The Journey and the People are really the reasons I love to go to Footbag tournaments...

Certainly World Footbag Championships is the father of all Footbag tournaments, and that means many of my old friends are traveling there too. This post is to summarize our Journey to Montreal. 

Starting in Oak Park, IL which is a suburb of Chicago, we began packing on Thursday, the day after my wife's moms funeral.  It was a tough week. I am traveling with my wife Valeria, my son Alex and my niece Juliana (both 14) and our dog Harley.  We each get a bin and packed it into our station wagon with a car topper that has our camping gear, chairs, xootr, etc...  

We got our usual late start and didn't get to the Windsor Canada crossing until midnight.  We had to reserve a room in Canada to prove we needed our passports expedited, but it took until 4:00am to find the hotel near Toronto. We slept until 10:30 and had to check out at 11.  

Another constant challenge is finding Internet and using it wisely. I rely heavily on iPhone maps, but without a data plan here, we have been successfully zenning our way around. We sat in the hotel parking lot and used their wifi to figure out our next moves. 

We found the Toronto lakefront, and went to this new park but $10 parking and mostly not dog friendly we backtracked to the old Toronto lakefront parks and found a $1.50 parking spot.  Here are some Toronto pictures: 

 A drive by picture

Met this kid and his sister, taught them some kicks and gave them a dragonfly Footbag from our sponsor www.footbagshop.com 

If you look carefully in the background you can see the spire in that last photo. 

The weather looked bad at this point, so camping that night was off.  We went to Gananoque CA which is billed as the 'Gateway to 1000 Islands' and found a hotel.  We watched a heavy rainstorm come thru and got up the next day to go see 1000 Islands. 

We zenned our way to the highway and headed for Montreal. We have a condo rented and we needed to dump all our stuff and get checked in for the tournament.  Here is our condo...

Pretty sweet!  About $100/night.  You see Valeria in the kitchen then the dining room and family room space, a bedroom beyond the TV and a sitting room to the right with Juliana on the barkolounger. 

We got checked in at the event site... Saw old friends like Tuan Vu and Lisa Monte-Vu, Kenny and Kendall Shults and family, and many others!  It was great!

Valeria made a great pasta dinner in our full kitchen and we felt right at home. 

On Monday, we skipped the tournament and went to Six Flags LaRonde and used our season passes to get in free.  They even let us use the parking for free!  

Julie and Alex at the site where I took 4th in the world in 1996. In the back of LaRonde.  After Worlds is over, we are going to 4 more six flags along the east coast.  Stay tuned. 

Back in 1996, a random jam happened on Isle St. Helene at this very location. Peter Irish, Tuan Vu, Eric Wullfe and I shredded epically here.  It is where I did my 2413th jam in a row and my last practice before round 1 at worlds. 

So at 12:30 today EST Worlds freestyle begins and at 1:20 my pool goes on.  So wish me luck.  It's breakfast time here.  And that is the story of how we got here!

See ya!

-Enlightener

Vote daily for Scott 'Enlightener' Davidson in Dr. Pepper video contest!

I need your votes!  Each day, starting July 10th thru July 24th you can vote once at http://www.drpepper.com/oneofakind/ and a second time by tweeting my custom hash tag #ScottForTheNextOne to your Twitter account.  

I know it will be difficult to remember to vote everyday, so I am putting a calendar event that repeats daily for the next two weeks to remind me. 

If you could share the link to my Dr. Pepper video on your Facebook and Twitter, I would greatly appreciate it. 

The video was submitted over a month ago, and would not have been possible without the help of my son Alex Davidson, my wife Valeria Davidson and my friend Steve Richardson.  It is in the style of the Dr Pepper /1 of a Kind as campaign and tells the story of how Over 1 million Footbag's are sold each year, and how hundreds of thousands of college students move on and never play Footbag again.  It also talks about how I am a world champion, how I am over 46 years old, and how I play every day, And that's what makes me one-of-a-kind!   When we were filming it, at Rosary College in River Forest, Illinois, As an afterthought, we got shot in front of the doorway at the college. It turned out that this was the best shot of the day.   A rather long string, captured with the iPhone in vertical mode, featured prominently in the second half of the video.

I apologize in advance for being annoying  this week. I will be making several Facebook posts a day to garner as many votes as possible. 

As of This writing, the video is not yet viewable. I hope there will be a share button for Facebook and Twitter, and even LinkedIn. I hope they publish it at 1080p. 

Even if you aren't quite as excited about this as I am, I truly appreciate your support in voting and getting the word out to vote!

If I win, the prize is that they will produce a professional quality video along the same lines of the one I made. And they will Eric on television and on the web.  I'll get flown to location, and per diem's. But no cash prize this time.

Just making the finals, feels like winning to me! But it sure would be nice to get some great positive exposure for the sport of Footbag, and Footbag Freestyle specifically.