It was a long trip—somewhat longer than I had expected at nearly two and a half hours. Quite fortunately, I wasn't driving; but that comes in later.
We drove up Friday after practice and pizza. It was raining buckets and pretty cold, a consequence of higher elevation and ugly weather patterns. We stayed at a Ramada; the water tasted bad enough that you might not be too thrilled to brush your teeth.
The day started at 6:30—I'm not one for early rising, but it's hard to sleep on competition nights anyway. We got breakfast together, then drove to the tournament. It was surprisingly well run. Everyone I talked to really went out of their way to be respectful from the get-go, and while there are always some political issues here and there, I wasn't exposed to any of it. Some of our people took heat for the forms they did, or their requests to start from the side. I was relatively unaffected by it all, though I did have a pretty killer headache all day and seem to have come down with a little cold today.
The format of the tournament was the only real downer. They separated the day by event type rather than rank. So all breaking was done first. Then all weapons. Then all open form. The all traditional. Then all fighting. It made for an extremely long day. We didn't leave until at least 8 at night, and probably later.
The headache rendered me almost completely antisocial at the end of the day. I was exceptionally tired and a little surprised I didn't lose my lunch during the course of competition, so needless to say I had half a bowl of chicken noodle soup and water at Friendly's. D's parents covered me, which was really sweet of them. D even offered to drive me home after we got back to RA, but I perked up enough on drive back that I could make it back to the folks' house. If I had to drive to mine, I'm pretty sure I would have failed miserably.
The team did pretty well; I think we left with a pretty insane ratio of around 3 trophies per person. An average of one is good, and MC has been angling toward 1.5 as a suitable goal.
The tourney was well-attended and had some good competition. I took a 3d behind two masters in open form and a 1st in traditional (competing with the same form, but different judges). I failed in weapons (we probably had 8 or 12 competing in that division, though, which makes Ds 3d place finish pretty sweet). I also failed in fighting, where I was ousted after scoring a single point.
My first in traditional pitted me against the master and his daughter again (they competed in open form also) for a grand championship. He was very complimentary afterwards, which was nice. We have worked together in the past—he is testing MC and MM for their next belt levels when I test for Master this summer. He's the only person I know who can wear pink head gear to fight and still be intimidating.
The coolest part of the day, I think, was when they ran a section for special needs students. A very stand-up thing to do, and pretty unusual in this day and age of competition. Often teachers are only interested in working with those of highest aptitudes and use the bottom feeders to keep the doors of their studios open. You could tell the organizers really did care about the usual things people in the martial arts preach (respect, honor, honesty, good sportsmanship, et c.).
Other highlights:
- Random people complimenting my performance
- Another Ohio State guy was at a foreign tournament; we talked about Jim Tressel for a few minutes. I met the first OSU guy in Jersey
- N adlibbing part of the staff form and still taking 2d
- A super-nervous J winning a 1st and 2d place
- Meeting some pretty neat martial artists
- Other competitors asking MC if they could learn his form
- Tying with D at open form and taking 3d in the tiebreaker
- That guy doing insane breaks
- Pretty high-quality trophies
Unlike other tournaments, this one did not have the flavor of redemption. It was, on reflection, however, close to another set of difficult circumstances, and while this trip didn't feel very good with the headache and pitiful (even for me) performance at fighting, it has turned out well. Inevitably, of course, I will compete somewhere that I haven't been before, and I will not retrace old steps. There is yet more room to grow.
In other news, I am more moved in today than I was. I have to buy blinds, which I will hopefully do today. Last Sunday was the first day that I spent two consecutive afternoons at my own house, for whatever that's worth.
I've had the builder do some work on the house (in fact, I'm composing this while he's banging away at a few doors), and the exterior paint and grading is finally finished. I've found a rogue Internet connection at the house, so I have the occasional opportunity to check mail and write.
L and I visited with some of her friends in NYC last weekend. We had a good time, though it didn't take long for the city to become oppressive. It was nice to meet them, though, and to do some running around in some of the different parts of the city. We enjoyed dinner in Chinatown—they are both fairly conversant in Mandarin. We had some "Shanghai" dumplings (L calls them soup dumplings; my butchered romanization is "Xiao lum bao." I mentioned them to Y at work, who is Chinese, and she understood almost immediately what I was talking about. She was quite animated, because they are in fact pretty awesome. I was pleased that I pronounced the name close enough for her to understand.
Other than that, life has largely been spent as usual: teaching, training, working, and not sleeping nearly enough.
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