3.28 wasn't even on my radar as possible until casually grinding the level in a call with eednob, who was chasing a 3.31 tie and randomly seeing a 3.28 timestop. I didn't chain it back then (2019?) and it was a single freeze, but it sparked something in me. I knew it had to be possible. I had to go for it.

With a few stray attempt sessions over the intervening years, I saw 3.28 7 times in total, none of which were chains. Then tonight I decided to just go for it and saw 5 3.28 freezes in a half hour. One landed on the platform and chained. Unfortunately, I messed up the chip collection and had to go for 3 in the gong room and got the worst luck. Kept going, and 20 minutes later got another 3.28 landing (I stopped keeping track of freezes because they were coming every few minutes), again had to go for 3 in the gong room but this time a monkey hit the gong as I caught it and I got squished. Could have been it but wasn't.

Another 3.28 landing, and this time I choked in the gong room.

And then this run where I held it together. That's a new record, a new frame, and I'm back. Maybe.

I probably played this level for over 20 hours in total over the years, including at least 5 of just 3.28 attempts, only really knowing it's possible for the last hour of attempts. I've set some crazy times recently in some crazy runs, but this one, this 3 second frame grind that's easily chokable, has gotten the strongest reaction out of me. Wow.