I accidentally in your base

Hi Denny,

We have not met yet, but I am Matt Gough. I am the Marketing Coordinator for Airkix.

I understand that you are the administrator for the unofficial Airkix fan group(?).

I understand that you created this group to bring together fellow fans before we decided to make a fan page ourselves, so thanks very much for being a great supporter. It is much appreciated that we have such loyal customers.

I have recently been bought on board at Airkix to improve our marketing and drive our brand image. As such I am putting some focus towards social media sites, including our Facebook page.

Whilst I know you made this group with the best intentions and it has been a great place for members to communicate about their experiences, would it be possible for you to close the group down? The only reason why I ask is that, I'd like to avoid any facebook users not realising that the official page exists (where we provide special promotions etc), and as I'm sure you can imaging, I need to have tight control over anything that could influence our brand image.

I hope you are able to understand my position.

Many Thanks,
Matt


Group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=4959914398

( My response, and ensuing discussion )

I'm sure very few people are interested by this point, but I finally appear to have got the hang of sitflying.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3FizeB02PI

Flying in a 'normal' body position (I don't know about you, but I spend most of my waking hours sitting in a chair) feels orders of magnitude more surreal than belly or back-flying. It's pleasingly grin-inducing, both at the time and every time I've remembered it subsequently :-)

(like sit-flying, only not quite there yet) :-p

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekXbXysDpMY

Ahem.

Airkix have finally sorted out the confusion with the vouchers my dad bought me for xmas - long story, but for a while there they'd 'lost' £170 of pre-paid tunnel time. Still, all's well that ends well, and I now have a sorted out and ready-for-abuse account with them, with all my time/money safely credited on it.

So... anyone want to go fly? Soon? :)

I booked a load of time in Airkix for this Saturday (10pm), expecting two or three other people to be coming along with me. As it happens, they're not. So um... anyone want to buy some cheap minutes off me? :)

Today (yesterday, technically), I spent a large chunk of the afternoon at Airkix, learning to do frontflips and backflips whilst floating in midair. I can't remember the last time I grinned so much.

Backflips. In midair. I'm a fucking Manga character.

I fact, when I left I was still grinning so much that people were giving me weird looks and then giving me a wide berth on the pavement :-p

I'm still high on endorphins now. :)

My first ever flight at Airkix:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=ufqSgPotdGM

Last flight before I started learning backflying:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=oQJyjcGm9Bk

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CBrDxrlw7O8

G'night.

:)

Getting into bed on Tuesday, Helen asks what the hell I've done to my back. I say 'Wut?'. She points out that my back is covered in bruising, and asks if I've been sneaking off for secret liasons with dommes for severe beatings. I saw 'Wut??'. She takes a photo with my phone:

( image )

I guess when I was learning backflying last week, I hit the mesh floor a bit harder than I realised each time I fell out of the air.

Saturday (last weekend) I went to Raindance, with libellum, flippit and fire_brand. The music was fantastic - I could have danced all night on any one of five of the dancefloors (drum and bass, happy hardcore, hard house, old skool, and um, something else), and half the night on the sixth (90s cheese).

The drunk guy who stuck his hand up Fliss's skirt was less fantastic. Especially when, after I grabbed his wrists to stop him groping her, he headbutted me in the face and nearly broke my nose. I hate drunks.

So, we left relatively early (4am), and headed back to the House of Monkeys, where we found a sleepy denari just finishing an epic video game mission. We chatted quietly for an hour or two, then all headed off to our various beds.

Sunday we got up late and had breakfast, then we had roast dinner not that long after it. So that was filling. Then we set fire to things and whirled them around, as per video already posted. I really need to spin fire more often, I keep forgetting how much fun it is.

During the week I've been steadily coming down with the lurgies of doom that everybody else has already been attacked by. I had Tuesday off work, and seriously considered taking Friday off too but decided against it in the end - work has been busy lately and I don't like taking time off unless I really feel like I need it. Speaking of work, on Thursday we had an excellent strategy meeting in the afternoon. I can only assume that I'm now fully into pointy-haired manager territory, when I leave a four hour meeting feeling like it was an enjoyable and worthwhile experience.

Last night I went flying again - this time for 8 minutes (4 x 2 minute slots). It was really good - I spent the first couple of minutes just arsing around, rather than trying to learn anything, which put me in a really good mood for the rest of the session. skorpionuk and dakeyras were with me as part of his birthday present, as was pieces_of_ele as part of her mission to do everything possible in the six days remaining before she heads back to Australia (via the USA). They all did really well, and had lots of fun too from what I could tell.

In my other slots I practised some of the things I've been trying to learn recently, and roamed around the tunnel touching the wall wherever the instructor pointed at it as quickly as possible, which was fun. I get in and out of the tunnel by myself now, rather than being helped in and out, which helps me to feel a bit more competent. In the last session we did 'stability training', which was hilarious... the instructor got me to fly in the middle of the tunnel at about head height, then got me to do a serious of increasingly absurd actions; nazi-salute sort of movements, putting my hands on my head, putting one hand on my hip (didn't manage that one, it's bloody tricky!), and so on. Oh yes, and 'doggy paddle' - good lord that was silly. It's really hard not to flail your legs around when you're doing that with your arms :) As Col's flight was a birthday present, Bec paid for a DVD of the occasion, which should also feature my inane activities - I'll try to get some clips posted up at some point.

The next part of stability training was when the instructor started wandering behind me and 'stealing' the airflow from underneath various bits of me. It's quite disconcerting when (for instance) one of your legs suddenly loses all lift, and compensating for it was an interesting challenge. This part of the session culminated in him putting his feet centrally underneath me, with his body facing me but his back arched so much that his torso was nearly horizontal, and then spinning around underneath me in a very disconcerting fashion. It felt quite a lot like being in a small dinghy on large swell waves - odd rolling sensation. I did a very credible job of not falling out of the air, although I did giggle quite a lot when he came into view at such an odd angle beneath me.

I was pretty pleased with the whole session really, and was on an endorphin/adrenaline high all the way back to London and to steerpikelet's birthday party.

Said party was fun in places, but my adrenaline did wear off fairly swiftly, so I gave Ele a lift home and headed back to my bed at about 4am, where I stayed until gone midday today. The cold/cough seems to have quite a thorough foothold now, so I'm probably going to spend the rest of the weekend lurking in bed and sulking. Boo, germs. On the bright side, I have a lot of shiny new books to read.