Hi! I'm Aaron, but some of you likely know me as yyr.  I've been playing DDR since the fall of 2001, when a friend of mine brought DDR USA for PS1 and 2 generic softpads into our college dorm.  Now, I've been playing DDR and ITG for 20 years, typically in Westchester/NY metro area arcades, and usually at least once a week.  My longest hiatus was just last year, for about 7 months...from March through late October of 2020, when I grabbed an L-Tek dance platform, a fairly reasonable home-version substitute for the real thing.  This year I added a ballet barre.  It's not quite a Stepmaniax stage, but it's the best I can do in my little apartment!

I'm turning 42 years old soon, and once again this year, I've decided to take the @OhioDDR birthday challenge.  The challenge entails playing the infamous MAX300 song as many times as your age.  At least half of those plays have to be on the hardest difficulty you can pass, which for me is Expert.  And, you can't play any other songs until you're completely done.  No warmups, no breaks, just MAX300!

Over the last few years I've been playing ITG and DDR with my buddy Dan Hood, aka revolutionomega in the FlashFlashRevolution community, where he's been active for over 15 years.  He recently turned 30, and he wants to get in on this craziness too!  So we'll be taking the challenge together.  We've both been pushing as hard as we can on DDR over the last few months, going for clear lamps on the Level 15-17 folders, and playing pretty regularly...so we're both pretty confident that we'll be able to complete this challenge.  I hope you'll come cheer us on, LIVE, on Sunday, November 21st, at 1PM Eastern/10AM Pacific!  (I expect the stream to last approximately 4 hours.)  We'll be stomping a ton of arrows, using some stupid mods, holding on for dear life to my ballet barre, reminiscing with Twitch chat about the glory days of step games in the New York area, and generally engaging in shenanigans.

We always enjoy stomping on arrows, but we figured, for this occasion, why shouldn't we also do some good?  With COVID still a big problem, and so many folks out of work, we have more hungry people than ever before...some of whom are in our very own communities.  Just a bit of help will make a world of difference to these folks!  Please consider pledging 25 cents ($18), 50 cents ($36), or even a dollar ($72) for each time we clear MAX300.  This money will go a long way!  (Due to the physically taxing nature of this event, as well as time constraints, we may not be announcing donations on stream...but rest assured that we really appreciate them!)

Thank you very much for your support, and for supporting Feeding America!  We hope to "see" you on Sunday, November 21st!