I always liked magic but would lapse in and out of thinking much about it. As a kid I remember watching the David Copperfield specials and would watch Penn and Teller whenever they were on TV. I liked it a lot but it didn't seem like anything I could do given the bigness of their tricks.

Recently however I chanced upon the New Yorker profile of Ricky Jay and watched some videos and I thought it was pretty cool. From there I watched some more videos of card guys, including Richard Turner's performance on Fool Us, which moved me to such an extent I had to email him. (He wrote back, which greatly pleased me.) Anyway, I decided cards are cool and now I am here as a man in his early 40s who is going to do his best to learn some tricks. I went from not being able to doing anything to having a good riffle and I'm working on the double undercut and the overhand force to modest success. I guess that's it. Looking forward to learning more.

I also want to note I'm from the Sacramento region and I am also interested in ultimately learning any manner of sleight of hand stuff..

Hi Big Howie,

Thanks for sharing your journey. I wish I had started magic earlier, but I didn't. It's encouraging to know that I am not alone on this journey. I was listening to the podcast "Late Bloomers - Finding Magic Later in Life", and it's encouraging to me to hear from different people who started their magical journey late in life.

Hi Big Howie,

Welcome to the Café! Hope you find a lot of good information here!