The Progression of a Calvin

by Crazy Ivan

If you know Myachi at all, you know that the longer you use a Myachi, the better it gets.  This is a process that we call "breaking in" or, occasionally, "yummification".  Some Myachis start off pretty good and get great.  Others start out pretty slippery and only get grippy and yummy after some serious use.

Perhaps no Myachi more aptly demonstrates this phenomena than the Calvin.  My personal favorite Myachi, the Calvin starts off as a very nondescript denim sack that few people would describe as yummy.  It's kind of stiff and the fabric is a bit slick, so jamming with a brand new Calvin can be something of a chore.

The Calvin, stage one... just opened the package.

When the Calvin first came out it was considered something of a dud.  Surrounded by the bright, vibrant colors of the 1.0 series, this Myachi was overlooked as being boring or unexceptional.  There were other dull, patternless sacks in that series, of course.  The Black Butter and the Dawg Diggity sat on the shelves beside it, but unlike the Calvin, they were also spectacular jammers fresh out of the pack.

Because of this, few people realized the extreme jammability of the Calvin when it was first released.  We assumed that with a bit of break-in time it would get yummier, but we didn't anticipate that it would also gain grip as it got some mileage under it.

The Calvin, stage two... a couple of days of use.

You can hardly see it in the picture, but the denim fabric naps out pretty quickly and coats the Myachi with a fine shell of catchability.  You can see from the difference in the two pictures that the color of the sack has already faded a bit and the shape itself has widened a bit.

But at this point, say a couple of days after you open it, the Calvin is inferior to a similarly jammed with Black Butter or Diggity.  If you jammed equally with all 3 sacks, the Butter and Diggity would be nearing their maximum level of yumminess by then.  The Calvin, on the other hand, is just getting warmed up.

The Calvin, stage three... a few weeks of use.

If you look closely, you can all but see the grip in the photo above.  The little pieces of fuzz that are standing up along its surface are almost like hand-velcro at this stage making the Myachi remarkably easy to catch from a long distance throw.  Close up jams are quick and confident at this point and by now the owner of this Calvin is starting to realize that they've got one of the best jammers of all time.

You'll also note that as the Calvin gets more broken in, the color gets lighter and lighter.  This is a relatively minor advantage, but it does make a broken in Calvin easier to see than a new one, which slightly accelerates its trip towards uber-yummy.

But there is still another stage of development that a truly SUMPOY Calvin will go through.

The Calvin, final stage... almost does tricks by itself.

At a certain point, the Calvin will break in like your favorite pair of jeans.  It will mold to the contours of your body instantly.  It will stay put if you catch it on a pencil tip.  It will sink into your hand from a ten story drop and through it all it will still be slick enough to pull off grind moves.

The Calvin is truly a Myachi that rewards its owner.  You can use the traditional methods to speed up the break in time of a Calvin and you might just get your way all the way to stage 3 without really jamming it up.  But the same methods of wetting, soaping, heating and drying that will cheat you to stage 3 pretty much guarantee that the sack will never reach stage 4.  The only way to get there is to earn it from day one.

The Evolution of a Calvin