Sometimes, friends will just drop out of your life completely. Its not sad - people change. People grow. And that is never a sad thing. I think the last time I explored this little park was with my old friend - lets call her Sasha. No wait, lets call her Sandra. I like Sandra better. Anyway, Its been almost 4 years since the last time I was at this little park. Time sure does fly.
I think the first thing I noticed about this place was the amount of vegetation that grew in the last 4 years. I clearly remember being able to see the ground where I was walking pretty easily back then. Now, there are trees blocking the way. It feels more adventurous I suppose. Wearing sandals was the worst idea ever.
I brought my D800 (the picture below was taken with my Oneplus) and the newest lens I own - a 20mm 1.8. Its my first time really using it. With the product shots (Like the Evora, T-shirts) I am usually shooting with a 55mm 2.8 macro. The 20mm has too much distortion for product but I love wide shots for scenery when I am traveling.
As the Ken Rockwell review suggested, its insanely sharp. Like insanely - even at f1.8. And it is small compared to the 16-35mm f4. I am so glad I went with the 20 prime instead of the 16-35.
I took an Evora along for the walk. I didn't actually throw it at all, but the purple is a good contrast for the forest. It is funny though, years ago CLYW had a video contest with "Canada theme" as the challenge, and I filmed it here. I won a gold and red splash Peak for it (Ironman edition?). I wish I still had it. That thing was bad ass.
I walked for a bit longer along the path until I found the stream. This was in the CLYW video from back then.
If you follow the stream, it leads to this brutalist monstrosity. This didn't change much since the last time I was here - I remember hopping around on the bricks in the past before as well. More graffiti than before I guess.
I think the last time I was here with Sandra we got covered in mosquito bites because we didn't wear bug spray. I didn't learn my lesson. I look back at it now, and it is weird how okay I am with how everything happened. We just knew each other so well because we grew up together from a young age.
This plant looked so out of place. What the hell.
Anodized titanium sure looks pretty. Its always so different than aluminum anodized that we are so used to seeing. Anyway thats where my journey ended. I essentially walked back where I started at the bridge. TLDR; Don't get hung up on old friends, anodized titanium yoyos are pretty, and the 20mm f1.8 is a baller ass lens. Cant ask for more!
Apologies if this writeup seems short. it has been an insane month of work, accumulating multiple 70 hour work weeks back to back. More than half of that work is comprised of plastic projects I have in the pipeline for 2023. So although it has been non-stop, it is work I have been enjoying quite a lot. Im trying to get stuff buttoned up before I leave Canada, so things have been all over the place. Back in December when the Fulvia hit the stores, this Triple zero was already in development. In fact - this was supposed to be the first yoyo released until I changed my mind in mid 2022.
December was such an insane month, it almost burnt me out. The amount of yoyos I had to ship out for the Fulvia release was insane, but on top of that being just a single person running Luftverk, it meant I was also dealing with invoicing stores all around the world and making sure the factory got paid in advance for shipments. All in all it was a slurry of spreadsheets and staying up late to pack orders every day.
I dont know where to start with the project. It has been the most expensive yoyo by multiple magnitudes to create. Not only was this project costly due to injection molding, but my persistence on a machining operation meant the R&D for this yoyo took forever. I started designing this yoyo over 2 years ago - and it has slowly snowballed into this proof-of-concept initial release based on the beloved Fulvia design.
