Welcome to Gaia! ::

Nah. I'm afraid our shopping centers are littered with martial arts schools. My association doesn't have a rep in the Williamsburg area yet.

Chesapeake. Home of David Wright.

Apparently this matters to people who like baseball.

i know i havent been as active here in kapow for a long time, but this year its been the same for gaia in general. this past year, in addition to my nine-to-fiver (more like eleven-to-sevener), ive had a steady contracting job doin digital artwork for a company in the bay area.. which leaves me less time durin weeknites to play. 3nodding

Bridge collapses, cars fall in the Mighty Mississip'.



So really, I'm hoping that the MN Kapowians (Luce, Wally, Kitty, and anyone else I forgot) didn't get hurt in this. 'cause that'd suck.

Pictures of the bridge collapse. We're all safe, or rather those of us who frequent the forums.

He did. See Bistro.

It's finally over. And I'm beat all to s**t. Managed not to break anything. The demonstration and testing were both today. Testing in the morning. Hanshi Hamada was personally running it. If anyone tells me there's someone scarier than that man, I'm gonna call them a damn liar. He's a modern samurai. Spent the first 20 years of his life in a monestary doing nothing but training in Shorinji-Ryu, Aikido and weapons.

He had us do three katas (forms), and then we kneeled down. His students filtered out among us. I'm face to face with a fairly big guy, also kneeling and he's got a hard rubber knife. So, it's knife defenses from a kneeling position, which of course, I've never done in my life. Would have helped if I had known about the guy behind me too. Then we did a few from standing.

Then they put the knives away, this is of course after I missed my opponent's knifehand, and took the tipp right in face breaking the knife. Just glad I've still got use of my eye. And they break out the thick padded shields and we are told to hit them with our strongest techniques. Well, I nail it with a good strong kick. Then the guy behind me rams me with his shield. I'm having a "what the ********?" moment when the guy in front of me lunges at me with his shield. And this really sucks, because these shields are really well padded, and make it rediculously easy to defect attacks with. So, I'm mustering up every trick and technique I know to keep from getting pinned between them, and then I couldn't breath. I had been having sinus trouble all week, and it picked then to kick in big time. I was completely unable to breath trough my nose. My body went into spilt second panic mode, and they had my sorry a** jacked against the wall.

For I brief moment I wanted to just lay down and call it quits.

Then I released, they could deflect my attacks, the wall couldn't. I was losing air fast, and my legs were working hard to just stay under me. I launched a best double palm strike I could, right into the wall. This shot me into one ot my attackers and knocked him back, giving me time to throw an elbow into the other guy's shield, no chance to deflecting that. Got a split second to right myself and they were on me again. They crowded me tight, negating my kicking ability. I locked down a stance and held them for a another moment and then one switched angles on me and busted my stance. Down I went, and thank you training because I managed not to bounce my head onn the gym floor. I got dragged to my feet by one of them by my jacket. He wanted me up, and came up swinging.

This all happened in 30 seconds.

So it's over and Hamada's students retreated. I'm completely out of breath and struggling to try to get it back, and then Hamada askes for our "best" kata. I know which one I did, but for the life of me I can't remember doing it.

It was over, and there we knelt on one knee. Heads bent. Pools of sweat forming on the floor. Hamada comes by and taps us with his sword and we pass. I'm now a fifth degree black belt recognized by the Dai Nippon Butoku Kai. This is a branch of the Japanese government and the Prince is on the board. So yeah, Japan says I'm an alright guy now.

Then came lunch, which luckily stayed down. Then hours of last minute training for our domonstration. Finally, the teams from around the world gave their perfomances. Their were demonstrations in Iaido, Juijitsu, Aikido, Jo, Kendo, Sojitsu and Karate. My team consisted of Black Belts from five different states who had only the night before finally trained as a team at my dojo. I performed the Pinan series, five katas in all, with four other guys, as other team members demonstarted different skills our Association practices. All and all, it went pretty well.

And then I come home with the assignment of writing a 200 word paper on the event and to write a Haiku. Finished that.

So, it's pretty much over. Months of hell and jumping through hoops. All done.

Right now, I don't even know if it was worth it.

Well I really don't know what to tell you about the worthiness of your experience Jaeg, but pretty much everything you write here is electrifying. It's often some really trying, hard, or traumatic stuff but I always catch myself holding my breath like I'm reading a novel or something. I'm sure that sounds terrible given that what you're writing about is your actual life, but you're a very gifted b*****d in the prose department. It's not even what happens to you, but it really is in how you tell it.

I'm bad at advice, encouragement, and empathy for the most part so I'll never be able to offer you anything useful in that department, but I will say that you should never stop writing because either you've got quite the natural talent or you're a sadistic b*****d that loves to make me feel bad by being entertained by your life story. blaugh