Oct/090
Andrew Meyer and the Meaning of Life
Greetings! Been a bit under the radar as of late. Feeling the need to post more than the usual 145 characters tonight. Life has been quite an adventure as of late. College graduation brought about an urgent need to figure out what I was put out on this earth to do and fly with it. So I decided to go for it and take off for an adventure working for a startup in Colorado. What an adventure it was! Hard work, fun travels, great people and utter failure..haha. I truly met some amazing people who had similar drive to myself, but I realized I was missing something. My skills were not anywhere near up to par compared to these people! So the adventure was short lived and I got to feel a big failure for probably the first time in my life (well..second…but that’s another story). (or third…moving on). This landed me my next and current place of residence…my parents house! Yes, I have become part of the phenomenon that experts have labeled, the Boomerang Generation. Basically it occurs when a budding young adult leaves the nest, lives an independent life for a few years and then returns to the nest. I am not really proud of this and really am trying to do what I can to shake this label off me. Unfortunately the job market is quite scarce and I am forced to take what I can get (leaving me financially unable to deal with rent and student loans). Really is quite frustrating.
So where am I going with this post? Basically I am writing this for myself as a reminder of how I got where I currently am and where I should not be in the next year. It can be quite numbing on the mind to have the constant expectant eyes of parental figures peering at your every move while in a state of experimental soul searching, but I believe I can get myself out of this. Through my past few months in this search, I have come to the conclusion that the drive that got me to Colorado should be used to focus in on myself, one step at a time. This is going to be a time of skill building and experimentation. There are going to be many failures, but I believe opportunities will begin to arise if I keep my head up. Anyways, I think I am going to rest my tired mind for the time being (tonight) and get some rest. I will be posting this unedited, unreferenced and will hopefully be posting more and more as I continue my journey. Happy trails!
Jul/091
Show Skiing
The path to show skiing success has been going quite well. Joining the team a third of the way through the season has been tough, but it hasn’t taken long for me to regain the status I had left there two years ago. Now I am at the point of surpassing this. In the past three weeks I have relearned how to freestyle jump ski, which has always been my favorite part of being a part of the club. Currently I have relearned long distance jumps (which are currently closing in at 100 feet), helicopter spins (a 360 degree spin with a wrapped handle) and front flips. I am also on the verge of teaching myself to throw the elusive gainer, which is a backflip while moving forward. After many failed attempts I managed to successfully land this last weekend.
Another great thing about the club is the untapped talent of the other skiers. I just recently taught my friend Adam to land his first front flip off the jump. This will be a great addition to the team jumping we do in shows. I have also taught many young skiers the basics of water skiing and they should be working on to get spots in the show and out of the beginner training. Teaching these young skiers brings such a good sense of accomplishment for myself. I love seeing the excitement in their face when they have accomplished that next step 
So for future posts I’ve decided to focus on show skiing technique. I would love it if this spawned a network of show skiers offering advice and making posts in their respective talents, as there are many facets of the sport I don’t even touch. I am currently getting ready to head to the midwest regionals tournament this weekend and I am excited to meet some of the other talented clubs in the area. In the meantime, check out this video that encompasses the freestyle jump skiing world.
Jul/091
Embed YouTube Videos In Your Wordpress Blog
In my previous post I had embedded a YouTube video using the nifty Wordpress plugin Smart YouTube. It’s very easy to use once activated. The plugin parses through your posts and comments looking for any urls that have the resource type:
- “httpv” for regular video
- “httpvh” for high quality video
- “httpvhd” for HD quality video
- “httpvp” for video playlists
So all you have to do is copy the url of the YouTube video you want in your post, paste it, and change “http” to one of the resource types in my list. No tags required, since the plugin does all the work for you. It appears in your post just like it would appear on the YouTube site itself. This allows viewers to use the various features that YouTube allows, such as full screen viewing (which is a big deal for me). Check out Smart YouTube Plugin for more information.
Jul/092
Crazy On You Intro Cover
Lately I’ve been getting into diligent practicing of my guitar and trumpet. I decided to find some material to cover to build on my skills and provide a challenge for myself. After hearing The Decemberists cover Crazy On You by Heart, I was enticed to learn the crazy acoustic intro to this song. I posted it up on YouTube and embedded it here. Hope you enjoy!
Jul/091
First Day Back At Sioux Falls Water Ski Club
Two Man Heli
I’m finally back to doing what I love. Today was my first day back at the Sioux Falls Water Ski Club, aka Catfish Bay. Unfortunately the practice was called off early due to severe weather in the area. However, I did happen to get a jump set in. This is definitely my all time top favorite stunt to perform in the show ski world. It has been two years since I’ve been able to hit the jump and surprisingly things went quite well. After successfully landing two ride overs on the jump, I decided to go for the heli (a wrapped 360). Lo and behold those two years of rust did not phase me and I landed the first one. I got two more chances to try again, and only failed at one (but two out of three ain’t bad). To give you an idea of what this looks like I pulled an old photo from a few years back out of my facebook photos. In the future I hope to post video footage of the kind of stunts I perform as well as what some of the other amazing performers at the bay have to offer. I also have posted another photo of me in the barefoot line from about the same time period. This is probably one of my favorite pictures ever captured of a barefoot line. Looks
pretty rough, which it really is. I typically enjoy being on the outside of such a stunt, since a face full of water while going 40 mph is not typically comfortable.
Jun/092
Farewell Colorado, Hello South Dakota
View of Boulder from the Royal Arch
I just got back to South Dakota after a six week internship at Blitzlocal. They are a local online marketing agency and are experts at what they do. I have decided to take what I’ve learned apply it to the Sioux Falls area. It is going to be rough at first, but I have some ideas to make it work. So what did I do in Colorado? I started out doing some engineering projects, but it really didn’t work out. I ended up learning a lot though and decided that engineering isn’t what I want to do in life. It’s a good thing I figured that out now, instead of when I’m in a cubicle farm getting a salary and going crazy. It took the advice of Dennis Yu, Chad King, and Jay Martin to help me figure this out. They have really put a lot of thoughts in perspective for me and are really good people to know. I had a blast up there doing some great hikes and bike rides. I also worked a ton and got very little sleep. Expect more posts about my experience up there.
So what now? First off I am going to start doing show skiing again at Catfish Bay. I almost went professional with my skills there, but put it off to focus on my degree. There’s a good chance I might try and go professional again. We shall see where events lead me though.
Secondly, I am going to pick up music again. Today I got my acoustic guitar back from Sioux Falls Music. I got to chat it up with the lead guitarist of Kory and the Firefllies and learn about some possible music ventures to pursue. With my twelve years of trumpet playing experience I should be able to grab some pretty sweet gigs.
Finally, starting today, I am going to start regularly posting on my blog. I plan to really get into it and make some posts about the process I used to get there. Hopefully I can inspire other people in the area to do the same. I plan on checking out some live music events in Sioux Falls and post about those.
That’s about it in a nutshell. I have other ambitions, but some doors have to open for me first. I think this is a pretty good start
Jun/090
Hey there!
Good to see you stumbled upon my blog! My name is Andrew Meyer and I am new to the blogging world. I’ve decided that I want to document events in my life and make some posts on some of my interests. I’m just getting started, but I hope to provide some good content really soon.