long story short, I have to stay there 2 more hours to unlock doors and such for the firefighters to check the origin of the smell. They eventually found a hot tank of steaming tar outside one of the back doors that was smoking and ventilating through the air intake of the building. But that wasn't enough, personally I think they just wanted to play with some of their new toys... They got their 100' ladder truck to extend a ladder onto the roof and check any air conditioning units to see if their belts were in good shape. It was a long day at what I used to consider a simple job. Pictures from the day are below.

Ok back to today.
         I already told you I was accepted into grad school AND got the G.A. Position in the athletic department, which solidifies my plans for the next phase of my life. Bout time... But then I go to practice. It was just me and my coach today. Our plan was to go from long run today and then short or medium run wednesday, before going out to Oregon for USA's. It was pretty warm outside today, humidity around 341% at least, and luckily some cloud cover. It was a pretty good, gusty tailwind today so I was excited to try to get on some big sticks. I started out with some straight pole drills and then moved back to 10 steps. (For future reference and your convenience, I'll say this now. When I say how many steps I'm running from, I'll try to always use the word "steps" which is referring to Total steps, not just lefts) I did significantly better today on my straight pole drills and also on my short run. At this point in my career, I have 3 primary approaches. Short = 10 steps, Medium = 14 steps, and Long = 18 steps. My short run is usually around 74'6", medium around 104', and long run around 134'. Today I didn't use a tape measure, just cuz our outdoor runway is on a football field and I can use the yard lines. So I don't know exactly what my run was at today but I was about a foot and a half further back than the last two practices. Most likely due to the tail wind. I moved back to long run after about 4 jumps from short. Just between you and me... and the rest of the world wide web... I went through a rough patch near the end of indoor season when I started to get on bigger poles. I have this recurring fear of my grip not being strong enough and that I'm going to slip off. It's a completely made-up fear that holds no truth whatsoever, and that's what I had to tell myself a thousand times before I got rid of it during outdoors this year. If I've learned anything through collegiate vaulting, it's that you can't ever let your mind get the best of you. You're in control and you have to maintain control, harness it, and never let it go. If I had a tip of the day, that would be it. Back to vaulting--- I ended up taking about 10 jumps from my long run. If I would've just blogged about jumping, it would've been titled, "The Best Mental, and Worst Statistical Practice of My Life." Dude... I made ONE bar the whole practice haha. I just have to laugh at that. In the past, if I only have a clearance percentage of 10% at a practice, it was an AWFUL day. But today was different. I felt like the greatest vaulter in the world. I was soaring to the clouds today. Yea, we may have put the bar on some pretty hefty heights today, but I was pleased. I cleared 17' 5" once, and missed everything else. from 18'1" to 18'7" to 19'1". I missed em all, but the thing about it is... I wasn't on my biggest poles. I wasn't running as well as I usually do. And I didn't care, because today was a breakthrough day. I was putting more energy into those poles than ever before at a practice and I was actually swinging and turning and going UP the pole ON THE SIDE... which, if you've ever seen me vault, I DON'T DO THAT. But today I did. It was a great day all around. My girlfriend, Julia (whom I will refer to as Julia from here on out on this blog so don't ever forget who I'm talking about) must have told me congrats at least 27 times and I thank her for that tremendously. After practice, I lifted weights, grilled some burgers, watched some tv, and here I am, in bed before 11. I've been pretty good about my sleep lately. I learned the hard way that sleep is important. I never realized it till I started getting more sleep. Dang it makes ya feel good. Tomorrow morning, I'm getting up early and Julia and I are goin on a bike ride. Lookin forward to it! I also wanna thank my mom and my friend Roy for giving me some good feedback on my last post! Thanks for your support! Catch ya later.

Graduate Assistant interview tomorrow... Wish Me Luck.

Here I am working at my part-time job on campus, bored as ever, just thinking about how to make things easier and life less complicated... I have a feeling it's not gonna be easy. Tomorrow morning I have my interview for this Graduate Assistant position in the Athletic Department that I'm dying to get. Grad School itself is riding on this actually. If I don't get this position, I'd have to pay for grad school myself, which means taking out loans for all of it. I'm trying to apply for a few grants anyway, just so I can get some extra money if I get the grad position. But in reality, I'm not ready to take out enormous loans to pay for school that I'm not too stoked about going to anyway. Of course I want to get my Master's Degree and I want to work in the Athletic Department, but if I dont get the GA position, I find it hard to believe that I'd take out loans to pay for school right now when my dream is to make a living off of vaulting. My number one priority is getting this position, but if not, my priorities flip-flop to just spending all of my money and resources on vaulting. I know I can do it. I'm going to do it. It's just a matter of how long it takes me to get there. It could be this weekend at USA's when I bust out all my moves and make the world team and possibly get a contract! But as my dad always taught me (Happy Father's Day, Dad!), "Expect the worst, Hope for the best." That's what I'm doing. I'll definitely be one of the youngest guys going to this meet, but I sure as hell think I have a shot at getting top 3. Anyway, I'm getting off-topic. I'll save the USA's talk for the rest of the week. Wish me luck at my interview tomorrow! There's only one spot open and I really want it! (The funny part about it is that I made this blog yesterday and have a whopping ZERO followers at this point, ha)

First Blog... Don't know what I'm doing.

Where to begin...
Ok here's a start. I'm at my house right now, sitting in bed, just tried to figure out how to do this bloggin mess for the last 3 hours. Not sure what I'm doing right now but I think it'll be good for me. All through college I hated writing papers, but I've always enjoyed writing about things that I wanna talk about, as I'm sure everyone does. The only thing on my mind lately (since my silver spoon from KU is not feeding me anymore...) is vaulting professionally. How to vault higher, how to get "signed", how to know what meets to go to, and blah blah blah. The other thing that I'm working on right now is getting into grad school here at KU to get my Masters in Sports Management. On top of that, trying to get a Grad Assistant gig up at the athletic department so I can actually afford to go to grad school. Supposedly it would be a full-time job that pays for grad school and gives me a little stipend each month to live off of. It should be alright I think, but I have to get it before I can really say that. Anyway, life is crazy right now and I've always been known to jump around from topic to topic mid-conversation, as I'll probably do very often in these blogs. It's almost 1am right now and I'm not too tired yet cuz, well i may have had a little nap a few hours ago.
      Getting to the point: The main reason I decided to blog... FANS. I need fans and I need some more fans. Many of you may know me by now as the vaulter with the crazy hair... true, true (pictures below). That's me. I love dying my hair for meets and so far, I havent duplicated a design. I'm probably up to around 20-30 styles since I first started last year. It's a lot of fun and I believe it gets the crowd into it a little more. I'm running out of ideas though, so if anyone has an idea, definitely throw it out and I'll give it a thought. I have a few ideas of how I wanna market myself in this challenging vault world I just entered into. If I jump high and people start wanting my autograph and stuff, I may ask for hair ideas from everyone and send out a "prize" or something if I choose your idea and go to a meet sporting your hair style idea. But that's for the future. Hopefully something will come of that... before my hair falls out from all this toxic dye I'm puttin into it.
      I just took a woodworking class in my last semester at KU and LOVED it. I've always loved woodworking, but now I actually know what I'm doing. At least more than I did know. Anyway, another idea I had is for raising money for the "Don't Let Jordan Starve Foundation" by giving out wooden creations that I make. I still have access to the wood shop in the art building for now, dont know how long that'll last, but i'm gonna keep trying to use it. I've been making boxes and pens, I made a cutting board, and even a sculpture of a vaulter. Shown here:

If anyone actually reads this, let me know if you think these are good ideas or if i should just stick to selling t-shirts to raise money like everyone else. (definitely a great idea, i just like being different)
       I'll try to write some more soon about getting ready for USA's this coming weekend and a circuit of 3 meets in 4 days that i'll be attempting the following weekend. Take care of yourself world... Goodnight.